Previous posts in this series:
Understanding Executive Function: What It Is and Why It Matters
The Zoom Out, Zoom In Dance: A Foundation for Better Productivity
The Daily Aiming Ritual: Putting Prioritization into Practice
Time Management for Planning: Aligning Your Schedule with Natural Rhythms
In my first three posts, I laid important groundwork - explaining how executive function works, why planning and execution require different brain modes, and what cognitive foundations support productive work. Now I need to establish one more crucial foundation before we dive into the practical transition techniques that make these concepts work in daily life.
What I'm about to share might initially seem like a departure from productivity advice, but it's actually the missing piece that explains why even excellent systems sometimes fail. Here's the reality: you don't have a single, unified motivation system. Instead, you have multiple internal "parts" - different aspects of yourself that can want conflicting things simultaneously. One part might genuinely want to tackle that important project, while another part fears criticism and wants to avoid it entirely. This internal conflict, not lack of willpower, is what creates the frustrating experience of knowing exactly what you should do but somehow being unable to make yourself do it.
Understanding and working skillfully with these different parts rather than trying to override them through force is essential for sustainable productivity. It's the foundation for everything we'll explore next about managing the transitions between planning and execution that make or break your productive flow.
The Mystery of Internal Conflict
Let me start with a scenario that might sound familiar:
Sarah sits down to work on an important presentation. She's planned everything perfectly using the Daily Aiming Ritual. She knows exactly what needs to be done and when. She has her environment set up, her materials ready, and two hours of protected time. She opens her laptop, stares at the blank document, and... nothing happens.
Instead of starting, she finds herself checking email. Then social media. Then reorganizing her desk. An hour passes. She feels terrible about herself, berates herself for being "lazy" or "undisciplined," and either forces herself to work through growing anxiety or gives up entirely, promising to "do better tomorrow."
From the outside, this looks like a simple failure of self-control. But when we look inside Sarah's internal experience, we can see this parts conflict playing out in real time:
One part of her genuinely wants to succeed with the presentation. Another part is terrified of potential criticism and wants to avoid the task entirely. A third part is angry about having to do work she finds boring. A fourth part is trying to protect her by keeping her from risking failure. Meanwhile, her rational mind is trying to override all of these concerns and force action through willpower alone.
This isn't unusual—it's universal. We all have different aspects of ourselves that want different things, often simultaneously. The difference is that for some people, these internal conflicts are mild background noise, while for others—particularly those with regulation challenges—they're loud, persistent, and extremely disruptive to productivity.
This is why willpower-based productivity advice fails so consistently for people with regulation challenges. When your parts are in conflict—when your fear part is screaming "danger!" while your achievement part is demanding "work harder!"—no amount of rational thinking can create smooth action. You need alliance, not override.
Because this internal complexity can be so disruptive to functioning, psychotherapists have developed techniques to help people learn to work more skillfully with their different parts. There are various approaches to this integration work, the best known modern incarnation being IFS or Internal Family Systems, but collectively these methods are known as "parts work."
The ideas I'm offering here are largely not my own. I learned about parts from Janina Fisher, who learned about parts from Richard Schwartz and embodied awareness from Pat Ogden. The affective neuroscience of Jaak Panksepp that helps support these ideas was called to my attention by a colleague, Ken Benau. I'm adding to the pile of ideas by recognizing that these concepts are useful not only for addressing trauma, but also for helping people facing productivity and regulation challenges. As Isaac Newton was supposed to have said, "If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
The Three-Level Brain: From Ancient Motivation to Modern Navigation
This experience of internal multiplicity isn't just a metaphor or a therapeutic technique; it's grounded in how our brains actually work. To understand why parts work is so powerful for productivity, we need to look at how different levels of the brain contribute to our internal experience.
