Three ways that you can use Batching for Productivity in you Business.

 Today's Blog is about Batching and how it can help with productivity, Batching is a term I have heard many times and I incorporated it into my professional life. It has yielded very good results for me and as such, I would love to share it with you guys. Let's dig in;

Batching Definition:  

Batching is a manufacturing term it means products are made in a specified group or amount, within a time frame. Batching is a  process, therefore it can be applied to different situations and as such it has been transferred to the productivity world. 

There are many tasks that you can do in batches some examples are

writing, content creation, editing etc.

A simple search on Youtube will yield results of YouTubers talking about how they batch their content creations, filming multiple videos on the same day, writing several blog post and so on.

You can, therefore, understanding how the process of batching can apply to your productivity. By grouping similar tasks together you avoid multitasking and frequent distractions. 

I use batching when filing and clearing my desk at work. Saturdays, for one hour I group my documents and label them for filing. Then on Monday morning my assistant just has to look at the labels and be guided accordingly. This way, she does not have to spend the entire morning working with me on labelling and filing, she can get to the filing and putting away of files within an hour or less.

How can you use Batching in your Business?

• Email/Messages

Instead of checking your emails every time you get a notification you can set aside a time block to do so, in this time block you -  read, sort and respond to your email/messages etc. Should an email/message response need to be detailed and technical then, you send a short response acknowledging that you have received the email/message and give a date and time you would respond to it in detail or delegate the response to someone who has the technical knowledge to answer the query.

• Social Media

As a small business owner you are juggling I am guessing several different social media platform. Being able to create content and schedule them way ahead of time is such a lifesaver. I am a solo entrepreneur who dabbles in every bit of my business. I also have a full-time job, hence my crazy schedule. 

Side Note:

I learned from Mel Robbins (she is my favourite, she is awesome) in one of her talks she tells us to just start, stop dreaming and start doing.
Check out the video her Youtube channel here

I have taken a timeout from Social Media. Because honestly, I am currently working on getting my act together for creating my content and scheduling them ahead of time. So this bit of advice is also for me…lol. (Hide Face)

Spend 1-hour maybe on Mondays for the week creating and curating content for your various platforms, then another hour or so scheduling the various platforms.

For Facebook, I use the built-in facebook

schedule feature. For Instagram I use Planoly (the free version). These are my two preferred platforms and of course, I would have to build my way up to others soon. 

It is advised that you use one social media marketing tool, like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule multiple social channels (these tools only offer a certain amount of post in the free version) to access the full benefits there is, of course, an investment is needed in terms of a membership fee.

Making your presence online felt, building your tribe is so important that is why responding to comments or even leaving comments on other people social media is essential in building your tribe.

Reserve sometime in the evening to respond to comments and engage with your tribe rather than reaching for your phone every time it goes off. You can also block this time on your calendar. Remember Create, Plan and Schedule it, then move on to something else.

• Filing Digital and Hard Copy
  

Set up one folder to dump all your papers for filing. All receipts, invoices, statements etc in one bright coloured folder (just cause I like bright colours…lol) then on the days that you blocked time off to do your filing you then pull from your bright coloured folder to sort and file. 

Do the same for your digital filing. I have one folder called “To File” there I store all my many digital files like artwork, letters, proposals, research etc. again on Saturdays I sort through them and move them to their respective folders. 

Read More: Planning 

Ps. I do the same for my email inbox, I move all the emails that I am working on to a folder I name “In Progress” and then when I am done I send them off to their respective folders.

Conclusion

Batching saves you time and helps you to stay in flow with your work.  Multitasking takes you away from what you are doing and causes distractions. You use a different part of your brain for different things and every time you switch task, your brain switches gear, this causes you to slow down.

Have you ever tried Batching tasks, maybe its something you do without knowing what it is. I would love to know about it. Leave a comment and let's have a conversation on this.

Take Care and Sending you Good Vibes

I am leaving you with a video on batching from Ami Landino from Amytv on Youtube.