Do Batching of Tasks

08.01.2018 |

Episode #6 of the course The fundamentals of mastering your focus by Som Bathla

 

Welcome to Day 6 of your course. Today, you will learn about the significance of batching of tasks in your journey toward building focus.

 

Use Your Willpower with Caution

I can’t stop emphasizing that brains have limited willpower and attention. Your objective should be to take advantage of that fact to maximize your most important activities. This limited amount of willpower should also be used systematically, so the mind doesn’t keep switching between activities of different natures. This drains mental energy to a great extent.

Here comes the importance of batching of tasks, i.e. the grouping of similar tasks that require similar resources to streamline their completion. For example:

• You could put your high-importance activities, i.e. making a report or presentation, attending to a call on important projects, etc., in one batch of time. Generally, the morning times are better.

• Similarly, you could put your email review and general professional update stuff in one batch. In another, you can put your social media feeds, news updates, blog reviews, etc.

• Your online bill payments of utilities, any personal communications, etc. could be put in a separate batch.

You may also consider batching any other parameters, like all the activities for which you are directly accountable to your reporting manager. Similarly, if you have people reporting to you, you can put their work-related matters in a separate batch. You can make different batching categories, like general knowledge updates, professional updates, general social media connection updates, etc.

 

But What Is the Benefit of Batching Tasks?

Batching promotes your focus and concentration. There are a few reasons for that:

• Batching helps your mind come into a state of flow, since you do work of a similar nature for a certain stretch of time.This increases the pace of your delivery.

• Batching helps your mind become clearer. You don’t have any distracting thoughts about every other mundane job because all tasks are categorized and you committed yourself to completing the relevant batching category at a scheduled time.

• With batching, you can avoid the drainage of a finite amount of your mind’s energy and willpower, since you don’t have to constantly switch between different kinds of tasks.

In the next lesson tomorrow, you will learn how to reset the people around you to keep distractions at bay.

See you tomorrow.

Som

 

Recommended book

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

 

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