154. 4 Activities You Should Try Batching

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, here’s the question I pose to you today. Have you ever gotten to the end of your day and just felt very scattered?

Courtney Baker:
Absolutely not. We all fall into those moments that we’re just like, it feels like too much. And so then you get working on a little bit of a lot of things versus strategically trying to knock things off and then you get to the end of the day and you’re just like, it’s too much. And I would say for me, it really compounds when it’s a lot of things that are not just work, but maybe there’s a lot of personal things happening. Maybe school starting. You’re just got a whole lot of plates spinning in multiple arenas. That’s when things for me are most likely to get to the end of the day and just feel like mentally scattered. It was hard to focus on getting the right things done, which is what we’re all about.

Nick Jaworski:
Verbs can I ask you?

Verbs Boyer:
Yes sir.

Nick Jaworski:
How do you know that you’re a little scattered or spread thin? When I’m eating a meal at 10 o’clock then I know things have overwhelmed me. I’ve probably had dinner by now, but if I’m like, oh God, I got to eat. I’m going to have some chicken now, or I’m going to have some ice cream, of course, if I’m at that place and I don’t have any reserve to tell myself, Nick, just go to bed, you don’t have to eat this food right now. Then I know that things have really fallen off the wagon. Is that the thing?

Verbs Boyer:
Well, so yeah, so I hear what you’re saying. So to answer your question. I normally either would, I’ll stay up late and try to watch TV shows and I should just really, same thing, just go to bed and reset for the next day. But yeah, I’m trying to focus on one thing, knowing everything in the peripheral is scattered and floating around, but this one show could help me bring it all back together.

Nick Jaworski:
Courtney is your version of that, is it to write lists? What do you do and what happens? How do you know?

Courtney Baker:
Like that I’m like-

Nick Jaworski:
Spiraling, yeah.

Courtney Baker:
When my car is just a disaster. And then I find myself just walking into rooms of my house, saying those words out loud about things like this. This room is a disaster. This room is a disaster.

Nick Jaworski:
I’m just picturing your husband. Just like, oh, there she go. He can just hear you off in the distance going, oh no, it’s happening.

Courtney Baker:
This room is a disaster. This room is a disaster

Verbs Boyer:
Which is interesting because it’s like, I feel like we go to those kinds of things because we feel like we can at least do something to control that. And it’s order again versus all the other stuff that we’re trying to grasp for order, but loading the dishwasher. Hey, that could be done. So today we’re going to look at four activities that you should try batching to reclaim order.

Courtney Baker:
Today, we’re going to be talking about batching, but we also have a really exciting course for you to go watch for free. We usually charge $49 for this. And it’s from a live event that we did several years ago. And it’s Amy Porterfield talking about batching. So go download that now and find out more about how you can successfully batch your work.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done. And finally start loving Mondays. My name is Verbs, here with Courtney Baker, happy, almost said happy birthday.

Courtney Baker:
Thank you.

Verbs Boyer:
Happy Monday to you, Courtney.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday. Yes it’s a good one. I am really excited to be talking about this and actually our producer, when we got on today, he was like, I feel like this is a Courtney Baker episode and he was right. So I’m ready to jump in.

Verbs Boyer:
Let’s take a look at activity number one, which is responding to email.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. This one. So again, we’re talking about activities that you should consider batching, and we’ve actually told you this a lot. You may not realize it though, because when we talk about our workday startup and our workday shut down, we are usually encouraging you to respond to email in those blocks, basically to get that low leverage work out of the way, and then to come back at the end of the day, to kind of keep it in check. And so essentially what we’re saying is you’re batching those activities on a daily basis. But the idea here is a lot of times we default to responding to email throughout the day at any moment, just to make sure that we’re responsive. Ultimately, what that does is instead of us working on high leverage work, we are just responding to what other people need from us.
And that sounds like helpful to other people, but not really helpful for us getting the right things done. Most likely, if you are continually not getting your daily big three done, this might be one of the reasons, because you’re just always checking email to see who needs a response to you. So again, this is one, and maybe we may have to challenge your thinking a little bit here, because if you’ve been in that habit, you may be like, there is no way that I can just check email my workday startup and workday shutdown. I would say if that is where you’re at, maybe you put a section in the middle. You’re like in the middle of the day, I’m going to check, but to work towards being intentional of when you’re going to check email versus just continually doing it on every five minute basis or every 30 basis to jump into email, I think you’ll find huge results just by this first activity.

