Published: Jan. 9, 2019

Research shows that executive function has a profound impact on your life – it correlates with academic achievement, mental and physical health, making money and saving money, and even staying out of jail. Lately, executive function has become a self-improvement buzzword and people think you can improve it through brain training iPhone apps or computer games.

In this informative talk, Psychologist Sabine Doebel explains why that doesn’t work and instead, what you can do to accomplish your goals. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. She has a Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota.

Her research focuses on the development of executive function. Sabine was born in Ohio but grew up in a suburb of Toronto, Canada, and despite having lived in the U.S. for 8 years, she still says “sorry” a lot and refers to colored pencils as “pencil crayons.” She lives in Boulder with her husband, Eric, and 18-month-old son/comedian, Vincent. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Learn more about her research in this story.