The Power of Batching 🔄
Hi friends!
Ever since I’ve discovered the power of batching, I’ve tried my best to use it at every instance because it just saves time, effort and most importantly, it reduces friction to get stuff done!
What do I mean by this?
When we’re in the flow of doing a task - it makes sense to continue and completing the same bunch of tasks since you’re already in the groove of things.
It does somewhat relate back to the theory of ‘focusing’ on getting the same task done, and not ‘distracting’ your brain by multitasking.
Take me for example, every time I want to release a new YouTube video, I’d have to: Brainstorm ->Write script-> Set up camera -> Film -> Film B-roll -> Import footage -> Edit -> Release video -> Market. As you can see it takes a tremendous amount of effort to get things up and running, and I basically have to do this every single week without fail because YouTube is all about consistency.
Instead of doing this process bit by bit, I wrote and batch filmed 5 videos in a single day. This helped because I didn’t have to keep setting up my camera, style my hair (gotta try my best to look presentable although my hair is looking long at this moment) and get into ‘Jamie on camera’ vibe! By getting that out of the way, I didn’t have to set up my lights / camera / mic for 3 weeks straight - and that allowed me to concentrate on my other efforts like editing and marketing.
The cool thing about this - ‘batching’ is that it can be used with tons of situations! This can be done with:
Emails - set time in your calendar to batch reply emails instead of constantly replying to them one by one! (wrote about this in my previous newsletter when I reviewed Cal Newport’s Deep Work’)
Meetings - be selfish with your time, and put your meetings together so that you’ll have more time to focus on your work instead of having to run in an out of meetings every ½ hour!
Meal Prep / Dishwashing - Preparing your meals for the next few days always helps! You cook once for a few days, so that you don’t have to cook every single day (unless you love cooking of course). When washing dishes - I also try to soap everything before washing it all off and drying them (instead of doing them one by one)!
Of course there are more examples, but these are the main 3 I use batching for. I really love this productivity tip and it’s definitely helped me improve my focus and save me time!
Do you use batching in your life? What do you use it for?
Till next week!
Jamie
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