How to Become a Productivity Powerhouse By Batching

February 14, 2008 By Debbie Dragon

Batching is a word that is typically used to describe a computer process, or used when baking goods in large quantities.  It generally refers to the grouping of like items together so that you can complete them all at once.

 You can create “batches” of most of your every day tasks, to save time and become more productive over all. 

Email, particularly work related email, can come in throughout the day.  If you stop what you’re doing every five minutes to read and respond to the email, you won’t accomplish much.  A much more efficient system would be to schedule two or three times each day where you check your email, read and respond to anything there all at once.

Laundry is another prefect candidate for batching.  Rather than do a small load every day, it’s actually not a bad thing to let the laundry build up a bit and do it all in one day each week.  You can schedule that day for your other housework chores, so that while a load is in the washer you vaccuum the floors; when you move that load to the dryer and put in your next load to wash, you can clean the bathrooms, etc. 

Meal planning and preparation can be batched.  This is my favorite!  When I’m creating my grocery list each week and which coupons I’ll use, I’m basically planning meals that I’ll make throughout the week.  On laundry day, I will get the washing and drying happening, and prepare three or four meals all at once. That night’s dinner might be in the crockpot, then I create other meals to freeze and put some in the fridge for the next day or two for quick and easy re-heating.  I don’t want to be tied to the stove when my kindergartner gets home at 4:30pm; I want to visit with him and still enjoy dinner at a reasonable hour, and this is a great way to accomplish that.

You can also batch your postal mail, as long as you don’t leave it for too long!  A good rule of thumb is to bring your mail inside daily, and go through it at least once a week.  You can spend a half hour reading mail and writing out checks to pay bills and responding to other mail once a week rather than five or ten minutes each day and it will actually make the most of your time each day.

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