Alex runs a social media management company. He’s sharp, talented, and constantly juggling client campaigns, proposals, and content.

But tasks just felt like they were taking forever.
While Alex liked things to be perfect, each post, each caption took so much mental energy and time.

When he would finally come home, he’d just crash out as he was completely drained.
He said to me, “ST, I feel like there has to be a better way. Sure, I can work hard, but I don’t think I can continue going like this for much longer.”

We changed one aspect of how Alex approached his work, and it changed everything. Not only did Alex have more time, but he still had energy left after the tasks were complete.


Thinking Skills 
While you are doing any task, you, without even realizing it, are using your 28 thinking skills.
When the thinking skills you need to use are strong, doing the task happens easily.
If the thinking skill you need to use is weak, doing the task is a challenge.
The struggle that Alex had came from a weak thinking skill of categorization


Categorizations
Categorization is being able to organize items or information in groups, so it’s helpful for your goal.
We spoke about categorizations in both episodes 528 and 540. If you haven’t listened to those episodes, I recommend you go back and tune in.

Today, we’re gonna see how categorizations played out in a different way for Alex. My hope is that you’ll be able to see and understand how one weak thinking skill plays out in many areas of life.


So how does categorizations play out in Alex’s scenario?

Categorizing Prep and Doing
Most tasks require us to do some sort of prep in order to be able to do the task.

In cooking, it might be figuring out what you have in the house, and what you will make? What to buy etc.
In sending an email, it be to decide what you want to say.

In having a team meeting, it’s understanding the goal, writing your talking points, potentially making slides, etc.

Then we actually have to do the task, cook, send the email, have the meeting....


Here’s where categorizations comes in.
We tend to put both prep for the cooking and cooking under one task.
True, it’s all for the same goal of having a meal.
However, we can break this task into smaller categories of prep for cooking and the actual cooking. Those are 2 smaller categories within a bigger category of having a meal.

Now we can break these two categories down even further.
In prep for the meal, we make a category of decisions, where we’re deciding what to make.
We have a category of shopping, we have a category of organizing all the ingredients and supplies, so when we cook, it’s easier to do the task.

Each part of the task can be chunked up or chunked down into categories.
How we chunk it either makes it easier or harder for us to do the task.

In Alex’s case, he’d just “do the whole task”.
The problem with this is that it uses different thinking processes, and your brain acts like you're task switching.

Task Switching
Every time you start a task, you use the most amount of energy.
So when you stop for a second to check your phone or do a different task, you’re brain has to restart and use more energy.
You can THINK you are staying focused on the task at hand, but because you’re still task switching within the task, by going from prep to the doing, you are using more mental energy every time you restart the doing.

For example, in writing an email, you have the actual writing and the proofreading of it.
Every time you stop your writing and go back to fix what you’ve written, you’re doing a tiny task switch, which uses a bit more energy.

Sure, one switch doesn’t make a difference, but when you do it with every task all day long, you feel mentally drained by the end of it

You want to categorize the parts of your tasks based on similar actions so you don’t need to restart every time.

Splitting the Prep and the Doing
Once we improved categorizations, Alex began writing out all the parts of a task and doing as many of the same parts as possible at one time, as they all use the same thought processes.

For example, if Alex were writing LinkedIn posts for a client, instead of just writing out 7 posts, Alex would first think of 7 ideas, then write 7 hooks, then write 7 CTAs etc.
When your mind is already thinking about CTAs, it’s much easier to think about more CTAs instead of thinking about more hooks.


You can do this in any aspect of life.
Do as many of the same parts of the task as possible at time.
If you’re cooking and a few dishes need sauteed onions, saute a bunch of onions first.
You can set a time when you respond to all your text messages or emails

You can have one day a week where you do errands.
Personally, I have 2 days a week where I do Zoom meetings, that way all meetings happen one after another, and the rest of the days I work on other things


If you’re getting overwhelmed by this, I’m gonna recommend 2 things:

1) Improve your thinking skill of categorization. Listen to episode 528 and do the exercises in there
2) Start small. Just split your tasks between prep and doing. It will make a massive difference.


Advanced Categorizations
If you feel like you’re ready for something more advanced.
Here’s what I’ve got for you:

Start thinking about your whole life in one big category.
Then see how you can chunk down those tasks into smaller categories to do to things more efficiently.

Don’t just think of categorizing the task in front of you, but think bigger, of all that you have to do.

One way this plays out is by putting decisions in one big group.

Every Friday, block out some time to plan your week ahead. During this block of time, you are making the decisions of what you will do that week.

You see what we did there? Instead of every day deciding what we’re gonna do that day, we took one block of time to decide what we’re going to do for the whole week.

Not only can you be more on top of things, it also takes less time as you’re doing it all at once.




When you separate prep from doing, you’re not just saving time.
You’re teaching your brain to batch decisions, reduce mental switching, and execute with clarity.

Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!