Verbs Boyer:
And I think sometimes we mentioned this earlier, that there’s activities that we kind of use as default work to at least make it feel like we’re still moving even though we feel stuck in maybe some other areas to where we feel that scattered state starting to creep upon us. So this set up with the email, at least by designating two or three moments throughout the day to which you check email, there may be some pre-work that you, again, you’d have to notify your team and say, hey, I’m going to check email during these times in the afternoon and before I shut down, and maybe even if it’s external communication, maybe even dropping something in your signature that lets other people know that they can expect a response between these times, just to help them understand your rhythm throughout the day in which you’re available via email, that could help as well.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I love that idea.

Nick Jaworski:
I might suggest that people will actually close their email, period. If you’ve got an email client, that’s like your notifications or I just use Gmail directly. And if I just have it open all the time, and I can see the number of email, just the number on the tab can be a real trigger. So I would suggest, just close it. Or if you’re using Microsoft Outlook or whatever, you’re on your phone, just get rid of the notifications and then just trust that you’ll get back to it. And I say this as somebody who emails are my kryptonite for real. So I say this from a place of love and compassion and empathy that having a time set aside, it is part of my morning ritual to get to look at those every day. And I have an assistant who also is dealing with it for me. So that’s another pro tip.

Courtney Baker:
Well, do you want to know my pro tip when it comes to my phone? I actually don’t have any email app on my phone or Slack. I don’t have them on there at all. Now, can I go onto a web browser and eventually get there? Yes, but I’ve got to take 12 steps and go find my password and the verification code. And so it makes it, I’m only doing that if there’s a real reason for me to go seek it out, which helps me a lot in the off hours. I don’t want to be checking email at first thing in the morning when I wake up. And so that has really served me well, actually, Megan Miller really challenged me on that several years ago, just to take it off my phone. And I was like, I guess if my boss told me it was okay, I could try it. And it really worked. It’s been a really helpful tool for me.

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, I know you lead a few teams in your department. So there has to be multiple meetings going on constantly. And that is activity number two, is thinking about how we can better batch our meetings together. What are your thoughts on the best way to do that especially if there’s multiple teams that require multiple meetings throughout a week, what are some things that we can do to help manage that better?

Courtney Baker:
When it comes to meetings, if you have the ability to use your ideal week, if you use the Full Focus Planner, or by the way, if you do not have a Full Focus Planner and you’re looking for that tool, you can find it at fullfocus.co/idealweek, but you can really use your ideal week to try to figure out when the best time to have meetings would be. For example, there have been seasons where all of my one-on-one meetings got scattered throughout my week. And so it would be like you would get started on something and then you would need to go to a meeting. I would get started on something and then go to another meeting. And so I’ve worked over time where all of my one-on-one meetings are just back, to back, to back, and then I’m done for the week with my one-on-one meetings, versus having just little 30, 45 minutes in between meetings because I have them back to back. It opens up bigger time blocks.
If I can have two and a half hours without any meetings, that’s much better than having four 30, 45 minute blocks scattered throughout my week. And so I would really encourage you if you haven’t ever used the ideal week to use that to figure out when you could block those meetings together. So you could, again, one-on-one meetings, you could have a time where you do any external meetings. You might even have a time where you do internal meetings or cross-collaborative meetings. The list is really endless here, but it’s basically trying to figure out how you can group those.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah, that’s good. And the benefit I think of it is when you batch in that way, it keeps you from having to jump mental buckets. So if it’s something that’s just a strategic day of meetings or meetings based on coming up with strategic plans or dialing strategy, then you’re in that mindset for the bulk of that day. Or if it’s vendor meetings, then you can be in that mindset set for the bulk of the day versus having to jump in and out of different conversations that are scattered. All right, activity number three is chores, something that we’ve been talking about quite a bit lately on the focus on this podcast.

Courtney Baker:
I mean, as an adult, I don’t have chores. I thought that those were supposed to end when I went to college, no?

Verbs Boyer:
Oh, I would’ve loved if chores ended, especially cutting the grass, but-

Courtney Baker:
Oh yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
But it’s still here, alive and well.

Nick Jaworski:
Have I told the story about when I used to mow the grass here, when I was a kid, have I told the story on the podcast?

Courtney Baker:
I don’t think so.

Verbs Boyer:
Maybe not. No.

