Caution: The Organizational Approaches You were Taught, May be Less Effective than They Appear - How to Find Approaches that Work for You.
With Spring Break around the corner for many, this month we're exploring how to find strategies and approaches to help you navigate transitional, executive functioning, and organizational challenges.
Hello Gifted Guides!
We’re so glad you’re here! We’d like to extend a special welcome to all our new friends from the NASP Convention. If you’re looking to explore the details of our Young Scholar Program, you can find that information at the end of this newsletter.
How are you doing?
In many ways, March is a month of transitions. And, traditionally, transitions have not always been a fan favorite in the gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) community. How can you and your learner more smoothly navigate the transitions of March?
Let’s explore that!
In like a Lion, Out like a Lamb
One of the most obvious transitions of March, depending on where you’re located, is probably the transition from winter to spring. Depending on where you’re located, March might start off blustery, cold, and thoroughly wintery, and it ends with the promising starts of spring renewal and rebirth.
Many of you probably “sprang forward,” with the time change on March 8th. And while that means more hours of sunlight (yay!), that may also have resulted in disrupted sleep schedules (not so yay!).
While many of us are excited for the start of spring, and the end of winter, disruption to our sleep, changes to our schedules, and an increase in seasonal allergies may still leave us dreading this seasonal transition.
In terms of school, many will be going on Spring Break later this month. Any school break can lead to tricky schedule changes and big feelings around transitions.
While we may have started the month feeling sluggish or ready to trade the last dreary days of winter for some spring warmth, the start of spring can also feel overwhelming. Much like New Years resolutions in January, ideas of spring cleaning, or new organizational flows, or a final push to the end of the school year, can make March and the start of spring feel pressure-packed, despite its pastel color scheme.
What can you do to help these transitions feel more approachable and manageable?
Lots!
Let’s explore how reflecting on and reevaluating your understandings of and approaches to organization can help create softer, more manageable, more intuitive transitions. Let’s find some approaches or strategies that might be a fit for you and your learner.
What Does Organization Have to Do with Transitions?
We often talk about how gifted and 2e individuals struggle with transitions because they struggle with executive functioning (EF). EF can be described as “the little CEO in the frontal lobe.” Working on EF skills often becomes crucial as learners progress through school and start having to manage more class changes throughout the school day, longer and more complex school assignments, and more nuanced social interactions.
A lot of strategies to develop EF skills focus on helping learners see time, understanding the flow of time, seeing their task (and all of its components), and understanding the flow of their task. Eventually, the goal is generally to be able to do all these parts at once—to understand the relationship between you, your tasks, and time and then to efficiently work within that relationship.
EF supports typically focus on strategies to better organize your time and/or the components of the tasks in front of you.
When you set alarms to remind you it is time to transition from one activity to another, you are employing an organizing structure over your experience with time. When you use a daily planner or a giant wall calendar in your kitchen, you are organizing. When you habit stack or lay out your clothes for the next day and make your lunch at night, so you’re ready to go in the morning, you are integrating organization into your routine.
So, to discuss transitions or struggles with EF, without discussing organization, would be missing the point.
But, as with all things we discuss here at Guiding Gifted, the aforementioned “point” is not one size fits all.
That is, forcing yourself (or your learner) to adhere to an organizational system that doesn’t fit your needs and support the ways in which you organically move through the world may end up causing your more suffering than success.
Is Shame Getting in the Way of Your Organizing?
Have you ever tried to stick to a schedule or organizing method that everyone swore to you would change your life, but it just didn’t click for you? Have you been teased throughout your life about your cluttered desk, but when things aren’t all piled up in front of you, you are actually more lost? Do you have a complex Post-It note system and/or a multi-alarm system in morning that no one but you quite understands, but you swear it’s the only thing that works for you?
If any of those examples resonate with you or sound vaguely familiar, you’re definitely not alone.
As adults, we’ve had lots of time to trial and error our ways into systems and strategies that work for us—whether we realize that’s what we’ve done or not. Sometimes, we stumble into our best rhythms and routines without realizing it.
Still, we may feel the need to amend those rhythms and routines for no other reason than they don’t look like what experts or other advice-givers have decided is efficient or effective.
What if those people were wrong? What if their approach is efficient or effective—in theory—but it’s not the right approach for you (or your learner)?
Should you still try to force yourself to adhere to it?
Is that how you want to spend your energy?
What could you do with that energy if you weren’t trying to mold yourself to an ill-fitting organizational system?
Gifted and 2e brains experience the world and processes information differently than others. Even when two people have, on paper, the exact same diagnoses and profile, they still experience the world distinctly as individuals.
Devon Price, Ph.D. has written two books that we find useful in deconstructing some of the lies we tell ourselves about what productivity and organization should look like, Laziness Does Not Exist and Unlearning Shame. If you’ve been with us a while here at Guiding Gifted, you’ve probably seen us reference these books before.
