Batching Tasks is All the Rage, but Proceed with Caution
If you spend much time poking around in entrepreneurial circles, you hear a lot about people batching tasks - doing the same task repeatedly all at once (like invoicing your clients, say) at a designated time. It makes you more efficient, you can concentrate, you get faster as you repeat it, you can get so much more done…supposedly.
I’d like to present a more balanced view of batching tasks, and look at them from a different angle. I find it to be a bit more complicated than it’s made out to be – and kind of like working in the kitchen.
Let’s say, for example, you’re cooking a meal. Now if you were batching tasks, you’d chop all your vegetables at once right away, transferring them to bowls temporarily when you needed more space on the cutting board. Instead of putting a pot of water on to boil for your rice at the same time, you’d wait and do that after you were done chopping. Instead of stir-frying the chicken in between vegetable chops, you’d do it only when you could focus totally on the chicken. After dinner, you’d spend a lot of time washing all those bowls and things you dirtied while you were concentrating.
Now if you cook like that, good job, you’re probably doing it more like a professional chef on TV.
I tend to cook more like a busy mom at the end of the workday. (Because that is what I am.)
I start everything simultaneously, based on how long it takes to complete.
If the stir fry from start to finish is going to take me 40 minutes, I’ll slice up the chicken, start stir frying it, then chop the broccoli and carrots next, because they take longer to cook than the other veggies.
In between, I stir the chicken.
After that, I’ll start the water for the rice since it needs 20 minutes to cook after the water boils.
I stir the chicken again.
Then I chop the onions and celery, because they’re in the second round of veggies.
By now it’s time to put the rice in the pot of boiling water.
Once the chicken is cooked and I’ve removed it from the skillet, I’ll start cooking the broccoli and carrots.
In between stirs, I’ll mix up the sauce.
Once the broccoli is bright green, I’ll add the onions and celery.
Then I’ll start cleaning up the dishes I’m finished with, while the veggies get crisp-tender, still stirring often.
I’ll add the sauce and wipe off the counter while it thickens, then add the chicken, heat everything through and check to make sure the rice has absorbed all the water.
When I’m finished, the kitchen is 90% clean, the dishes are in the dishwasher, and the meal is ready to serve. If I had batched those tasks it would have taken me well over an hour instead of 40 minutes, easily.
In my business, I do batch tasks to some extent, but I also adjust frequently depending on things like whether the ideas are flowing, if I’m quickly finding the information I need, and how much time I have left before I have to change gears.
For example, I might sit down today with a plan to find 5 companies to pitch, research them, and decide how to approach each one. My plan would then be to write those 5 pitches tomorrow.
But if I hit a wall with my research today, I draw a blank on ideas, I can’t find the contact I’m looking for at a particular company…I am not going to stick to my batching plan and get frustrated. Instead, I’ll switch gears and start writing a pitch for 1 of the 5 I DO have my thoughts together on. I’ll maybe outline another one or start it (because starting is the hardest part) so that tomorrow, I’ll be so happy to find I already have some words on the page.
I don’t know if it’s just the 18 years of working motherhood driving my approach, but batching plans notwithstanding, I do not allow myself to get stuck and stay stuck. I can’t spare the time, frankly. There’s always a load of laundry I could fold or a bathroom I could clean while my brain takes a quick break, and then I can start fresh and come at something from a different angle.
For this reason, I always keep a list at my elbow of at least 3-5 priorities when I sit down to work. If I get stuck on the first one for some reason, I can quickly switch to the next, and make maximum use of the time.
Do you batch tasks when you’re working, and does it help you be more efficient? I’d love to know.
Also, did I make you hungry for stir fry, or was that just me?
See, now I wrote a post and planned a meal for next week’s menu, both at the same time. Batching can be helpful, but it isn’t always the answer.
#batching #stirfry #workingmom #efficiency #entrepreneur #freelancer #copywriting #poreovercopy