Think of your brain as operating on three interconnected levels, like the floors in a building:
The Basement: Ancient Motivational Circuits
Deep in the brainstem and midbrain, we have what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified as seven primary emotional-motivational circuits: SEEKING (curiosity and exploration), CARE (nurturing and protection), PLAY (joy and social engagement), LUST (sexual motivation), FEAR (anxiety and avoidance), RAGE (anger and approach), and PANIC/GRIEF (separation distress and sadness).
These circuits are ancient, fast, and powerful. They operate largely independently of conscious thought, each with its own "agenda" and preferred responses. They're like different engines in your motivational basement, each one capable of powering different types of action related to survival. When your SEEKING circuit activates, you feel curious and energized to explore. When FEAR activates, you want to scan for threats and find safety. When CARE activates, you're motivated to nurture and protect.
The Middle Floor: The Integration Hub
Between these ancient motivational circuits and your thinking brain sits a crucial integration system centered in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex. This is part of what neuroscientists call the Salience Network—your brain's sophisticated filtering and switching system.
This middle level receives signals from the motivational basement and translates them for the executive floors above. It's constantly asking: "What deserves attention right now? What's most important given both our internal state and external circumstances?" It's like a skilled interpreter who can understand the language of ancient motivational circuits and translate their messages for the modern executive brain.
The Executive Floors: Navigation Networks
At the top cortical level, you have the networks we've discussed in earlier posts: the Default Mode Network (supporting planning, reflection, and big-picture thinking) and the Task-Positive Networks (supporting focused execution and goal-directed action). These are your brain's sophisticated navigation systems, capable of complex planning, abstract thinking, and flexible problem-solving.
But here's the crucial insight: the executive floors are brilliant at navigation but have no motivational power of their own. They can see the best route to your destination and plot the most efficient course, but they need the engines in the basement to actually power the journey.
The Alliance Model: Navigation vs. Motivation
This three-level understanding reveals why willpower-based productivity fails so consistently: your rational mind (located in the executive floors) is trying to force action without engaging the motivational systems (the engines in the basement) that actually create the energy for sustained effort.
Again, here's the key insight that changes everything about productivity: your rational, thinking mind is brilliant at navigation, but it lacks the motivational power to create action. Meanwhile, your emotional parts have all the motivational force, but they can't see beyond immediate survival concerns to plan for the future.
To illustrate how this key insight works in practice, consider the case of a glider pilot trying to keep their aircraft aloft. Think of your cortical self—your rational, language-using, planning mind—as like that glider pilot; a skilled navigator who can see the big picture (literally the big picture of the landscape), think flexibly about problems, and plot the best course toward long-term goals. This is "you"—the cognitive self that can think about thinking, use language symbolically, and see into the future to optimize for good long-term outcomes.
But gliders lack engines. They cannot keep aloft under their own power. Glider pilots need to seek naturally occurring thermals (columns of rising warm air) to gain altitude and stay aloft. In the same manner, your rational cortical mind cannot create the energy needed to power you toward your productivity goals. Instead, it needs cooperation from your emotional parts to create action.
Your parts—the emotion-based instinctual aspects of yourself—are like the natural forces in the environment. Some provide lift and energy, others create turbulence and resistance. Parts generate all the motivational force, but as they are literally hardwired survival routines, they operate with little flexibility. Fear always does more or less the same thing: lock onto threats and move away from them. Parts can't see beyond "now" because they lack the cognitive apparatus for future thinking.
A skilled glider pilot reads the landscape and weather conditions to locate the invisible energy sources known as thermals, then uses them strategically to reach their destination. They don't fight against these natural forces—they work with what's available. Similarly, the alliance approach I'm teaching you recommends you learn how to read your internal conditions and work with your available motivational energy rather than fighting against them.
Your emotional parts operate on much shorter time horizons than your rational mind. Fear parts respond to immediate threats. Pleasure-seeking parts want satisfaction now. Protective parts try to prevent any risk of failure or criticism. They can't delay gratification because they literally can't appreciate the future benefits that motivate your rational planning. If you want your productivity to "stay aloft" then you need to create an alliance between your cortical navigation systems and these powerful motivational circuits.