Nick Jaworski:
We had two yards. We had a front yard backyard, too big, not to brag, but it was too big. And so me and my brothers would split up because you’d get $7 to do one of, like the back and you’d get $7 to do the front. And I was in second grade-

Courtney Baker:
Pay as a kid.

Nick Jaworski:
I was in second grade.

Courtney Baker:
In the 90s. Wow!

Nick Jaworski:
I was in second grade and I’d just gotten glasses and I’m pushing this mower. I’m really trying to make it work. I’m pushing this mower around and I’m like, oh, these glasses are too… I don’t know. I’m like, you have to get used to that process. And so I put them down next to this bush that was at the corner of our driveway. Smash cut to I’m running over the glasses with the lawnmower.

Verbs Boyer:
Lord have mercy.

Nick Jaworski:
My poor… She was so nice about. I think about that now if my child did that, just how I’d have to process that news and glasses were much more, they were harder to get back, then they took longer. They were more expensive. So anyway, not a fan of lawnmower. That’s where that story was going at.

Courtney Baker:
That’s a good thing, you were getting top dollar for your mowing so that you could [inaudible 00:13:36].

Nick Jaworski:
It was a good deal. You got a dollar, if you did the side lawn too, which was kind of small.

Courtney Baker:
Man. Wow!

Verbs Boyer:
Actually, hold on because now I’m thinking about what you said and I’m agreeing with you. It’s like, hey we’re adults. Do we still have chores? I like what you mentioned in an episode previously though, we were talking about dishwashing and you used the word. I like to reset the kitchen.

Nick Jaworski:
Yes.

Courtney Baker:
Yes.

Nick Jaworski:
I literally say that every day. I’ll tell Ashley, I’ll go or I’m going to start to reset right now, and I’ll get up and it really feels better. It doesn’t feel like a punishment. I got to clean up all the stuff I did today.

Courtney Baker:
Yes.

Verbs Boyer:
Doesn’t feel like such a chore.

Courtney Baker:
I agree. I’m a big proponent. These subtle shifts in our thinking really help us. I think this works best when you’re thinking of mega batching chores is to think of the chores that you only have to do once a month and trying to group those together. For example, if you’re like, okay, we need to clean the windows. You’re not going to clean… I’m saying this, and I’m like, should I be cleaning the windows every week? I don’t know. For all our listeners that are really into Go Clean Co or cleaning methodologies. I apologize in advance, but whatever those are, maybe grouping those together that it’s like, okay, on the first Saturday of the month, I’m going to knock out all these things, and having the confidence that you aren’t having to try to track all that, and remember all those things, like the worst feeling is you look up at your lighting fixture and there’s just an inch of-

Verbs Boyer:
It’s like a Halloween haunted house.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. It’s like, oh, we decorated for Halloween unintentionally. You’ve kind of got those things knocked out or like changing the filters. All of those things that I think are easy to just of forget, until it’s Halloween in your house.

Verbs Boyer:
Let’s talk about creative work. What’s an efficient way to batch creative work so that we can really harness that creative energy for those specific moments that need to happen?

Courtney Baker:
I want to say a disclaimer at the beginning of this section, because I think so many times when we talk about creative work, I think we think about people that work in the arts, it might be writing, it might be design, it might be those jobs that are very easy to connect the word creative to. And I think we all have creative work, even if you’re an accountant, and you’re working with numbers and spreadsheets, you have creative work of some sort. I always say in my role, I’ve written lots and lots of strategy documents in my life. And it’s the most creative work that I do. Dreaming up new things, that’s a creative process. So before you check out and think I don’t do any creative work, I beg to argue that you do, that we all do. So when you start to pursue whatever that creative work is that you do in your life, in your work, that usually takes some time.
And so figuring out how to group that together, and it may actually be easier for folks that work in a tradi… Like what we would say as a creative role to identify those things. You may have to be more mindful of it when it’s not so easy, but figuring out the creative work that you need to do in your role and grouping it together, I think is really effective. For me writing a bunch of strategy documents at one time, much easier, once I get in that frame of mind to just keep going and do it all at one time. Now, Verbs, you are in more of a traditional creative role. I would really say both you and Nick probably fall into that traditional description. What advice do you have for those of us that maybe aren’t, how could we apply this for our work too?