If you (or someone you’re guiding) are struggling with understandings of productivity or organization that are not aligning with your lived experiences and needs, maybe these books can be helpful first steps to finding more aligned approaches.
What Does Your Version of Organized Look Like?
Everyone’s definition of what it means to be organized is different. It may come as no shock at all that what organization means to you may differ vastly from what it means for your learner.
Typically, there is what we have been taught about how to organize, and there is our natural sense of how to organize. These two do not always overlap. Sometimes, they are absolutely opposed to each other. This tension between what we’ve been taught we should do, versus what our natural patterns are can cause a lot of frustration, shame, and feelings of defeat.
What if it didn’t have to be this way?
That’s right.
What if the way your mom told you things had to be organized isn’t the only way things can be organized? (Sorry, moms!) Neurodivergence often runs in families, so the supports and strategies that worked for other family members may not work for you, and that’s ok.
What if the way your 4th grade teacher said your work had to be organized wasn’t the only way to organize your work?
What if what works for someone else doesn’t work for you?
Simple!
Let’s figure out what works for you, and try it out!
Below are a variety of resources that all explore neurodivergent approaches to organization and executive function.
Why are there so many resources on the same topic? Because, if you’ve met one gifted/2e person, you only met one gifted/2e person.
Even when folks have similar profiles or the “same” diagnoses, the ways they experience and move through the world is going to differ. That’s why we’ve shared a variety of resources. Even when they overlap, the differing approaches and perspectives of one resource might speak to you or resonate with you in a way that the others don’t.
Articles:
33 ADHD-Friendly Ways to Get Organized - ADDitude
The Tools that Help Me Organize a Neurodivergent Life - Becca Alley
Tips for Families: Is Flexibility a Superpower? - Peg Dawson, Ed.D.
Executive Functioning and Gifted Children - Davidson Institute
Videos:
Organizing While Neurodivergent: There’s an App for That - Neurodiversity Podcast
Overwhelmed? Too Busy? Here’s How To Get Through It - How to ADHD
How to Do Something That Should Be Easy (But...Is...Not) - How to ADHD
How to Deal with Clutter When You Have ADHD - How to ADHD
SPRING BREAK - do this! - Seth Perler
Books:
Perfectionism - Lisa Van Gemert, M.Ed.T.
How to Keep House While Drowning - KC Davis, LPC
Brain-Body Parenting - Mona Delahooke, Ph.D.
Plus, check out the Devon Price books we linked earlier in this issue.
What have you learned from these resources? Did you watch or read one and feel a wash of relief? Did a concept that you’ve long struggled with finally seem to click? Did you let go of some of the shame or negative self-talk that you used to hold related to a particularly onerous organizational task?
We hope so. We hope the strategies and ideas discussed in these resources can serve as a springboard for brainstorming more ways you can support your learner and yourself through transitional, executive function, and organizational challenges.
Conclusion
Whether this is your first issue with us or if you’ve been here since the beginning, we are grateful to be part of your advocacy community, and we’re here to support you how we can.
If you’re in one of our programs already, you know there are lots of resources for you to access via our private, member’s only website.
If you’re not currently participating in one of our programs, there is still a wealth of information and support available to you. Check out our Resource Library or our free resource guides or any of our other curated resources (like our Spotify and YouTube playlists or our Bookshop.org reading lists).
Finally, a fundamental part of advocacy is making sure basic needs—like food and shelter—are being met for both us and our learners. If you or someone you know might need extra support, findhelp.org may be a useful resource. It can also help you find organizations to support, if you’re in a position to help others.
We hope you find ways to more comfortably navigate this month’s transitions and changes. We’ll see you in April!
What’s New at the Davidson Institute?
Apply to Young Scholars!
If you’re interested in joining the Young Scholars program, you can learn more and start your application today! Get started by visiting our How to Apply page!
If you want to learn more about our program, explore our website, or register for our upcoming virtual Application Q&A. Our next Q&A is taking place on March 16, at 4 pm (Pacific). Does that time not work for you? Don’t worry. If you register for the event, you’ll receive a recording of the Q&A.
Remember! Annual Summit Weekend is only open to Young Scholars. If your family wants to join us for Summit 2026, be sure to apply to Young Scholars!
Testing Opportunities – Spring Test Dates Available NOW!
Through our partnership with Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, throughout the year, we are able to offer low cost, remote testing for students in grades 3-10.
This testing can be used to apply to the Davidson Institute’s Young Scholars program, along with the Davidson Academy, Reno and Davidson Academy Online.
To learn more and register for Spring 2026 test dates (or to join the Fall testing waitlist), check out our Eligibility Assessment page today!
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We’ll see you next month. Stay well, Gifted Guides!