Planning and Prioritizing
Written by:
Shirley Reichberg, BA, BEd, OCT
| February 2026
If you’ve ever watched your kid sit down to study, reorganize their entire desk, make a snack, check their phone, and then announce they’re “about to start” — you already know what planning and prioritizing difficulties look like up close. It’s not laziness. It’s not attitude. It’s a skill gap, and it’s one of the most common things I work on with students.
Does this sound familiar? These are signs of difficulty with planning and prioritizing, which are two of the most essential executive function skills. These skills don’t automatically get easier with age. Many high school and university students still have difficulty with these skills daily, as demands pile up and external support fall away.
The good news is that planning and prioritizing are skills that can be learned at any age. With the right support, students can get better at breaking tasks into steps, deciding what is most important, and following through with the work.
What do we mean by planning and prioritizing?
Planning means looking at a goal and being able to figure out how to get from A to B. It involves breaking something big into smaller steps, thinking ahead, and organizing what needs to happen when.
Prioritizing means deciding what to do first. It is the ability to look at a list of tasks and recognize which are the most urgent or most important, and then completing those tasks in that order.
Together, these two executive functions skills help students manage homework, long-term projects, and study sessions.
Why students struggle with planning and prioritizing
The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for planning and prioritizing. It is still developing well into a person’s mid-20s, so even older teens and university students are working with a brain that is not yet fully developed.
The challenge for younger students is that they haven’t yet had much practice with self-directed planning. The workload gets more complex for high school students, but teachers still provide a lot of structure. That structure mostly disappears for university students. As a result, university students that have never had to plan without support may find themselves struggling with their new independence.
Reasons students might struggle
- They don’t know how to break a task into smaller steps
- They have trouble estimating how long things will take
- They feel so overwhelmed by a big task that they avoid starting all together
- They know what needs to be done but can’t decide where to start
These are all brain-based challenges that respond really well to the right strategies and support.
Planning and prioritizing in kids with ADHD
For kids with ADHD, planning and prioritizing are often among the most difficult executive function skills to develop. ADHD affects the brain’s ability to regulate attention, manage impulses and hold future goals in mind — three things needed for good planning.
A child with ADHD might:
- Hyperfocus on one small part of a task and miss the bigger picture
- Forget steps in the middle of a plan because of poor working memory
- Struggle to start tasks that feel boring or unclear
- React the whatever feels urgent in the moment, rather than what’s actually the most important
If your child has ADHD, executive function coaching and structured support can make a real difference. These skills don’t always develop on their own and must be explicitly taught.
High school vs. university: why the transition is so hard
One of the times when planning and prioritizing challenges can become especially visible is during the transition from high school to university. In high school, there are regular reminders, structured class schedules and teachers who check in. However, in university, a student might have an essay due in five weeks, with no reminders at all and no one noticing if they fall behind.
High school students often struggle with:
- Juggling multiple subjects with overlapping deadlines
- Managing longer-term assignments that require planning in advance
- Balancing academics with extracurricular activities, or a part-time job and a social life
University students often struggle with:
- Reduced structure means students must create their own systems
- Longer gaps between classes make time harder to manage
- The volume of reading, assignments, and exams requires prioritization that most students haven’t been taught
If you’re a university student reading this (or a parent of one), you should know that struggling doesn’t mean that you’re not capable. It often just means that no one ever explicitly taught you how to plan. That’s something that executive function coaching can address.
Strategies for planning and prioritizing
Whether your student is in middle school, high school or university, the following strategies can help build stronger planning and prioritization skills. They work best with consistency and some guidance.
Start with a brain dump
Have your child write everything they need to do, without worrying about order or importance.
Sort by urgency and importance
Once everything is on paper, help your child sort tasks into two categories: what needs to happen today, and what can wait. A simple four-box grid can make this easy to grasp. On the grid write urgent vs. not urgent, and important vs. not important.
Break big tasks into small steps
A task such as ‘study for the history test’ is too vague to act on. Help your child break it down. Eg. find notes, review chapter 4, make flashcards, quiz yourself. Smaller steps are less intimidating and give your child a clear starting point.
Use a visual schedule or planner
Many kids benefit from seeing their plan laid out visually. A paper planner, a whiteboard or even sticky notes on a wall can work well. The key is that your child can see what’s coming and check things off as they go. Digital tools can work too. Just make sure the tool works with your child, not the other way around.
Set a start time, not just a deadline
Deadlines are easier to ignore than start times. Help your child practice setting a specific time to begin a task. This reduces the tendency to put things off until the last minute.
Do the hardest thing first
When possible, encourage your child to tackle the most difficult or least appealing task at the start of their work session. Once it’s done, everything else seems more manageable.
How parents can help
Your role as a parent looks different depending on your child’s age, but it’s important at every stage. With younger students, you may be more hands-on. With high schoolers and university students the goal changes to helping them build independence.
For parents of younger students
- Ask guiding questions instead of giving answers. Instead of saying, ‘You need to start your project,’ try ‘What’s the first step for your project?’ This builds their confidence and ability to think it through themselves.
- Keep routines consistent. Predictable routines can reduce the number of decisions your child has to make each day. This leaves more mental energy for actual planning.
- Acknowledge effort, not just results. Praise your child when they make a plan and follow it, even if the outcome isn’t perfect. We’re not looking for perfection, just progress.
For parents of high school and university students
- Step back from managing the details. Teens and young adults need to develop ownership over their own planning. Your job is to be a sounding board.
- Ask open-ended questions such as, ‘How are you feeling about your workload this week?’ This opens a conversation without making them feel defensive.
- Normalize getting support. University students may resist asking for help. It helps to explain that executive function coaching is a skill-building process.
How executive function coaching can help
Some students can improve their planning and prioritizing skills with only practice and their parent’s support. However, others, especially those with ADHD, anxiety or learning differences, need more structured and targeted help.
It might be time to look for outside support if:
- Difficulties with planning are significantly affecting your student’s grades, confidence, or mental health
- You’ve tried strategies at home and nothing seems to stick
- Your high schooler is heading to university and has never had to manage their own time independently
- Your university student is struggling in their first or second year despite being a strong student before
Executive function coaching for students is one-on-one work with someone trained specifically in these skills. A coach doesn’t just tell your child what to do; they help them figure out what works for their specific brain, build systems that actually fit into their life, and provide consistent accountability.
Here’s what I want parents to know: struggling with planning doesn’t mean your kid isn’t capable. Some of the most intelligent students I’ve worked with have never once been taught how to break a project into steps or decide what to do first. They’ve just been expected to figure it out. When they don’t, they start to believe something is wrong with them, and that’s the part that worries me most. These skills are learnable. But some students need more than strategies on a list.
If any of this feels familiar and things aren’t improving, we can help.
Shirley Reichberg, an OCT-certified educator with 17 years of classroom experience, is the Director of Executive Function Coaching at Red Oak. Specializing in special education and executive function coaching, Shirley helps students build essential skills like organization, time management, planning, and task prioritization—tools that foster both academic achievement and personal growth. She also posts content on Instagram as @efskillswithshirley and on LinkedIn.