This is why willpower-based productivity advice fails so consistently for people with regulation challenges. When your parts are in conflict—when your fear part is screaming "danger!" while your achievement part is demanding "work harder!"—no amount of rational thinking can create smooth action. You need alliance, not override.
Finding the Affective 'Thermals': Working with Willing Parts
Now that you understand the basic dynamics of internal parts, let's explore how to work with them practically. In parts work, we recognize two main categories of parts that show up in productivity challenges:
Vulnerable Parts are those aspects of yourself that carry difficult emotions like fear, hurt, shame, or overwhelm. These parts often hold memories of past failures, criticisms, or rejections. In productivity contexts, vulnerable parts might be scared of making mistakes, terrified of being judged, or overwhelmed by the complexity of a task.
Protector Parts develop to shield you from having to experience the activation of your vulnerable parts. They try to prevent situations that might trigger your vulnerable parts by causing you to act in various ways that accomplish that goal; perfectionism, avoidance, distraction, disinterest, etc. Crucially, protector parts often have little empathy for vulnerable parts. They tend to see vulnerable parts as liabilities to be managed rather than aspects of self to be cared for.
Protector parts function as gatekeepers. They control your access to your vulnerable parts, and they often need to be negotiated with before you are allowed to make contact with your vulnerability. This one reason why traditional willpower-based productivity advice often fails; it tries to override your protectors, and your protectors are often stronger than your willpower.
Why Parts Language Creates Leverage
You might wonder why we need this "parts" framework at all. Why not just work with emotions directly?
The key advantage is that parts work promotes de-identification from emotions while opening up the possibility of dialogue and relationship between you (your adult self) and individual parts. When you think of anxiety as just an emotion you're experiencing, it feels like something happening to you that you need to eliminate or push through. When you think of anxiety as a fear part that's trying to protect you, it becomes something you can communicate with and potentially negotiate with. Instead of "I am anxious," you recognize "a part of me is feeling anxious." Parts work creates the mental space needed for mindful awareness and the flexibility for internal dialogue and relationships with your parts. When you become able to befriend your parts they become more cooperative.
But here's a crucial prerequisite: you have to be able to recognize when you're become identified with a part and then shift your mindset to become mindfully aware of that part as something somewhat separate from you. Most of the time, we're "blended" with our parts—we become our anxious part or angry part or perfectionist part without realizing it. We experience our self as anxious, or angry, or inadequate, rather than perceiving that we have parts that are feeling anxious, angry or inadequate.
This is where the real challenge lies, and it's important to be honest about it: developing mindful awareness of your internal parts is a genuinely difficult skill. Some people will pick it up relatively quickly from the exercises I'll share, while others will need more support and practice. Everyone can improve their parts awareness, but people start from different places and progress at different speeds. That's completely normal.
Mapping Your Parts: A Preparation Practice
Parts aren't just ideas, but instead are felt experiences. They occur inside you but are separate from you. However, it's not going to seem that way at first because as you initially experience your parts it's extremely likely you will be blended with them, meaning you'll experience yourself AS anxious rather than you HAVING an anxious part.
How then can you learn to unblend so as to experience yourself as having an anxious part or an angry part? A good way to learn how to do this involves paying deliberate and conscious attention to the internal embodied experiences that accompany the activation of each part. It's most effective to develop parts awareness as a regular practice, like a body scan but where you scan inside listening for internal voices and motivations. The goal of this parts-scan practice is to map your common parts patterns before they show up in work situations, so you can recognize them more easily when they do appear.
