Antonym for "physical" as in "physical task"?

In my personal issue tracker, I want to sort tasks into one of two categories: The first category is labeled "physical" and contains all tasks involving physical work, e.g. housecleaning or handiwork. The second category contains all tasks that only require mental capacity, e.g. accounting or doing phone calls. I'm having trouble coming up with a nice one-word label for that second category.

I considered "intellectual", but it doesn't fit well since many of these tasks are just office work and not really intellectually challenging.

I also considered "mental", but at least to me (as a non-native speaker), that word is strongly correlated with mental disorders and phrases like "being/going mental". Is that concern misplaced? If not, can you suggest a better word?

(I might just go with "non-physical", but would prefer a label that's not that lazy.)


The term mental is perfectly adequate for this type of task. Most native speakers will not associate it with mental illness.

But, if you prefer something that implies thought process, I'd use the term cognitive.

Cognitive means:

Of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)

The key notion here is involving conscious intellectual activity which I think is a good description of the types of tasks you're suggesting.

If you prefer, you could also use the term intellectual as it also refers to tasks requiring the intellect (i.e. mental processes) to carry them out.


The tasks you've listed here, such as accounting and phone calls, seem to be office work. So to set it apart from the physical tasks, you might try calling them "clerical" or "administrative" tasks as these terms deal with office work.

Clerical: (of a job or person) concerned with or relating to work in an office, especially routine documentation and administrative tasks.

But this is only based on the examples you've given. I'm not certain if all non-physical tasks you're dealing with fall into the realm of office work.