Verbs Boyer:
I’ll just say this briefly and then I’ll let Nick chime in here, I think, or at least what I’ve found really, probably more so over the recent years as really harnessing your most, and the time where you’re feeling the most energy, whether you are a morning person, some people get a burst of energy in the afternoon. Some people work better in the evening as far as their creative flow, but really harnessing those times, first recognizing when those times are, and really harnessing those times to get the most creative work done during those moments in those batched times, because you’re in a zone and it’s easier to create out of that flow and you feel it really start to dissipate if you’re outside of that moment where you would normally have your most energy. And so for me capturing those moments is the best way, and the best flow that I can establish to make sure I’m getting at least the prime time creative process in during those moments.

Nick Jaworski:
When is that for you?

Verbs Boyer:
It’s in the morning actually for me. So especially if I’m doing any kind of design work, I’m normally waking up with thoughts and ideas anyway. So getting to be able to actually start to produce those things or make those things happen in the morning time is my best flow. Once I get after into that later afternoon, not so much.

Courtney Baker:
I would just like to say note for the audio here, that if you’re watching us on YouTube, you can look at both Nick and Verbs background and know for sure that they are in a… We’re like Verbs background today, we’re like, you’re like a music executive over here. And Nick, he has a cat walking around in a outfit, I’m not even sure but just know that you’re a creative.

Nick Jaworski:
Got to go to YouTube to see sweater cat. I will say it’s funny because my time is later in the day where I feel most productive. And if I’m being honest, my real productivity is 2:30 to 7:00, which is the worst time if you have a family. So I struggle with that a lot, where I’m like, oh, I just want to keep going. But I will say that the pandemic made it hard. But I do think that removing yourself from whatever office you’re in, for me, it’s a coffee shop, to sit there and be away. It’s like a trigger for me also, I’m here I just have this little space on this table that I’m going to write in and I’ll bring a notebook with me and whatever I got to do.
So physically moving also forces you to batch stuff because travel time costs you. So if I’m going to go to the coffee shop, I’ve spent 10 minutes or whatever, maybe I walked there and now I can’t just go back and forth. So I’m here, I got to get all my stuff done is also really helpful for me. And again, pandemic made it harder, but just be careful.

Verbs Boyer:
And I’ll add this to real quick, because I remember I read this in the book, Courtney, you may remember this. This was a leader books selection a few years back. I believe it’s called Sleep. It talked about how important it is for creative, any kind of creative work. Again, whether you’re artists, whether you’re in education, things to where you’re producing things that bring order, or bring something into the world that people can utilize and appreciate, all that good stuff. But normally creatives like artistic creatives think, hey, I got to catch this moment of inspiration and I’ll just stay in that until I’m done. What he was saying really, you shouldn’t really go beyond four or five hours of creative work. And then even if you start something and you know you’re getting into that fifth hour, it’s better to just end it and leave yourself with something to do to pick up again tomorrow.
So you’re not breaking your creative flow. You’re just putting a pause in between that creative flow and picking up again. Because normally what’ll happened is once you’re done, you’re done and you feel exhausted. But if you get into that next day, and you’re already picking up where you left off, because you started something that makes that basically sets you up, it’s easier to get into that flow again. So to Nick’s point 2:30 to seven and then there’s family time, but how can we set ourselves up in a way to we’re confident that whatever I was doing, it’s possible I can pick back up on that and keep on going and find my creative flow again. So that was an interesting concept.

Courtney Baker:
Is the book Sleep:Redefine Your Rest, for Success in Work, Sport and Life by Nick Littlehales?

Verbs Boyer:
No.

Courtney Baker:
No?

Verbs Boyer:
Alex, his name is-

Nick Jaworski:
Called Rest.

Verbs Boyer:
Rest. That’s it. Sorry, Rest.

Courtney Baker:
Rest.

Nick Jaworski:
I love Googling. It’s my super power. Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

Courtney Baker:
Soojung-Kim Pang.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s it.

Courtney Baker:
He also wrote Shorter, which I read, which is about, shorter work days. I read that when we moved to a six hour work day. So yeah, fantastic books.

Verbs Boyer:
So we’ve been doing this every once in a while. We’ll take a question from the community in which our producer, Nick sets us up, neither Courtney or I know what this question is, but Nick will allow you to take it away, sir.

Nick Jaworski:
All this is question from Tom. And I want to say that Tom’s gotten a lot of helpful comments in the community already. So definitely want to go check out if this relates to you, or if you just want proof that people are helpful in the Full Focus Planner Community, Tom’s got 23 comments already from a day ago. People are engaged. Tom writes, okay, “Need some experience here. I want to use the planner so bad. I start and stop all the time and never say consistent. I make the excuse, I hate writing and my penmanship sucks, so does spelling. This is the method I want for my life, but I never fully burn your boats, commit to it. Any advice is welcome.”