Parts can be detected in any of five experiential channels that you can learn to notice:
1. Cognitive themes: Your thoughts and mental content ("I'm thinking I want to hide")
2. Behavioral patterns: What you're actually doing ("Am I pacing? Procrastinating? Organizing instead of working?")
3. Physical sensations: Where you feel things in your body ("That tension in my chest," "The knot in my stomach")
4. Emotional qualities: The feeling tone, if you can access it ("This feels like fear," "This feels like anger")
5. Environmental/relational signals: What you respond to in your surroundings ("This space feels too exposed," "I'm picking up on their stress")
Some people find physical sensations most reliable for parts recognition because emotions often have predictable somatic (body) signatures. Fear might show up as chest tightness or shallow breathing. Anger might appear as jaw clenching or shoulder tension. Sadness might manifest as heaviness in the chest or behind the eyes.
Others connect first with behavioral observation—noticing what they're actually doing (or not doing) - as a clue to which parts are active. Still others start with thought patterns or emotional themes. The environmental channel recognizes that many parts conflicts aren't purely internal—they're connected to and triggered by legitimate environmental factors. Find your natural entry point and build your awareness from there.
Start with a simple mapping exercise: Set aside 10-15 minutes when you're relatively calm. Bring to mind a productivity challenge you've been struggling with—maybe a project you've been avoiding or a pattern of procrastination that keeps recurring.
Close your eyes and notice what happens in your body when you think about this challenge. Where do you feel tension, heaviness, or activation? What thoughts come up? What do you want to do behaviorally—hide, flee, attack the problem, organize something else? What environmental factors might be affecting your response?
Try to identify the different voices or impulses present. You might notice a part that wants to avoid the challenge entirely, another part that's angry about having to deal with it, and yet another part that desperately wants to get it done. See if you can sense these as separate voices rather than a monolithic "you" having mixed feelings.
This is just the beginning of parts awareness—think of it as learning to hear the different instruments in an orchestra rather than just undifferentiated noise. With practice, you'll start to recognize your common parts patterns and how they show up in different situations.
Common Productivity Parts Conflicts
As you develop your parts awareness, you'll likely start recognizing some predictable patterns. It helps to understand that functional parts names often map back to the underlying Panksepp circuits:
The Perfectionist vs. Progress Dynamic: Your perfectionist part (driven by FEAR circuits trying to avoid criticism) wants everything to be exactly right before you begin or share anything. Your progress part (which may be your cognitive self navigating toward goals, possibly energized by SEEKING curiosity or RAGE-based determination) wants to move forward and make things happen. When these parts are in conflict, you might find yourself endlessly researching, revising, or preparing without ever completing anything.
The Achievement vs. Rest Battle: Your achievement part (usually SEEKING-driven, sometimes with FEAR components about what happens if you don't achieve) drives you to accomplish, succeed, and prove your worth through productivity. Your rest part (your cognitive self recognizing the need for sustainable pacing) knows you need downtime and recovery. When these parts are out of balance, you might find yourself burned out from overwork or guilty and anxious when you try to rest.
The Self-Critical vs. Self-Compassionate Response: When things don't go as planned, your self-critical part (RAGE directed inward) attacks with harsh judgments, while other parts might respond with PANIC/GRIEF (which includes shame) or attempts at CARE for your struggling self. Understanding these as different emotional circuits rather than "the truth about you" creates space for choice about which voice to listen to.
Each of these conflicts creates internal friction that drains energy and makes smooth action much more difficult. Traditional productivity advice typically takes one side or the other—"just start imperfectly" (anti-perfectionist) or "proper planning prevents poor performance" (pro-planning)—without recognizing that both parts usually have valid concerns that need to be addressed through alliance rather than suppression.
Speaking With Parts To Form The Alliance
Sensing the presence of your various parts is an important and necessary first step but it is not sufficient by itself to form the alliance. In addition to noticing and identifying your parts, you will also need to learn how to speak to your parts and gain their confidence. I'll illustrate what doing this looks like with a concrete and practical example.
Imagine you're avoiding starting an important project that has a looming deadline. Your rational mind knows the work needs to happen, but you keep finding yourself procrastinating.
