Batching Tasks

Creatives are notorious for multitasking. Well, let me say, notorious for ATTEMPTING to multitask. But before we get into that, let’s first debunk that multitasking is a con artist. It makes you believe you can give 100% or at least “enough” attention to a few things at the same time and expect grand results as if you are some genius octopus at an old-timey switchboard. The truth is that with each layer you try to add to that multi-tasking cake, the result is bitter, not as sweet as it’s made out to be.

But we need to take it one step further, not just eliminate multitasking, but eliminate the grinding of the gears in our mind when we shift from one type of task to the next. Scientists show that it takes our brains a while to readjust to a new type or category of task than

Task batching is a productivity strategy where you group similar tasks. This technique can decrease multitasking and increase focus time.

Even as I type this, I am batching the tasks of writing. Writing blog posts, show notes for upcoming episodes of podcasts, and text messages to check in on some close friends who are having a hard week. I’m in the writing zone, and to think I would be better off by switching this part of my brain off and moving on to some other task type like editing, planning, meetings, or business development and expecting grand results is a farce.

This is why I’m against project management software like Trello. Sure it’s visual and sexy, but it organizes your tasks by status, not by type of task. so you could be editing for one client then switch to writing a proposal for another, then on to sending an invoice to another, while writing scripts for a different upcoming project. Your brain is not built for this and you will short-circuit yourself and your clients if you continue to operate this way.

Instead, grab a tool like Asana and tag each of your tasks with the type of task it is. Combine that with your ideal week calendar and when your calendar says its time for editing, you can click your editing tag and see all of the editing tasks that you can knock out. This puts you into the proverbial “zone”. When a basketball player gets “on fire, baby” it’s because they are hitting the same shot or types of shots over and over again. They’re in a rhythm.

So batch your tasks, get rhythm, get in the zone, autoz…. never mind. You get it.