Start UnBatching Your Tasks

Every three months I do an accountability call with the students  from my Listful Thinking Masterclass. We discuss the ways they’ve implemented the course into their day to day lives, and we also talk about their latest ventures in productivity.

Recently, one of my students explained how, after being inspired by a LinkedIn article, he has started avoiding social media on Tuesday. Why Tuesdays? He just picked it and now Tuesdays  are his most productive day.

I really like this idea. I often promote the idea of batching tasks together. So the same way you wouldn’t do laundry one sock at a time you shouldn’t pay bills for instance one by one. Instead batching them together weekly is a much more effective use of your time! But I think the same principle can be applied to ‘unbatching’. Putting together tasks that you’re not going to do!

If you’d like to start to unbatching imagine your perfectly productive day.  What kind of things are you not doing on this day? Move these tasks to another time (like Friday!) and avoid feeling cluttered with unimportant tasks on your more productive days.

Here are some examples of tasks you can unbatch:

Social Media – In an ideal world we would cut out social media from our working day. But it still creeps into our lives whether we like it or not. I hate having notifications on my phone so I will end up checking Facebook or Twitter just to rid myself of a notification. So if I need a productive day I will turn off the social media notifications on my phone. What I don’t know about can’t hurt me!

Meetings – I written a few posts about how meetings are a productivity zap. Try to  make at least one day a week where you have no meetings. Then you can use that time  to get your head down and focus. If you can’t do this at least try to reduce the time you spend in meetings. I wrote a post before about how to have a 7 minute meeting!

Saying yes – In a day we don’t think about how many times we say the word yes. We may only be agreeing to small tasks here and there, but all these tasks can add up. You don’t want to come across as a negative person, or someone who says no to everything. But it’s okay to give yourself permission to have a day off from saying yes.

Are there any tasks that you like to unbatch?