Instead of forcing yourself to start (willpower approach), you might first survey which of your parts are present. In this case, you might notice that your procrastination is actually a protector part working to keep you from having to feel the pain held by a separate vulnerable part that's scared of potential criticism and failure. In order to form the alliance that will support your productivity you'll first need to speak with both of these parts, and in the proper sequence, to gain their confidence so that they will allow you to proceed:
First, negotiate with your protector: "I see how hard you've been working to keep us away from this project. You're trying to protect me from that scared part getting activated again. I appreciate how you've been managing this situation, and I understand why you think avoidance is the safest strategy."
Ask your protector to step aside: "I'm going to handle the scared part directly now, so you don't have to keep managing this through avoidance. I need you to trust me to take care of this. Please step aside so I can gain access to that scared part and calm it down."
Then, speak to your vulnerable part: "I can feel your fear about what might happen if our work isn't good enough or gets rejected. Your fear makes complete sense given past experiences."
Provide care for your vulnerable part: "I'm going to break this into small steps and get early feedback so that you can feel safer. You don't have to handle this alone—I'm going to stay present and make sure you're protected while we make progress."
This communication approach honors both protector and vulnerable parts while creating space for forward movement. You're not fighting against the protector's resistance or the vulnerable part's intense fear; Instead, you're forming relationships with each part and helping them get their needs met. As your parts feel heard and cared for, they naturally calm down and offer less resistance.
As you can see, different types of parts benefit from different communication approaches. Vulnerable parts benefit from reassurance and comfort, the kind of attuned care that says "I can feel what you're feeling and I'm going to help." In contrast, protector parts need your respect and respond best to clear assertive requests asking them to step aside so that you (the adult self) can can provide direct care to your vulnerable parts.
The goal isn't to eliminate parts or suppress your emotions. It's to create internal communication, calm and coordination so that all parts can contribute towards moving you toward your chosen goals. Your adult self serves as the compassionate leader and navigator who offers wise direction, coordinates with your protective parts and offers care to your vulnerable parts.
Parts and the Two Stages of Action
It's important to have realistic expectations about what parts awareness can and can't do. There are actually two distinct moments where parts dynamics show up in productivity challenges, and they require different approaches.
The first moment is when you're trying to initiate taking action. Sometimes, understanding your parts' conflicts and creating internal alliances with them to help them get their needs met will clear the way for your smooth and productive execution. But sometimes, even with excellent parts awareness, action still doesn't happen easily. This might be due to executive function differences, processing speed variations, energy depletion, or other factors that parts work alone can't address.
The second moment occurs after you've struggled to take action and failed. This is where parts work is most reliably helpful. This is when your self-critical parts typically attack: "What's wrong with me?" "Why can't I just do this simple thing?" "I'm so lazy/broken/hopeless."
This secondary suffering—the internal beating you give yourself for struggling—is often worse than the original difficulty and can often be minimized through parts awareness and self-compassion. Even if parts work doesn't always get you moving, it can dramatically reduce the shame and self-attack you experience that make productivity challenges so emotionally devastating.
Think of that ADHD experience: spending three hours trying to convince yourself to cook lunch, failing to do it, and then feeling terrible because you can't "just stand up and do it". From the outside it looks like you were just sprawled on the couch scrolling your phone, but inside you were suffering. Parts work might not always solve the executive function challenge of task initiation, but it can absolutely minimize the internal criticism that makes the experience so much worse than it needs to be.
Integrating Parts Awareness with EEFS Productivity Techniques
Now let's connect this parts work foundation back to the productivity techniques we've already built and forward to what's coming next.
Remember the Daily Aiming Ritual? One of the most powerful enhancements you can make to the Daily Aiming Ritual is to include a parts survey exercise as part of your morning planning. Before diving into task selection and scheduling, take a moment to check in: "What parts are present today? What do they need? Which parts seem motivated and willing to work, and which parts might create resistance?"
