Are you a multitasker? Do you think you are being productive when you multitask? Like, man I’m doing so much at one time. Here’s the truth….multitaskers actually reduce productivity by 40%. And when you multitask it actually takes longer to complete a task.
So what’s the alternative? Let me tell you about BATCHWORKING. Batchworking is a highly-focused, topic-specific form of working. When batchworking, you divide your work into different hours/days and focus on only one thing at a time.
Let’s use social media as an example. Instead of scrambling each day for something to post, with batchworking you spend a chunk of time each week or even once a month to focus on the tasks surrounding your social media like planning your content, creating long-form content like blogs, filming videos, designing graphics, scheduling posts.
What it looks like for me when planning 2-4 weeks of social media content:
- I spend 30 minutes planning out the topics of my social media posts. Just writing down the topic on a calendar.
- 1-2 hours creating graphics for each post.
- 30-60 minutes researching hashtags and creating hashtag lists for each post
- 1 hour writing captions for each post
- 30 minutes adding graphics, captions and hashtags to Buffer to schedule posts
That’s 3-5 hours. To plan and schedule 2-4 weeks of content. If I did each post one at a time, it would take me at least twice as long. Instead, I get the zone (design, writing, etc.) and I am not only creating the content quicker, it is also better quality because I am focused on just one type of work at a time.
When you batchwork these types of tasks, you will get them done faster, with more accuracy, increase your creativity and free up so much time and energy for other tasks and for engaging with your community.
Do you utilize batchworking or something similar? How has it changed the way you work?