What if working harder is actually the problem?

Case Study
Vanessa owns an event planning company that manages about 40 events a year.
She’s incredibly hardworking and detail-oriented.
Always the first one in, last one out.

And somehow always behind, always stressed, always feeling like she was barely keeping her head above water.

She'd start her day with a massive to-do list and just grind through. Call vendors. Email clients. Order supplies. Update spreadsheets. Confirm bookings. And all the hundred other things that need to happen to create an event.

She'd work nonstop, barely taking breaks, and by 8 pm there’d still be uncompleted items on her list.
New things had appeared. Urgent issues had popped up. Vanessa felt like she'd worked for 12 hours with nothing much to show for it.

Meanwhile, her husband, a CPA in a big firm, would be done by 5p.m. daily and still have energy once he came home.
Vanessa felt in many ways her husband was more work than her, but in way less time.

Her husband was constantly reassuring that it was fine, they were different people doing different jobs but Vanessa knew it didn’t have to be this hard.
This way of working was destroying Vanessa from the inside out.

And Vanessa was right. It didn’t have to be this hard.


See, your brain uses 28 different thinking skills throughout the day.
With every task, your brain automatically picks the thinking skill it thinks will help most with this task.
Sometimes, the thinking skill you need to use to do the task is weak, so your brain overcompensates with a different, stronger thinking skill.

That’s like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver. You can do it, technically.
But it's way harder than it needs to be and the results aren't great.

That's what was happening to Vanessa.

She had a few weak thinking skills and was overcompensating for them to get the tasks done.
Once we improved her weak thinking skills, tasks happened much quicker. She was able to cut down her working hours by over 3 hours daily, drastically reduce her stress and even got rid of her brain fog.


Here are 3 ways to identify if you’re overcompensating with the wrong thinking skills:

Sign 1: Tasks feel harder than it should be.
When something feels way harder than it should, there’s a good chance you’re using the wrong thinking skill.

You’ve got to be careful though. People often mix this up with not getting results right away.
They’re like it’s not possible I’m doing all this work and not getting what I want.
There the problem often is, you don’t realize how much work needs to happen.

What I’m talking about now, is the actual work is hard. It’s hard getting started. You feel completely drained from doing a part of the task etc.

For example, say you want to grow your following to 100K followers. If writing a single post is hard, if you feel drained from one video etc, there’s a good chance you’re overcompensating.
Not if you’re just getting impatient and want your follower count to go up.

In Vanessa’s case, every decision took ages. She wanted each event to look perfect, for the hosts to be in love with decor etc so she overthought every decision when really all she needed to do was improve her thinking skill of comparing. Then decisions became obvious.
Ask yourself: What tasks feel exhausting even though they shouldn't be that hard?


Sign 2: When someone gives you advice on how to do it differently, you struggle

I am not saying that every piece of advice should be followed.
I’m actually a really big believer in taking advice as most people give advice that worked from them and their goals, not necessarily for you.

The point here is that you’re able to follow the advice.


I’ll give you a personal example:
When I took Tony Robin’s Rapid Planning Method course, I tried to implement what he was teaching of planning out for the year ahead and just couldn’t.
I could plan today, but struggled with even planning the week.

That’s a very clear sign of weak thinking skill.

Today, while I don’t use the Rapid Planning Method, I do plan yearly because I’ve improved my thinking skills.

In Vanessa’s case, sometimes her husband would give her advice, such as picking out her priorities the night before. Yet when the time came for her to pick her priorities, Vanessa just got overwhelmed. She needed everything to happen yesterday.
Once she improved her thinking skills, picking her priorities happened a whole lot easier


Sign 3: You Default To The Same Approach
Everyone has a go-to thinking skill they overuse when other skills are weak.

For Vanessa, it was perseverance. No matter what the task was, she'd just grind through it.

Some people overuse working memory - trying to hold everything in their head instead of organizing externally.

Some overuse planning - making elaborate plans even on simple tasks.

What's YOUR default?
That’s probably the thinking skill you overcompensate on.


Here’s the thing,
It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You use it to help you get what you want.
Doesn’t lose it.

And, at the same time, observe yourself.
Is this really the smartest way to do it? Or am I just doing it because that’s what I always do?


Which brinsg us to, how do we stop overcompensating?

Well, we don’t want to stop using the thinking skill we’re currently using, because then we’re not going to be able to do the task at all.
We’ve got to identify which thinking skill will be smarter to use here, build that skill and automatically, we’ll stop overcompensing.
Like using the screwdriver to hammer in the nail. The moment you someone gives you a hammer, you’re able to hammer in that nail so much easier.


If you’re not sure which thinking skills you need to improve, take the thinking skills assessment at: www.lifepixuniversity.com/cf


I’ll be very real with you. Understanding that you’re overcompensating takes a lot of humility. This is the place where many people have a fixed mindset. They think they’re okay because they’re doing the work.
And it’s true, they are doing the work. They are getting results. But it’s so hard for them.

Most of the time we don’t even realize how much we’re overcompensating until we learn the other thinking skill and see how much easier it can be.


Vanessa has been overcompensating for comparisons with perseverance. As soon as her brain had an easier time comparing, Vanessa had much easier time prioritizing and manking decisions.

She’d be able to look at her massive to-do list and see which tasks were actually important without getting overwhelmed by everything else on the list. This allowed her to give her full attention to what really mattered and not stay late at work day after day on tasks that barely moved the needle.
Tasks that used to drain her became manageable because she wasn't grinding through them with pure effort anymore.

Plus her brain fog disappeared because her brain wasn't exhausted from constantly overcompensating.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!