18. How to Use the Batching Strategy to Work Smarter
Episode 18
Are you ready to learn about one of my secret weapons for working smarter? I’ll bet you’re actually already doing it, but just aren’t harnessing its full power to improve your productivity.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter, I share how to use the Batching Strategy to work smarter. Trust me: this is a technique that can streamline your workflow in ways you can’t imagine.
🎙️Other Episodes Mentioned:
→ Episode 1: What’s an Admin Block and Why You Need One
→ Episode 15: 3 Email Management Strategies to Handle Your Inbox
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18 How to Use the Batching Strategy to Work Smarter
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
[00:00:00] Are you ready to learn about a productivity strategy that can make your workday so much easier?
Like literally, I've seen it revolutionize people's entire workflow, the kicker, he said, it's something you're probably already doing in other areas of your life, but you just don't know it. Okay picture this.
Let's say the gift three errands to run. You have to go to the bank, you have to pick up some groceries and you need to return some library books at the library.
So you get in your car and you drive to the bank and then you drive back home and park your car and then drive away. You get out of your car, you go back into your house and you turn around and get back in your car. And then you back out of the driveway and you go get your groceries and you drive back home and you park your car in the driveway, and then you get out of your car.
You go back into your house. Hold up. Follow me here. And then you back out of your driveway and you go to the library and return your books, and then you drive back home again.
We agree that this is ridiculous. [00:01:00] Obviously we would never do that.
You would leave your driveway once hit all three errands back to back. And then you would return home.
This is the batching strategy. And as I was saying, it's something that you're probably already using in your everyday life.
And in this episode, I'm going to show you how to incorporate it into your professional life so then you can get more done in less time.
If that sounds good, then you are in the right place.
Let's start with what the batching strategy is.
So, simply put, batching refers to the act [00:02:00] of grouping similar tasks together to be clean, completed in one sitting or in one setting.
The goal of batching is to reduce front-loading and offloading and transition efforts between tasks. And believe it or not, all the prep work for certain tasks is sometimes more clunky and stressful than the task itself.
And batching minimizes that.
All right. So let's go back and look at our errands example for a second.
Every time that you plan to do an errand, you have to prepare to leave the house. You go to the bathroom, you make sure you have a coat. You make sure there's gas in your car. Obviously you pack a snack, right?
You get all the things that you need to do your errand, and then you get in the car and drive to wherever it is that you're going.
Same thing when you come home from your errand, right. And you make sure you take everything out of your car, you unload things, you take your shoes off, you hang up your coat, you put things back where they belong. Right.
This is something we do all the time and we don't really think about it [00:03:00] just because it makes sense and it makes our life easier.
But if we do all of our errands at once, which is what we usually do, we're only prepping to leave the house once and we only return once. Now in the context of work, the same thing happens.
So obviously let's move away from errands and into work because that is why you are here.
And we're going to begin with email because that's a really great, great place to start if you're new to batching or you want to try it, or you're curious about it and use it for the first time.
I'm going to leave a link in the show notes and in the description box, but in episode 15, I give you three critical email management strategies to handle your email inbox. Now, one of those three tips is to create some kind of email routine or a system, right?
We do not want to be bouncing into our inbox all day long and putting out fires. Instead, this is an area where we can use the batching strategy.
I actually also mentioned this in episode one, which is [00:04:00] all about admin blocks and why you need one for your productivity.
I'll put that link in the show notes too, but essentially I was introducing you to the batching strategy in that episode without calling it the batching strategy. Right.
But here we are.
So you could use something like an admin block, which is a designated time during the week that you've chosen to handle administration tasks, like email. I, and you would schedule this time on your calendar, like an appointment. Maybe it's 30 minutes, right?
I don't know. It depends on what your job is.
But in that 30 minutes, you log into your inbox once and you handle what's in there and then you get out.
It's the digital equivalent of doing all of your errands at once. All right.
That is so much more efficient than checking your email all day long, getting stressed out every time you do so, getting distracted from your real work in order to respond to whatever is thrown your way. Right.
An adult client that I work with [00:05:00] uses batching with the team she manages. She works for a medium sized identity theft company and manages a team of, I think I think it's five people.
As a manager, she batches meetings on one uh, day of the week. I honestly can't remember what day it is.
Let's just say Tuesday. Cause otherwise I'm making that up.
