You know when you block time to work and somehow three hours disappear with nothing to show for it?
That's not a focus problem.

Case Study
As a coach trying to get more high quality leads, Derek knew outreach was an important task to do. He would block three hours every Tuesday and Thursday morning for client outreach, sit down at his desk, and somehow accomplish basically nothing.
The Problem

Those 3 hours went like this:
Sit down, open the prospect list and check email.
Someone had responded. He'd reply.
That would remind him of another client he needed to follow up with. He'd draft that email.
Then he'd wonder if he should check LinkedIn.
Maybe someone commented on his post. Oh, his profile needs an update.
An hour would pass. Maybe he'd sent two LinkedIn DMs. Maybe.

Derek would get distracted by someone commenting on his post.
Potentially, that’s another lead. Right?

He’d start drafting another message but would get frustrated and quickly lost mental energy.
At the end of 3 hours there wasn’t much to show for it and he’d find himself just beating himself up.
"Why can't I focus? Why does this take so long? What's wrong with me?"

Not only was this a waste of 3 hours (happening twice a week for weeks on end), this had a direct effect on Derek’s income. He had 2 little kids at home and the financial situation was starting to take a toll on his mental state.

He'd tried everything.
Turning off notifications.
Using website blockers.
Putting his phone in another room.
Time tracking apps to see where the time went.

Nothing worked because Derek was missing something fundamental about how his brain needed to work during those three hours.


You see, every time you do work, your brain uses some of the 28 thinking skills.

If the thinking skills you need to do the task are weak, doing the task becomes challenging.
You procrastinate, get overwhelmed or maybe just shut down.

For Derek, the thinking skill that was weak was categorizations.

Once he improved that skill, he made the most of those 3 hours, filling not only his bank account but also his energy.
I’m gonna explain exactly what categorizations is, how it transformed his deep work and what you can do to improve this skill.


Categorizations
Categorizations is your brain's ability to organize information and tasks into groups that makes it easy for you to do what you want to do.

When this skill is strong, your brain automatically categorizes the task at hand.
For client outreach it would be: choosing prospects, researching them, writing messages, sending follow-ups, logging information.


Derek’s categorizations was weak so his brain saw "3 hours of outreach" as this massive, unclear thing.
Which meant he’d end up checking email, scrolling LinkedIn or updating his profile as those tasks were easier for his brain and gave immediate feedback.

Derek wasn't lacking focus or discipline.
His brain just couldn't organize the work, so it kept getting pulled toward whatever felt simpler in the moment.


Improving Categorizations

I first had Derek do a basic categorization exercise to see what categorization is all about, then we implemented categorization strategies to make the work easier.

Go to your closet and categorize your clothing based on color.
Then put them all back in one pile and categorize them based on seasons.
Put them in a pile again and categorize them based on material.
Put them in a pile another time and categorize them based on how often you wear them.

The goal of this exercise is to show your brain how the same items can be categorized in different ways depending on what you need.

For daily wear, it might make more sense to categorize your closet based on how often you wear the items.
If you tend to record videos in your closet, it might make sense to sort it by color.

It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about categorizing the times in a way that’s best for the situation.


When it came to Derek’s outreach here were 3 ways he implemented categorizations to make the tasks easier:

1) Break the task into smaller categories
Derek stopped calling it "client outreach" and broke it into specific categories:
Finding prospects to contact
Researching prospects
Write personalized messages etc.

Then he’d give each category a time slot.
Instead of 3 hours for client outreach, it became 30 minutes finding prospects to contact or 45 minutes researching prospects.
This is a lot more specific and lot easier for the brain to understand what it needs to do.


2) Group Similar Tasks Together
Derek used to bounce between categories randomly.
Research one person, write their message, send it. Research the next person, write, send.

This killed his efficiency because his brain had to keep switching between different types of thinking.

We restructured: do all the research at once. Then write all the personalized lines at once. Then complete all the messages at once.

When you batch similar work within categories, your brain gets into a groove. By the 10th prospect you're researching, you're way faster than the 1st because your brain knows what it's looking for.

Derek cut his research category from 60 minutes to 40 just by doing all 25 in a row instead of mixing it with other categories.

Look at your task breakdown.
Which categories use the same type of thinking? Batch those together.

You can take this one step further by doing a lot more of each task at time. For example, spend one block of 3 hours only finding prospects. You’ll be able to find a lot more prospects in that time that will give you what you need for the next while. Then spend the next block of 3 hours researching prospects etc.


3) Separate Incoming From Outgoing Categories
This one's tactical but crucial for Derek.
He set up two monitors. One screen was for outbound work only, and the other was for incoming messages.

This way, if someone responded to a message he sent, and he’d want to respond immediately, he was able to pull up their information without losing whatever else he was working on.
As soon as that response was sent, he could get right back into sending the outbound message he was in the middle of sending.


Derek started strengthening categorizations everywhere in his life.

Grocery shopping? Category 1: produce. Category 2: dairy. Category 3: pantry items.
Create the shopping list by categories, not randomly.

Cleaning the house? Category 1: dishes. Category 2: laundry. Category 3: surfaces.
Do one category completely before switching.

Planning his week? Category 1: client work. Category 2: business development. Category 3: admin.
Block time by category.

Every time he practiced organizing things into clear categories, his brain got better at developing the skills of categorization.



It didn’t take long for Derek to start seeing the results of his outreach. High-quality clients, cash in the bank and whole lot more energy.
Not because he was working more hours, but because he was actually using those 3-hour blocks productively.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!