The pomodoro technique. Power poses. Planners. Denise Daskal has tried them all, searching for the right strategy to improve her executive functioning, or the mental skills used to manage time and pursue goals.

Ms. Daskal has spent hours hunting through TikTok, reading books and taking classes to become better organized and more focused both at work and in her personal life. But the long list of strategies, while somewhat helpful, has felt exhausting, she said.

“My mind breaks a bit when I get overwhelmed and I have too much coming at me all at once,” said Ms. Daskal, 63, who lives in Dearborn, Mich., and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder a few years ago.

Conditions like A.D.H.D., autism, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression can impede executive functioning; so can the period of life when women transition in and out of menopause. Life circumstances such as parenting young children, getting a bad night’s sleep or even missing a meal can scramble a person’s ability to focus and complete tasks, too.

Here’s how to understand executive functioning, and figure out which coping strategies might work for you.

What is executive functioning?

Executive functions are life management skills that help people “convert intentions into actions,” said Ari Tuckman, a psychologist in West Chester, Pa., and author of the “The ADHD Productivity Manual.”

In other words, if you plan to do something, executive functions help you do it at the right time and place because it will benefit you, either now or in the future, he added. These skills are essential for planning, solving problems, managing time, making decisions and initiating tasks, as well as controlling your emotions and attention.

Amy Dorn, 44, a mother of three in Evergreen, Colo., who has A.D.H.D., has trouble staying calm when her brain becomes overstimulated by too many things happening at once. It doesn’t take long before she becomes frazzled. Sometimes, she said, she’ll even “scream at the top of my lungs.”

There are no quick fixes, but the self-awareness that her brain is different helps her calm down faster, take a deep breath and say she’s sorry.

“The kids call me the apologizer,” she said.

Her tendency to go from 0 to 100 may never go away, she added, so her family has found ways to prevent overstimulation from happening in the first place. Her husband changed his working hours, arriving home earlier to ensure that she has an extra hand shuttling the kids to activities. And they have limited their children to one sport per season.

Moving beyond tips and tricks

There’s no shortage of techniques to help with executive functioning, like the pomodoro method that Ms. Daskal tried, the gist of which is a 25-minute burst of focused attention followed by a short break.

But before trying one of these strategies, experts say, it may help to start with a brief self-analysis.

Identify which aspects of executive functioning are most problematic for you.

Tamara Rosier, the founder of the ADHD Center of West Michigan and the author of “You, Me, and Our ADHD Family,” said that difficulty starting a task was the most common executive functioning issue for her clients. The to-do list can feel overwhelming, which may lead to frustration, anxiety and avoidance.

When Ms. Daskal planned to finally clean out her garage, for example, she was so paralyzed by the prospect that she went out and adopted a dog instead.

Potty training a puppy seemed simpler than confronting the thousands of little decisions required to organize her space, she explained.

Next, look for solutions that address your problem.

For task initiation, ask yourself, “What’s making this hard to start?”

It might be perfectionism, fear or unclear steps, Dr. Rosier said. Once you have a better idea of what’s slowing you down, try to address it. If you’re unsure of what steps to take because your are overwhelmed with emotion, make a list of what is overwhelming. Then ask yourself, “Am I overcomplicating this task?” Challenge yourself to think of the simplest way to do it, Dr. Rosier said.

Another strategy, she added, is to use “body doubling,” which is working alongside someone else — virtually or in person — to create momentum. For example, the Attention Deficit Disorder Association offers an online “productivity powerhour” where people can gather to work toward a goal. You can also pair your task with something pleasant like music or a podcast to make it feel more enjoyable.

Try solving the problem outside your mind.

“Externalizing” your thought process — by discussing your problem with a friend, writing it down or physically manipulating the things you’re working on — can be more helpful than trying to hold everything in your mind, Dr. Tuckman said.

Ms. Dorn, for example, often forgets things that seem boring or mundane. She now wears a recording device on her wrist and says her to-do list out loud, then plays it back later in the day.

Set expectations for yourself and others.

Personal strategies are less effective if your environment isn’t friendly to people with executive functioning deficits, such as a job that requires you to complete a complex task on the computer while continuing to receive instant messages that may or may not require a response, breaking focus on the main task.

Ms. Daskal decided to pivot from owning a salon and spa, which involved managing a facility and a staff, to focus on her dream of starting a new nail polish brand. This time around, she said, she’s mindful of how many responsibilities she’s taking on and which ones need to be outsourced. That helps her make time for sleep and exercise.

“I limit both what I attempt to do in a day as well as the time I attempt to do them,” she said. Her mantra: “One step at a time, one thing at a time.”

Setting expectations with the people you interact with is also important, Dr. Tuckman said. Say you’re always late to meet friends. You can work on arriving earlier while also being honest, saying, “Don’t leave until I text you,” Dr. Tuckman suggested.

Don’t judge yourself too harshly.

If you’ve had trouble with executive functioning, it can be easy to blame yourself — especially if other people are continually suggesting that you fall short.

Remind yourself that you aren’t flawed or irresponsible, Dr. Tuckman said. Rather, you have difficulty following through on what you intend to do and juggling all of the other demands of life in order to make it happen, he added.

This mind-set can be “tremendously validating,” he said, especially when someone has tried so hard — sometimes even harder than others — yet doesn’t have as much to show for it.

“If you are someone who struggles with executive functions, critical people with very specific expectations may not be the people who should have a starring role in your life,” Dr. Tuckman said. “It’s not just you are a bad fit for them — they are a bad fit for you.”