So that means that she has her team meetings on Tuesdays, as well as her individual meetings with individual team members.
Tuesday is meeting day.
That's the day that she knows she needs to be in the office and not work from home. That's the day she doesn't schedule like anything else. Just meetings.
She batches her meetings so the rest of her work week isn't fragmented and broken up.
Okay.
Let me give you another example of using the batching strategy at work.
We obviously live in a hybrid world, right? And many of us spend time in the office and spend time working [00:06:00] remotely from home or wherever, wherever our home office is.
It would make sense to use the batching strategy to figure out what projects you'll work on, depending on where you'll be.
For example, if you're only in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you could match all of your in-office tasks to be completed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Right? That way you don't have to worry about bringing materials from home or forgetting something that you need. Right.
I personally use batching all of the time in my business.
So in addition to private coaching when that's like the bulk of my, my week. Uh that's when I meet one-on-one with clients about 30 hours a week, I also create a ton of content, if you haven't noticed.
I have my blog posts on schoolhabits.com. I have my. YouTube channel my schoolhabits, YouTube channel.
I have the new learn and work smarter YouTube channel. I sell my executive function journalist -a physical product. I have this podcast. I have all of my social media posts, right.
This takes [00:07:00] so much time. And I do it all myself.
All right, so let's take, I don't know, YouTube, for example. I batch record those videos and film four or five at one time.
That means I do my hair and my makeup and I get my camera ready and stage my office.
And yes, it makes for a really long day, but I do it just once. And then throughout the next coming weeks, I edit the videos and release them according to my content schedule.
Same with recording this podcast. I try to record several episodes at a time, which is actually what I'm doing right now.
I just recorded one and I have two more after this, maybe one, we'll see. We'll see where the day goes. Now I know that I put out an episode every Thursday, right.
And I have a content calendar where I plan out about a month's worth of topics ahead of time. And then on a day when the kids are out of the house and it's relatively quiet, I go up into my recording studio here and record four to five [00:08:00] podcasts at one time.
Yeah, there is a ton of prep work that goes into that in advance, like planning out my episodes and writing my outlines.
But I am only sitting down and messing with the tech, which is the hardest part, and recording everything in just one sitting.
I would so much rather do that one whole production situation like once a month versus stressing out every week about when am I going to find time to record when the kid's going to be out? When is the house going to be quiet? All the things right.
So my question to you is where in your work day or your work week, can you use the batching strategy?
Because I am almost certain that there was a place for it. No matter what your job or your industry is.
Now one tip to figure out where to get started is to think about the tasks that you do in, like I say, a one week span. And you can think about this monthly, I suppose, but let's just [00:09:00] start with one week.
All right. What similar tasks do you do on Monday through Friday that you could shift around and start completing together in one sitting?
Can you move all of your meetings to one particular day? Can you batch and handle your email inbox three times a week instead of all week long.
Can you ship all your packages on one day instead of running to the post office every day?
That's what I do with my executive function journal. I ship like one day a week.
So look at the tasks you complete in a week and write these tasks down if you need to. In fact, I strongly suggest that you do that.
Write them down. And then you look for common ground.
Are there tasks that are fundamentally different ? Like the task itself is different, but they all require the same resources or the location that location, maybe they're all, or like computer tasks or something. Batch them together.
Try batching one area at a time, and I know you'll feel the difference almost immediately.
And that will inspire [00:10:00] you to apply the batching strategy to other areas.
Now I know that I say this a lot, but I am going to say it again because it's really, really important.
I want you to take action on what you're learning today. It is. One thing to learn about a strategy and envision yourself doing it and, you know, making it happen in real life. But nothing happens in real life until you take action.
. So my challenge to you is in the next, I don't know, 12 hours or so look at your task management system or your to-do list or your weekly plan or wherever it is that you. You know, story your tasks and try to find a cluster of tasks that are similar enough that you could batch them together.
The magic is in the actions, my friend.
Okay. And as a reminder, don't forget I do a monthly Q and a episode where I answer listener questions.
And if you have questions that you want me to answer here, it doesn't matter how general or how specific or what category, as long as they [00:11:00] relate to learning and working smarter, you can ask your question in the form at learnandworksmarter.com.
It's right there on the homepage. And with that, I leave you with my greatest advice I could possibly give you, which is to never stop learning.
