The 1 Thing You Should Be Batching That You’re Probably Not Batching

TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED Hey, Hey, so this week I want to chat about one of my favorite things to do in business, and that is batching . I think when people hear batching, they think about like batch preparing their blogs, batching, social media, batching, or podcasts but bear with me because I think it's one of those strategies that everybody thinks they're doing, but the debt maybe not doing to the fullest extent. There are three main reasons that you're probably really familiar with around why we're doing batching. The first one is a creative flow. for writers, for example, who needs to have long uninterrupted periods of creative flow. So they often have like a batch day where all they're doing is writing. They're not writing and then doing the social media. And then during the promotion. the second reason we see people doing batching is for similar activities. So for example, if you create video as part of your content strategy, you know, in a day, a lot of work to put up all the lighting, get all the sound, right? Do the hair and makeup. Have all the outfit changes, ready to go. You don't want to be doing that every single day. So you batching so that you can set it all up record and then move on to the editing piece. The third reason that we're all familiar with batching is really, it's kind of covers your ass because. If something happens, you're already ahead in your content production and you're not going to drop the ball and you're not going to let somebody down. My podcast is batched. I am usually two months ahead in my guest interviews for a couple of reasons. No one, it makes sense for me to have a specific day each month where I'm batching interviews, because it allows me to get into that space of interviewing. It allows me to spend the day getting familiar with my guests before I talk to them. It allows me to do nothing else on that day and relax and recover and be just completely in interview mode. But it's also great for me because. I'm two months ahead of my recording. So if I want to take a month off, I can, without there being any implications, or if I'm forced to cancel the recording day, for any reason, I'm still far enough ahead for that. Not to really matter. So for me, that's creative flow, plotted, similar activities plus it's covering my ass. Right. So all three reasons hit in one, So we're very used to this idea of batching our content. Some people will take it a step further and they will start to think about theme days where the days of the week, maybe all themed around a particular activity. Maybe you have one day that you have client calls. You have another day that you have sales calls. One day, that's all your marketing. One day, that's your writing. And one day that's just like a deep thinking day for you or something like that. So starting to group those activities to keep you in the zone around that activity. But I'm going to suggest that you think about it in one more different way. I want you to think about batching, the things that you don't like, the things that don't light you up. I want you to think about batching them together. So let's say for example, we're talking your bookkeeping. Maybe that is something that just fills you with intense dread. You're not a spreadsheet nerd like me that is something that if you are looking at it and tackling it every single day for a little bit, every single day, it's just draining that little bit of joy, that little bit of energy away from you far better, that you group that into one solid hour once a month, where you knew that I was not going to be a lot of fun, but it's only one hour. Versus thinking, Oh, I really need to do that today. You can just feel how that would be draining to you. And that doesn't have to be necessarily a books and records. For me, my podcast interview days take a lot out of me for me to be really intentional and focused with the guest and focused on what they're saying. You know, my interviews are not prescripted. We don't send questions across to anyone so that conversation can go wherever it wants to go. And I think last week's episode with Makey saying was a really good example where we thought we were going to talk about one thing. And we went in a very different direction, which was unexpected. So for me, when I'm in that zone, I know even though it's something I love doing that energetically, it takes a lot out of me. I could not have a podcast interview every single day and still get through everything else I needed. So, yes, I do it for all the creative reasons, but I also do it for the energy reasons. And that's something that's enjoyable to me. If you did something like that, that took that much energy out of you for something that you didn't enjoy and you split it like you did it every single day, or you did a bit once a week instead of just bringing it all together. Batching is such a powerful tool because it allows us extended time when we need to get into creative flow or we need extended focus on a complex problem. It's going to allow you to group similar activities together, which will save you time, either through setup or through context switching, it's going to allow you to cover your ass when you have prepared ahead of time for things that need to happen in your business. So that if you need to take a vacation, when you used to take a sick day, you're covered, and it's going to allow you to really manage your energy, minimizing things that drain you by grouping them together into one specific time period. So it's rather one hour that you're not really enjoying rather than death by a thousand paper cuts every single day. Just a little bit of energy leaking out of the day. I would often suggest having something that really lights you up then that batch that you're not really enjoying follow began by something that you really love. So build a bit of energy, lose a bit of energy. immediately build energy again. If you're brand new to batching, I recommend starting with content. It's the thing that we're most used to, and that we're the most comfortable with. And then start looking for those activities that are maybe not as much fun for you, that you can start to group together into sessions where you work on that one thing, rather than letting it take from you a little bit every single day.


We’re used to batching to save time or increase focus but what if it helped you manage your energy too?

Key Takeaway

Batching is for more than just content creation, creative flow and context switching.

In This Episode

  • The 3 reasons we batch
  • How and why I use batching in my podcast preparation
  • What else you should be using it for as well