This intelligence gathering helps your rational mind plot the best course through your internal landscape. If you notice your perfectionist part is highly activated, you might choose tasks that benefit from detailed attention rather than trying to force quick, rough work that will trigger internal conflict. If your playful part is energized, you might look for ways to make necessary work more engaging or social. The goal isn't to be controlled by your parts, but to be strategic about working with rather than against their available energies.
This parts awareness also explains why the planning techniques I've taught are so crucial. When your cortical self takes time to plot the best path toward your desired future, it's essentially creating protection against parts that operate on shorter time horizons. Your plan becomes a commitment you've made during a clear-thinking moment that can guide you when emotional parts are pulling toward immediate gratification or avoidance that would distract you from your goals.
Task analysis becomes more effective when you consider which parts resist which types of work and how to sequence your tasks based on internal readiness. Prioritization frameworks work better when you factor in not just the objective importance of tasks but also whether your parts are willing to engage with the different types of tasks you need to complete.
Looking forward, the transition rituals we'll explore in the coming posts are fundamentally about parts management. The challenge of moving from planning to execution isn't just cognitive—it's about helping your parts shift gears from reflective, big-picture thinking to focused, action-oriented engagement. You'll discover how different parts of yourself respond to the cognitive gear-shifts that productivity requires—from broad planning focus to narrow execution attention—and how to help your parts to smoothly navigate these transitions.
Similarly, the difficulties people experience with task-to-task transitions, interruption recovery, and shifting back to planning mode all have parts dynamics underneath them. Different parts are comfortable with different types of cognitive engagement, and smooth transitions are best enabled when you attend both to internal coordination among your parts as well as your skillful external technique.
The reason we ritualize these transitions in the first place is to build trust and safety with your parts through consistent, caring transitions. When your parts experience predictable patterns rather than jarring cognitive shifts, they learn to trust that transitions will be handled skillfully, reducing the internal resistance that derails productivity. Understanding your parts isn't a detour from productivity; it's the foundation that makes all other productivity techniques actually work.
The Practice Ahead
Parts awareness is a teachable skill that everyone can develop, though people start from different places and progress at different speeds. Some will find the exercises I've described immediately helpful, while others might need additional support to develop this internal awareness.
The key is to approach this as a practice rather than a performance. Like learning to play an instrument, progress comes through regular engagement rather than perfect execution. Any increase in awareness of your internal dynamics will prove valuable.
Start with the parts mapping exercise I described earlier. Notice which of the five channels—thoughts, behaviors, sensations, emotions, or environmental responses—gives you the clearest information about your internal state. Build from your strengths while gradually developing the other channels.
Pay attention to your common productivity parts conflicts. Do you recognize the perfectionist vs. progress dynamic? The achievement vs. rest battle? The planning vs. execution split? Simply naming these patterns when they arise can begin to create the observational distance needed for internal negotiation.
Most importantly, be patient with yourself as you develop this awareness. The ability to step back and observe your parts rather than being completely identified with them is genuinely difficult and takes time to develop. But even small improvements in parts awareness can dramatically reduce the internal conflict and self-criticism that make productivity challenges so much more difficult than they need to be.
In our next post, we'll explore how to apply this parts awareness to the rhythm of productivity itself—the constant transitions between different types of cognitive engagement that either support or sabotage your productive flow. You'll learn to recognize how different parts of yourself respond to different types of work demands and how to create smoother transitions between planning and execution modes.
The goal isn't to eliminate internal complexity—it's to develop the internal leadership skills that allow all parts of yourself to contribute to your chosen directions. When your parts become able to work together rather than remaining at cross-purposes, productivity becomes not just more effective, but more sustainable and satisfying.
This is the ninth in a series exploring executive function and productivity. In my next post, I'll examine "The Rhythm of Productivity: Managing Transitions for Optimal Focus" – how to use parts awareness to navigate the different cognitive modes that productive work requires.