Sheila has a busy week. Her schedule reflects that she is interviewing three guests this week for her new podcast. She has a webinar on Friday and needs to prepare slides and notes for her presentation. She also has her daughter’s wedding invitations on her desk, waiting to be addressed and taken to the post office.

Sheila decides that the best way to handle her week is to spread things out a little at a time, so she can whittle away at the tasks and end her week with all tasks completed. She sets aside time each day for each project: schedules the podcast interviews for Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and plans to address 25 envelopes each morning until they are done on Friday. She thinks that she can get her webinar presentation slides done if she works on four per day and will write out her notes each night before bed, taking them one topic at a time. Sheila sounds like she is great at spreading out her tasks and making the most out of her day… Or does she?

Sheila is making some fundamental errors when it comes to time management, efficiency, and quality. By spreading out her tasks over the course of time she may be keeping herself from working too hard on one task for too long, but she really isn’t doing herself any favors. What Sheila needs to do is batch her work into meaningful chunks and knock things out.

Batching brings tasks together into single episode events that streamline and organize the task and knock it out at one time. Batching allows for pre-planning and diminishes interruptions and procrastination. Batching reduces the likelihood that a task won’t be completed on time and increases the quality.

Let’s revamp Sheila’s week and see how batching can make her life better

Podcast interviews– Instead of doing interviews on three different days, Sheila should host all of her interviews in one day. This way she is only set up her equipment once and she can stay focused and on point when she does her work. She can manage the content and complete any back-end work while things are fresh on her mind and walk away from the work to focus on other things for the week.

Addressing invitations– There are a few ways to batch this work. First, Sheila could consider taking one day or afternoon to address all the invitations. Setting aside the time to get in and get the invitations done early in the week will leave her able to get to the post office and rest assured that nothing will interrupt the invitations being sent on time. She could also consider hiring someone to address the invitations if doing so would free her up to do income-producing tasks.

Webinar prep– Sheila should designate one day to prepare for her webinar. Ideally, she would prep on Wednesday to give her enough time to create the slide content and keep the information fresh in her mind for Friday. If she does the podcast interviews on Monday, she can remove that from her mind and free up her thoughts and space to give her webinar all of her energy on Wednesday. If she works on her presentation notes on Thursday, she can increase the likelihood that she will be rested, prepared, and ready to go for her webinar on Friday.

Batching work means working smart, not hard. Whether you batch your week regularly: Laundry on Sundays, meeting with clients on Wednesdays, and meal prep on Saturdays; or you take the week’s workload and batch it up, you will streamline your work and increase your personal stamina and satisfaction.

Have more questions? Schedule a Simplicity Session I’d be happy to chat. And check out my exclusive Facebook group The Small Biz Society – a unique support and service space where aspiring entrepreneurs and new small business owners “get bizy” planning, building and sustaining.

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