cmguy - congrats on your amazing patience! We have this same problem and it drives me wild. I never have the patience to wait while DS7 picks out his clothes or puts away things or any of the other routine things.

DS's most consistent stall is the bathroom mirror, which will distract him for many minutes before he washes hands/brushes teeth, etc. I have no idea what he's doing when he stares into it. Sometimes he is watching himself make faces, but most often he is just transfixed, staring into some other place - and driving me bonkers. At one point I actually hung a towel over the mirror so he would just get on with it.

Anyway - keep up the good work on being patient instead of taking over and making things happen. I'm often concerned that my interventions are slowing down development of DS's executive function skills.

FWIW on the other hand - we do the logical consequences/you're going to miss out if you don't move it strategy, whenever it would be useful (e.g., "you're going to miss going to play basketball" (sadness) versus "you're going to be late to school" (hooray!!). And honestly, these consequences don't appear to help. They make him mad, sure. But they don't help him improve execution. I think there's value in him learning there ARE consequences, so he can internalize that he needs to build in time. But I've given up thinking the consequences are actually going to make him faster.

One reason I've kinda lost hope on EF completely going away as an issue is that uber-responsible DH who is an accomplished, brilliant, successful business owner has the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. It was an ah-ha moment for me the day I realized I always build time in around schedules that include DH. It's just the way DH's brain works, and you take the bad with the good (or the great IMHO!). I think DS will just need to do the same for his whole life.

To chime in on chay's point - his WISC scores were crazy with respect to processing speed. His PSI was exactly one half of his VCI. And boy do I see it in real life!!

Good luck with your absent-minded professor!

Sue