Case Study
Joseph is an architect, which means his days were filled with big projects.
Building designs. Site plans. Client presentations. Permits.Revisions.
The kind of work where a single project can take weeks or months to complete.

But Joseph had a problem that was quietly slowing down his entire business.
He procrastinated constantly. Not because he was lazy or didn’t care.
Actually, the opposite.

Joseph cared a lot about his work. He took pride in doing things properly. His clients respected him for it.

But throughout the day, he kept running into the same situation.
He’d look at a task he needed to do… realize he only had 30 minutes… and decide not to start.
He’d open the project file, look at everything that needed to happen, and immediately think:
“I don’t have enough time.”

So instead of starting, he’d switch to something else.
Check email.
Scroll through articles.
Do a few small admin tasks.

Sometimes he’d even convince himself he was being productive because he was “clearing smaller things first.”
But the real work kept on getting pushed.


And the problem was, this was happening multiple times a day. Joseph would have pockets of time throughout the day 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there etc.

But because the projects in front of him felt big, his brain kept deciding those pockets of time weren’t enough.
So he’d wait until he had a “proper block of time.”
Which rarely happened.
At the end of the day, Joseph would feel frustrated. He’d worked all day… but somehow the most important things barely moved forward.

When Joseph first came to me, he said exactly what most people say in this situation “I just need to stop procrastinating.”
But procrastination wasn’t the real problem. It was a symptom of a deeper problem, a weak thinking skill

Specifically, the thinking skill of categorization.

28 Thinking Skills
You see, in order to do any task, you’re gonna use some of the 28 thinking skills. However, if the thinking skill you need to use is weak, you’re gonna procrastinate on the task because it’s a challenge for your brain to do.
In Joseph’s case, he had a weak thinking skill of categorization, which was causing his procrastination.

You may have a different weak thinking that’s cause you to procrastinate.
Find out where each of your 28 thinking skills are standing at lifepixuniversity.com/cf

Categorizations
Categorization is about taking small groups and putting them in big groups
AND it’s about taking a big group and breaking it down into small groups.

In order for Joseph’s brain to take a big project and break it down into smaller parts, he’d have to use categorizations.
Instead of seeing one giant task called “Design the building.”

Categorizations would be to see:
Research zoning requirements.
Sketch early layout ideas.
Create the first floor plan draft.
Review structural constraints.
Prepare presentation slides.

Those are categories within the larger task.

Then, within each one of those categorizes there are even more categories.
Researching zoning requirements involves
-Checking setback rules,
-Confirming height limits,
-Reviewing parking requirements,
-Verifying any special permits that might apply to the property etc.

With strong categorizations, your brain finds a task (within the task) it CAN complete.

Plus, the whole project is a lot less overwhelming.
Once we started improving Joseph’s categorization, everything began to change.

Those random 20-minute pockets of time suddenly became useful, and Joseph was able to get done a week’s worth of work in 2 days

Improving Categorizations
This is the exact exercise I gave Joseph to do to improve his thinking skill of categorizations

Step 1
Write out a bunch of tasks that you need to do on index cards.

Step 2
Then split the tasks based on time (under 30 min, 30-60 min, 60min+)

Step 3
Look at each task and see if it can be split into even smaller tasks, and write them each on another index card.
This will show your brain that it can be smaller tasks

Step 4
Is show your brain that there are different ways to categorize.
Take the same cards and now split them into

Categorize them by:
-Like to do it - neutral - don’t like to do it
-Short-term result - long-term result
-Can do it by yourself - need to do it with others
Then give your own categories

Step 5
Split the tasks based on what makes sense to go together

BONUS Step 6
And plan your day or week accordingly to how you split your cards.


After Improving Categorizations
Interestingly, Joseph had always wanted to post on LinkedIn more consistently, but the categorization issue came up in a different way.

Every day, he’d try to post, but you know how things go, life happens, and you don’t end up posting daily.

What Joseph needed was stronger categorizations to make the task a BIGGER task. Instead of writing and posting daily, Joseph started writing and posting once a week for the whole week (grouping the 5 posts into a once-a-week task). His impressions 10X, and he started getting many inbound leads.

Crazy what improving one thinking skill can do!