Imagine trying to construct a skyscraper without a blueprint. You have steel, concrete, and a talented crew, but without a master plan—a schedule, a sequence of operations, a defined workflow—you will end up with a chaotic, unstable pile of materials, not a soaring tower.
In the development of a young girl, raw intelligence, talent, and passion are the materials. Executive functioning skills are the blueprint.
“Executive functioning” is a clinical term for a set of mental processes that act as the project manager for your brain. They include:
- Organizational Skills: Keeping track of materials and information.
- Planning & Prioritization: Knowing what to do first and mapping out the steps to a goal.
- Time Management: Estimating how long tasks take and staying on schedule.
- Emotional Regulation: Managing frustration and staying focused under pressure.
Often, these skills are mistaken for personality traits—you’re either “organized” or you aren’t. This is a fallacy. Executive functions are cognitive skills that must be explicitly taught, practiced, and reinforced through scaffolding.
The Missing “Load-Bearing Wall”
Our educational system often focuses heavily on content delivery—the bricks and mortar—but neglects the instruction on how to manage that content. When a bright girl struggles in middle or high school, it’s rarely a lack of capability. It is almost always a failure of executive functioning structure. She has the materials, but she lacks the project management skills to assemble them.
At The Teeny Tiny Collective, we treat executive functioning as the load-bearing wall of success. Through our “My Inner Advocate” program, we move beyond simple study tips. We teach girls how to be the architects of their own time and energy. We provide the tools to draft a plan, the scaffolding to practice it, and the feedback loop to refine it.
When a girl master’s these skills, she doesn’t just become a better student. She becomes the capable, confident CEO of her own life.
