Case Study
Elena owns a recruiting firm for top talent in the medical field. Smart, experienced, great at what she does.

But Elena was exhausted in a way that didn't make sense.

She wasn't working crazy hours. She wasn't managing a huge team. Her business was successful and relatively stable.

But she felt constantly drained.

The problem was her brain was never fully focused.

Even if she was physically present in a client meeting, part of her brain would be somewhere else. "Did I send that email? I told Alex I get back to him by noon. I’ll have to do that right after this meeting."

At home with her kids, she'd once again be physically there but mentally somewhere else.
Her daughter would be telling her about school and Elena would realize she hadn't heard a word because her brain was cycling through work tasks.

Elena realized this couldn’t go on any longer when her husband asked her a simple question about the kids homework and Elena snapped, "I don't know! I can't keep track of everything!"

Telling Elena “just to focus” didn't help.
Putting her phone in the other room didn't help.

Her brain needed to learn how to pay attention to the task at hand and put the other important information that she had to deal with on the back burner.

She couldn’t forget that other information.
At the same time, she couldn’t let that information over take the current situation.

What Elena needed to do, was help her brain improve the thinking skill that was making it hard for her to focus.
She needed to learn the thinking skill of being able to put things on the back burner. The official term of that is categorizations.
Categorizing what’s important for this second and what’s in a category for later.

Once we improved categorizations, Elena’s brain had a place to put the information and wasn't scared that she was going to forget it. So that way when she was talking to her daughter or dealing with a client, she was able to stay fully focused in the present moment.


Here's the thing. In Elena's case, the struggle that she had came from the thinking skill of categorizations. However, that is just one of the 28 thinking skills.
The reason why you may be struggling to focus may be because of a different reason.
Find out where each one of your thinking skills are standing by taking the thinking skills assessment at lifepixuniversity.com/cf


Categorizations

Categorization is your brain's ability to organize items and information into groups so its easier for you to what you want to do.


We spoke about categorizations in episode 547 and how it helped Derek make the most of his time.
Here’s I’m gonna share with you how Elena improved categorizations to help her stay focused, so you can see how the thinking skills affect many areas of life.

Up until now, every time Elena remembered a piece of information, the information would go in her brain in one big pile. Almost like a forever-growing to-do list. This category was mentally labeled “to-do”

But since the list was so long, her brain knew she’d forget whatever was on that mental list, so she’d be thinking about that important information while she was dealing with the other task.

What we had to do was help Elena’s brain create mental categories. This way, as information was coming in, it had a place to go, making it easier for Elena to remember and deal with the information later on.


Elena created categories like:
Deal with this immediately after I’m done
Emails to send
Potentiai ideas
Staff etc.

Elena started by keeping a sticky note on her laptop to jot down all the information in categories. Since it was right there where she saw it all day, she knew she wouldn’t forget the information. Plus, at the end of every day, she’d go over the sticky note to make sure everything was dealt with or scheduled to be dealt with later.

At the same time, we improved Elena’s thinking skill of categorizations. Because you don’t always have the sticky note by you 100% of the time. Plus, if it’s not categorized in your brain, the thought is still lingering.



So here are 3 ways we improved Elena’s thinking skill of categorizations, so that way the information coming in to her brain could be categorized mentally no matter what was going on.

Exercise 1: Categorize Fruits
Google search a fruit color picture (or ask AI to give you a list of 20 different fruits)

And categorize the fruit based on color.
Then categorize the same pictures based on texture.
And categorize the same pictures again based on how much you like them.
And categorize the same pictures again based on season.

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

There is no one right way to categorize items or information. Just what’s best for that situation.

You can do this exercise with animals, clothing, cars, countries.
Help your brain develop the skill of categorizing over and over again.


Exercise 2: Brain Dump

Turn on a timer for 10 minutes and brain dump all the thoughts swimming in your head. Things to do. Ideas you’ve got. Thoughts about yourself or the business. Whatever comes to mind.

Then look at your long list and think how you can categorize the information. Tasks that will help grow the business. Things that are shiny objects Thoughts that are related to the kids. Etc.

This helps your brain see that the thoughts you have can all be categorized.


Exercise 3: Tasks You’re Avoiding
This exercise uses the same thinking skill of categorization but it’s more abstract, challenging your brain more.

Write down each task you’re avoiding on a different index card.

Then categorize them based on the skills you need for each of them (Decsion making, negotiation etc)
Put all the index cards back in one pile
Then categorize the same index cards by risk (high, low, medium)
Put all the index cards back in one pile again
And categorize the index cards by what’s stopping you (fear, money, don’t know what to do etc)



These exercises help your brain develop categorizations mentally.
So that way when you put something down for later, your brain isn’t still thinking about it the whole time.


The information is now sitting on the back burner.
You know it’s there and at the same time, you know you don’t need to check on it, until you the time is right.


At the end of Optimize Your ADHD Brain, Elena told me, she feels like she actually got her whole brain back. “I didn’t even realize how much energy I was using thinking about the other tasks. My brain feels quieter and I’m able to focus so much better,” she said.

About two months later, I got an email from Elena telling me, she went on vacation and for the first time in her life her brain didn’t think about what she had once she’d came back. Any thoughts that came in were mentally categorized right away. The thought left just as fast as it came. There was no struggle in being present, she just was.



Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!