Ronald Reagan and his fellow Republicans once invoked what they referred to as “welfare queens” as they made the case for reining in social spending in the 1970s and 1980s, painting a picture of unscrupulous women bilking the system to finance a sumptuous lifestyle.

Now as they try to justify cuts to Medicaid, congressional Republicans are focused on a different deadbeat poster child: the shiftless male video gamer who lazes around the house attached to his console while getting free health care that should go to more deserving people.

The imagery has changed, but the political tactic from the G.O.P. remains the same. By making broad generalizations about the types of people who could inappropriately benefit from federal benefits, they make the idea of cutting back seem virtuous rather than stingy.

With a new, restrictive work requirement for Medicaid and other cost-cutting measures emerging as main points of contention in the political debate over their sweeping domestic policy bill, Republicans have sought to play down the potential fallout for Americans who rely on the health care program for the poor. They say no one who truly merits help will lose benefits.

To bolster their case, they assert that ridding the Medicaid rolls of slackers and undocumented immigrants who should not be getting taxpayer help will shave off billions of dollars without touching benefits for those in need. Their message is that the necessary savings can be achieved by going after the old standbys of waste, fraud and abuse.

“You don’t want able-bodied workers on a program that is intended, for example, for single mothers with two small children who is just trying to make it,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on CNN in February as he began laying the groundwork for the Medicaid cuts. “That’s what Medicaid is for, not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games.”

Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, piled on to the perceived couch potato community.

“If you are able to work in America, well then you should not be sitting at home playing video games and collecting a check,” she said last month after meeting with President Trump and hearing his pitch for the legislation.

Other Republicans, Democrats and data analysts say that most Medicaid beneficiaries are already working. They note that even if a glut of loafing gamers did exist, cutting them off from government-provided insurance won’t save much money, since they don’t use much health care.

“They’re not on Medicaid because they are malingerers,” Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said about his 1.3 million constituents currently on Medicaid. “They are on Medicaid because they can’t afford private health insurance.”

But Republican proponents of cuts say their argument was underscored by a recent analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. Applying the American Time Use Survey and the Current Population Survey, the report estimated that able-bodied Medicaid recipients who don’t work spent about 4.2 hours a day watching television or playing video games, their second most common activity after sleeping. Working Medicaid recipients, it said, spent about 2.7 hours watching TV or gaming.

The speaker’s office said the findings substantiated Mr. Johnson’s point that some beneficiaries were gaming the system as they gamed at home.

“The next time a Democrat makes false claims about ‘Medicaid cuts,’ just remember that what they’re really saying is they want illegal aliens and able-bodied adults playing video games at home to continue stealing resources from those who need it,” the speaker’s office said in a news release.

Yet a new analysis from the Brookings Institution questioned the potential impact of the new House-approved work rule, which would require childless adults without physical limitations to show they had worked, volunteered or gone to school for at least 80 hours in the month before enrolling in Medicaid.

Even if the new requirements now under review in the Senate did catch some idle gamers, the savings might not prove to be that great, the analysis said. The 4.3 million people the study said were on Medicaid with no limits on activity recorded the lowest average Medicaid spending, while 40 percent did not use medical services at all. The authors said their data showed that just 300,000 beneficiaries reported that they didn’t work simply because they didn’t want a job.

“Speaker Johnson’s archetypal young men who hang out in basements playing video games are not as common as he may imagine, and just don’t use a lot of health care services,” said the Brookings report, written by Sherry Glied and Dong Ding. “Disenrolling this group would generate only modest federal savings, far less than needed to offset a significant share of the bill’s tax cuts,” they added.

Democrats say Republicans are well aware that millions of Medicaid beneficiaries are not whiling away the hours at home playing video games while they eagerly take advantage of a program where eligibility is tied to low income. They say Republicans are misrepresenting the situation in pursuit of savings to offset tax cuts in their legislation.

“They are just desperate for money and they know there’s a lot of money to be saved by pulling people off welfare,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. “And so they have to imagine an unworthy person.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Republicans wanted to justify their Medicaid cuts by stigmatizing “health care as a handout, when it should be something that enables the whole society to be more productive.”

“I think we are descending into the old ‘welfare queen’ demagoguery, and I think it is a disservice,” he said.

When Reagan ran for president in 1976, he peppered campaign speeches with the anecdote of a Chicago woman who had found a way to bilk the welfare system through the use of aliases and other fraud. The claim that the system was rife with corruption was meant to stir anger and resentment among voters who worked for a living.

Though suggestions of widespread cases of people living a luxurious lifestyle on welfare were debunked from the start, the impression has persisted for decades and surfaces in political and policy fights from time to time. When Congress enhanced unemployment benefits during the Covid pandemic, conservatives balked, saying the extra pay would keep those already disinclined to work at home.

Mr. Johnson and others have accused able-bodied unemployed Americans of “cheating” by receiving Medicaid coverage when they could work, even though the expansion of Medicaid in many states under the Affordable Care Act has made it permissible to obtain coverage without working as long as low-income guidelines are met.

“If you are able to work and you refuse to do so, you are defrauding the system,” Mr. Johnson said in late May on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He said that there was a “moral component” to the Republican push to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and that it would provide dignity to those pushed into the work force.

The Brookings analysis said that many of those who don’t hold a job would probably be exempt from new requirements because of reasons such as caring for a family member or other factors. It predicted that the effort would produce unintended consequences such as discouraging those who need Medicaid from qualifying for help because of new paperwork requirements.

“Prior efforts to surgically separate the meritoriously enrolled from the slackers have proved both ineffective and very administratively costly,” the report said. “Medicaid work requirements just don’t work in the way their proponents promise they do.”

Robert Jimison contributed reporting.