What batch working is, and how it can help you increase your productivity and downtime

Lockdowns, new challenges, pivots and multiple demands are putting different stresses on us all. 

By implementing a batch working regime you can reduce your stress, increase the amount of stuff you get done, and as a result have more time to spend doing the things you love, with those you love.

Podcast Service

Listen and Subscribe On Your Podcast Service

If you can’t find the podcast in your usual service provider.

Click on THIS LINK and you should find the link there

Links mentioned in the show

Get more home working resources and FREE Time Management cheat sheet download HERE

Illustrate and design FREE software https://www.canva.com/

If You Prefer To Read Your Content

Hi, it’s the 28th of September when I’m recording this ready for tomorrow. 

Episode seven about batch working. If you’ve not heard of this, I’ll explain what it is, 

how it can help you, 

how it can definitely increase your productivity, 

which as a result will mean that you have more downtime, which is always a good thing. 

I will dig into how batch working works and how it can increase productivity and downtime, and it couldn’t come at a better time, really, this because in the chaos of lockdown, like I say, we’re in September, 2020 as I’m recording this. 

In the UK, we’re not in lockdown, but the government have said work from home. I’m sure in different places around the world, that people are stuck at home. So it’s a different routine and a different sort of environment that we’re in at the moment. We’ve got a lot of home-working.

People are still doing midlife pivots because sometimes at the moment, especially jobs are being very causing moves and changes, a comment on midlife. 

You’ve always got changing priorities anyway, and I want to help you organise your life better so that you can have a better life work balance. I’m a firm believer in that. 

If you put your mind to it, there are ways that you can improve your situation. 

We’ve got this myth around, especially women, that we’re really good at multitasking . The stats that I’ve found, I’ve done a bit of digging round and the stats that I’ve found, say that only 2.5 people per cent of people can multitask effectively. 

I’m fairly sure that that 2.5% is female, sorry guys, but moms are usually quite good at juggling stuff. 

I find that figure really low, but I can believe it that when you are doing lots of different things, you never put any full attention to each one.

It’s the classic situation of, you know, being on the phone while you’re watching TV, we all do it, but we’re not a hundred percent in either thing that we’re doing. 

I don’t know about you, but I listen to audio books and podcasts. I sometimes find that while I’ve been doing another job, I’ve actually missed half of what I was listening to and I have to rewind it. So even though I think I’m multitasking, I’m not doing either of them effectively and that’s underselling yourself and underselling your work that you’re doing. 

It might be family time that you multitasking with. 

If you can get used to this batch working system, it would just give you more time with your family on your own, whatever you want to use the extra time for. 

According to figures I’ve discovered, they reckon that you can increase your productivity by a massive 40% by doing batch working and not multitasking, which is brilliant.

I won’t say don’t multitask because I’m in the real world. I know that when you’re cooking, you’ll be doing something else, while you’re sat watching TV or doing something else. 

Just give it a go and try and shift your mindset, maybe to do a bit of batch working and see how it goes. 

If you’re not sure what it’s all about, it’s basically lumping together all your tasks that you have to do and tackling them in batches. 

Like you would cook maybe a big pan of spaghetti sauce. You’ve got no intention of eating it all that day. You put some into freezer boxes, shove them in your freezer, into Tupperware or whatever, in your fridge for tomorrow or the day after. That is batch cooking and working works on the same theory that you do all your same jobs on the same day or in the same timeframe.

Maybe if you’re organising a podcast, you might get all your notes together and record four sessions. One after the other, you’re not intending playing them consecutively. They might go out over the next month. 

It could be, if you’re a You Tuber that you record all your videos.

At the moment a lot of us are home-working, there’s a sort of standard joke around Zoom meetings, you know, whether if you got your pyjamas on or your yoga pants, with your nice jacket for your meetings. It’s that type of thing.

If you’re getting all dressed up, getting your makeup on, doing your hair, getting shaved, whatever you need to do, why not record three or four? I’ve done it before where I’ve actually gone and got changed three or four times to record three or four videos that day. Because then I know they’re done.

I don’t have to worry the next day about getting me makeup on if I don’t feel like it. 

It can help you, you know, just relax a little bit because you’ve done a few in hand. It takes that stress away as well of last minute deadlines. 

And you know, you’ve done it all already. 

It can be things like maybe Canva. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s a really good app for doing illustrations. 

You can do your social media posts, Instagram posts, marketing images, or flyers or magazines, whatever. And it’s really handy. It gets a bit addictive. 

You go in and you start drawing in it and creating these images. Why not create all your social media images for that week? If you are an Instagram person who goes on Instagram every day, you might need three or four stories a day.

Why not go in while you’re watching TV, for example, go in and do all of your Instagram images all at once. And that’s making the most of multitasking and batch working because you’re doing them, and they’re all sat there waiting for you when you need them. 

If you’re on the road somewhere and you think, ‘Oh, I’ve no time to post,’ you can just dive into your photo album, find that post that you created when you batched them. 

It’s ready to send. 

Again, it’ll just take a little bit stress away. 

It’s lots of different jobs. I’m sure that if you look at whatever you do, whether you’re working at home, it might be that you’ve got a lot of meetings to organise or a lot of minutes to write up. 

Why not do them all together. Instead of … I’m going to put that meeting in my diary.

Then I’m going to type up those minutes. Then I’m going to create that agenda. Then I’m going to contact that person. Oh, then I’m going to reach out to them on LinkedIn. Then I need to do this. 

Instead of doing all that, then starting again at the beginning and doing the one for tomorrow, then the one after that, then the one after that. Why not do all your diary at the same time? Simple. 

All your meeting, schedule all your meetings in the diary for the next month, two months, three months, then go in type all your meeting notes up, then send them out by email and do all your emails. 

A really good way of getting organised is to actually use a schedule. I use Gmail and I use the manual diary as well, but whatever diary system you use, and if you don’t use one, please start using one.

Cause it really does help and put in there a block block out a time. Maybe two hours, three hours, or even just half an hour and schedule in what task you’re going to do within that half an hour and stick to it. 

So give it a go. 

It’s not a complicated, I would love you to have a go. 

Let me know in the comments, how it’s worked for you and how you felt about batch work and don’t over face yourself. 

Don’t put a block of four hours in because you won’t concentrate for that long, try and block out breaks every hour, half an hour. 

The Pomodoro method is that you work 25 minutes, five minutes break, 25 minutes, five minutes breaks. You can try that as well, but give it a, go. See how it goes. 

Let me know, because I would love to help you with your life work balance at the moment, because I know how stressful it is.

This will hopefully give you a bit more time to do what you choose to do. 

Whether that be writing, walking, just spending time with your family, you know, just whatever your downtime is. 

I would love you to get better at time management. 

If it is something you struggle with, and I have created a free download that you can get from our website, I’ll drop a link in the show notes as well. So if you want to download that, that’s got some more time management tips on there. 

So give this batch working ago, let me know how it goes and I will catch you again next week. Bye.