I was recently asked by a college student how best to compensate for their lack of executive functioning skills around college assignments.  She complained of not being able to organize her assignments, start them or stay on task and complete them.  Here was the response that I provided to her. 

 If you have never been diagnosed with ADD, my suggestion would be to have a thorough evaluation with an individual qualified to diagnose ADD. That may be a school psychologist, psychiatrist, family doctor of social worker who is well versed and trained in diagnosing ADD. Knowing what is causing these symptoms, will provide you with many answers. When working as a coach with my students at the university, I advise them to set up a regular study schedule. This helps them to stay on task in that they begin to develop regular study and school work time and habits. I also advise them to stay out of their dorm room (or home) and go to the library where there are many students studying and there are less distractions. The third thing I advise my students to do when feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do, is to take one small piece of the assignment at a time. Break each assignment down into smaller pieces. For example, if you have a large paper to write, the first action step you might take is to locate the research information to start the paper as the first step. Set up an amount of time that you can allocate to that task and set a timer. Next, write the first page only of the paper in an allocated amount of time. Set a timer for this as well. If you can only hold your attention for 30 minutes at a time, start by setting your timer for 30minutes. AS you develop the habit of working on a regular schedule you may find that you can go for longer periods of time without being distracted. Sometimes just starting the work provides you with the momentum to complete the task. You will need to experiment with what works best for you.