How Batching Can Save You Time + Energy
Hi, I’m Dr. Tiffany Shelton Mariolle, The Manifesting Psychologist and Founder of modAmbition!
You might be surprised to hear there is a right way and a WRONG way to batch your work!
Batching can be a great way to free up some of your time and energy but only if done right.
Got way too much on your plate and want to learn how to correctly use batching to go from overwhelmed to on top of things? Then you’re in the right place.
By the end of this podcast, you will know when not to batch, how to use batching to save time at work, and how to use batching to save time in your personal life.
This episode is brought to you by modAmbition.
Our brand new luxury goal planner is launching soon and we don’t want you to miss out. With a modern aesthetic and psychologist-created content, this planner is designed to help ambitious women like you have it all without the overwhelm. Go to signup.modambition.com to take a look at the planner and reserve your invite!
Cheers to having it all!
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We all know the feeling of having a never-ending to-do list and feeling desperate for any life hack, system, or tip to make our lives more manageable. Let’s face it, having more time while also getting things done seems like a dream come true.
There was an article in the Atlantic by Joe Pinsker that referenced a 2019 research paper about how much free time the happiest people get. He said, “The paper, which analyzed data covering about 35,000 Americans, found that employed people’s ratings of their satisfaction with life peaked when they had in the neighborhood of two and a half hours of free time a day.”
And as a working mama, I know that my plate is full. So any time optimization to help me get those 3 hours of time to myself is much appreciated. This is why batching is an important piece of my life.
So first, let’s talk about what I mean when I say batching. Batching is a systematic approach to working that essentially means batching together like tasks and doing them all at once.
In the content creation space, it has become a very popular concept because many have preached the benefits of creating many pieces of content like blogs, videos, or podcasts all at once. But it can really apply to any type of work you do.
If you’re a service provider like a therapist you might batch all your clients on one day and do other admin and marketing tasks throughout the week. Or you might batch all your emails into two time periods throughout the day.
Batching saves us time by the notion of momentum. It takes more time and energy to start, end, and restart a task than it does to keep it going. The idea is once you have moved past the inertia of starting, you use that momentum to complete other similar tasks and thereby save yourself the extra time and energy it would take to do each task one by one.
ONE: When not to batch
It may not be recommended to batch WHEN:
- It takes extra energy exertion, time, and prolonged focus that may not be available.
- If your quality is diminishing due to the energy needed to batch.
- When doing something in the moment is
- You’re batching something you need to eliminate or delegate.
- You haven’t proven the system is efficient yet, Lean start-up example.
TWO: How to use batching to save time at work.
- Plan: Identify what are your time sucking tasks, or tasks you are always behind on. Time audit
- A great built in way t do this is by incorporating a paper planner into your workflow. Within the modAmbition planner that is launching May 30th, get excited, there is a built in way to track and optimize your time. Which I think is one of the things that makes me so confident that this goal planner will help ambitious women 100% is because it is infused when things that help you have it all without doing it all. Our time is something that can not be replaced and if we can use simple tools like a beautiful planner to help us get more time back and get more done, then why not. If you don’t want to miss out on the launch and you want to take a look at this planner just head to https://signup.modambition.com/
- Be realistic about what work tasks you can batch
- Prepare: Use templates, checklists, and SOPs to eliminate the friction when you sit down to do your batch work.
- Email signatures
- Filmed/screen recording SOPs
- The pumpkin plan by Mike Kalowitz
- Execute:
- Batch Days with flexibility
- Workcations for big projects like writing a book
- Maya Angelo
- “I do still keep a hotel room in my hometown, and pay for it by the month. I go around 6:30 in the morning. I have a bedroom, with a bed, a table, and a bath. I have Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, and the Bible … I have all the paintings and any decoration taken out of the room. I ask the management and house-keeping not to enter the room, just in case I’ve thrown a piece of paper on the floor, I don’t want it discarded. About every two months I get a note slipped under the door: ‘Dear Ms. Angelou, please let us change the linen. We think it may be moldy!’ But I’ve never slept there, I’m usually out of there by 2. And then I go home and I read what I’ve written that morning, and I try to edit then. Clean it up. And that’s how I write books!”
- Review how things are going and adjust
- Make it easy to do
- Make it pleasurable
THREE: How to use batching to save time at home.
- Plan: Decide when you will batch which chores
- Our morning and evening routine, so we aren’t cleaning all day
- Repetitive chores i.e. laundry.
- Think outside of the box besides just batching cleaning tasks.
- Running all errands at one time when you have to go out anyway.
- Prepare: Have things ready to go for when it’s time to batch chores
- Bring the clothes down on Friday.
- Execute:
- Find a way to make that time enjoyable and be consistent
- Organize into small batching tasks. Within tasks like cleaning the counters. Ridding all counter crumbs then wiping, or grouping dishes before putting them away.