Verbs Boyer:
So his main challenge is he doesn’t like to write and he’s not too confident on his spelling capabilities is what it sounds like.

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah. I make the excuse. I hate writing and my penmanship sucks, so does spell.

Verbs Boyer:
Okay. So that’s the-

Nick Jaworski:
Definitely wants to use it, but can’t pick it up and then has these reasons why.

Verbs Boyer:
My initial thought is, you’re pretty much the only person that sees your planner. So the spelling and the writing thing, you’re the only one that sees it. So I wouldn’t be too self-conscious about that part of it. And maybe it’s just figuring out what is the best half step that you can take into using the planner consistently? Which we always suggest is always the daily pages, identifying what those three big, high leverage things are that you need to get done. And just start there, try that, call it as we like to call it here and experiment, try that for a week or two and build up some consistency, doing that, and then you can add in the other applications and segments of the planner on top of that. That’s my initial thought. Courtney, I know you have something to say as well.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I mean, I think this is one that not to be the scuba diver here since Blake’s not here today, but I feel like sometimes we’ve got to kind of get back to our thinking. It seems like you have the desire that you want to use the planner, but I would probably my first question is why, why are you wanting to use the planner? What is the problem or the pain point? Why do you want to use the planner? I think that would be my first question back to you. And then as those excuses bubble up, I would say rather than allowing them just to be excuses, to actually use our exercise of turning a limiting belief into a liberating truth, which is basically to say, instead of saying, I hate writing or my writing’s terrible. I’m a terrible speller, but to figure out what could you win those come up, because they’re going to come up.
What you could tell yourself instead. I would say ultimately I think there needs to be a little shift in your thinking to think of yourself as someone that, this is kind of hard to do without having you here. But again, whatever that why for you’re wanting to use the planner, let’s say it’s like, I really do want to achieve some big goals. Let’s say that’s your why. Then it’s like actually start seeing yourself, your identity as somebody that achieves goals. Even if that’s a little bit of that, you’ve got to fake in your thinking, but it’s telling yourself over and over again. I am somebody that achieves goals.
I am someone that plans, that is able to get the most important things done. Keep speaking that into your identity. And then I think over time, you’ll start to see that that really takes hold. And it’s easier to get traction with these things over time. Even if it’s a small step, like Verbs said of just doing your daily pages. Lastly, last thing, I will say, accountability does help, sharing some of this with another person and asking for help. Staying on track with this can also help as well.

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, your answer was so much better than mine. Nick, can we just edit my-

Nick Jaworski:
It’s not out of context Verbs. No.

Verbs Boyer:
I feel like this would be way more-

Nick Jaworski:
Self-affirming language here.

Courtney Baker:
We need to switch that from a limiting belief. No, I’m just kidding. You gave me time to think about it. It’s a really good question.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:28:06]. That’s what we call it. We’re on the same team.

Courtney Baker:
That’s right. We definitely are.

Verbs Boyer:
So today’s tip to level up your focus. On your daily page, write down one activity that you think you should try to start batching. Then answer the question, what would I need to do to begin batching this activity? Thanks for joining us on Focus on This.

Courtney Baker:
This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends and don’t forget to join us on our Full Focus Planner Community on Facebook. And remember we have that free session on mega batching with Amy Porterfield that is normally $49, but you’re going to get it for free today just to help you maybe improve even further on batching, and you can get it at focusonthispodcast.com/megabatching. We’ll be back next week with another great episode, until then, stay focused,

Verbs Boyer:
Stay focused.

Courtney Baker:
I did want to give you a little update on my dishwasher situation.

Verbs Boyer:
Yes, please.

Courtney Baker:
I wanted to let you know, I have been effectively using your solutions and watched the entire video, and it is working. So I want to report back if you all missed the episode that will forever be referred to as The Dishwasher episode, you may want to go check that one out because it’s definitely working, Nick. So I wanted to give you props on that.

Nick Jaworski:
Thanks. It was life altering for us. So I’m so glad to hear that it’s worked out.

Courtney Baker:
Yes.

Nick Jaworski:
We don’t have to labor that Verbs has to do the dishes.

Courtney Baker:
Right. Do we know what-

Verbs Boyer:
You see I don’t have an update.

Nick Jaworski:
I’ll put the link in the show notes.

Courtney Baker:
Okay, great.