You sleep okay. You eat okay. You're not burning out. And yet by mid-afternoon, your brain just... stops.

There are a lot of reasons this can happen. But there's one that almost nobody talks about, and it's the one I see constantly in high-functioning, driven people.

Your brain might be wasting massive amounts of energy. Not because of what you're doing, but because of how it's doing it.

Case Study
Simon has been an accountant for close to two decades. Smart guy, good at what he does, clients love him.

But every single day, Simon would hit this wall around mid-afternoon where his brain just... stopped. He just felt so drained that he couldn’t continue.

Making simple decisions felt impossible. He'd stare at his screen, unable to process what he was looking at.
He’d come home with a completely empty tank and didn’t have any energy or patience for his wife and kids.
Simon tried everything. Better sleep. More exercise. Supplements. Cutting caffeine. Adding caffeine.
While it made improvements, Simon felt like a lot of it was forced. He could do it, but it felt so HARD. Harder than it should be.

Really quickly, we realized, Simon’s brain was using 10 times more energy than necessary because his thinking skills weren't strong enough to handle tasks efficiently.

See, without you even realizing it, you're using your 28 thinking skills to do any task.
When those skills are strong, your brain can do what you want to do easily.
When those thinking skills are weak, you’ll still find a way to do the task (especially if you're determined), you’ll just have to use WAY more energy to make it happen.
Simon's exhaustion wasn't from the work itself. It was from his brain overcompensating for weak thinking skills by burning massive amounts of cognitive energy.

Once we strengthened Simon's weak thinking skills, his brain was able to work a lot more efficiently, which gave him a whole lot more energy.
To his surprise, Simon wasn’t crashing midday, and the best part was that he was able to loving dad and husband even after a full day in the office.

Your Brain's Current State
Your brain has a limited amount of processing power each day. And while we can expand that processing capacity over time, we want to make sure you’re using the most of the power you have right now.

When your thinking skills are weak, even simple tasks drain that power quickly because your brain has to work so much harder to do the task.
Think about it like this: if you're really good at math, calculating a tip takes almost no mental energy. If math is hard for you, that same calculation drains your brain because it has to work so much harder to get the same answer.

In business, if your brain struggles with making decisions, making decisions is so much more draining. However, there are people whose decisions are easy for them (Hi, that’s me!) Why? Simply because the thinking skill needed to make decisions, comparing, is strong.


Another example, some people's planning gives them a high? They’re soooo good at it! Why? The thinking skills needed for planning are strong, so planning is much easier for them.
If you’re not good at planning, does that mean you’re doomed? No. You just need to improve the thinking skills that are required to plan well, like having a need to make a plan, time, and understanding reality, and all of a sudden, planning becomes a whole lot easier.

Improving Your Thinking Skills
Here's what we did with Simon, and what you can start doing today.

Step 1: Identify Your Energy Drains, aka Your Weak Thinking Skills
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There are two ways to do this:

1) For a week, keep track of tasks that are more challenging. You were still able to do them, but you felt mentally drained by the end.

Now, don’t just write down the task, write down what PART of the task was the challenge. For example, don’t just write down “responding to emails,” write down “figure out how to express my thoughts clearly in the email.”

After a week, you’ll have a long list. You’ll see on your list that there’s a pattern between the tasks that you find mentally draining. Maybe it’s “expressing yourself clearly,” or maybe it's “making decisions,” or maybe it's “knowing where to start.”
This should give you hope! Instead of having to solve every problem separately, you just need to solve the common dominator, and it will help with all the problems on your list.

Note: You may have more than one common dominator. That’s normal!

2) The second option is to take the thinking skills assessment at www.lifepixuniversity.com/cf, where you can see where each of your 28 thinking skills is standing. And yes, it’s free.


Step 2: Pick ONE thinking skill to improve
When you work on everything, you end up working on nothing.
If you’ve tracked your draining tasks for a week, pick the common denominator that is most important to you right now.

If you've done the thinking skills assessment, you’ll want to improve the thinking skills in order. Starting from number 1, make sure they’re each a 3 or higher. If not, you know which thinking skills you’ve got to work on.


Step 3: Improving the Thinking Skill
When you’re making a business decision or talking to a client, that’s not a good time to work on your thinking skills.
You’ll want to improve the thinking skill OUT of the task that matters, as your brain needs to feel safe to make mistakes so it can really improve.

I’d suggest you block out either 10 minutes a day or an hour a week to work on your thinking skills. Go ahead, set that time as a recurring meeting on your calendar now.

But, ST, what should I do to improve my thinking skills?

First, you’re reading this blog! You know how many exercises I’ve given you to improve specific thinking skills. If I haven’t covered what you want, DM me on LinkedIn @ST Rappaport with your request, and I may just create an episode for you!

Second, we live in a beautiful world of AI. Use it to your advantage. Tell AI exactly what thinking skill you’re struggling with, how it’s playing out for you, and ask it for exercises to improve the skill.
You just want to be careful when you prompt AI not to give you “hacks”, but rather to give you exercises that will help you improve the actual skill.



It took 3 weeks for Simon to start seeing improvements in his energy levels. I’m in NO WAY saying that’s what’s gonna happen to you, but I do know YOU WILL get results if you put in the work.
If you’re not getting results, it’s either because it’s the wrong exercises for your brain or because there are other thinking skills getting in your way.


If you’re putting in the work and getting stuck, DM me on LinkedIn @ST Rappaport, and I’d be happy to help you out.
You’ve got this!