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15: Batching And Scheduling Will Change Your Life
Season 1, Ep. 15
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In episode 15 on #MerryBiz we share exactly what we do to get MORE shit done in less time. Cheers to productivity! Take a listen... and for preparation for next episode... be sure to download your goal setting guide HERE!
This time last year we would've said that we were the busiest we've ever been.
Yep, 12 hour days filled with multi-tasking and running around like headless merrymakers. We had little structure and we worked on a 'do what we feel like' basis. Sounds appealing but...
This kind of mindset and work ethic lead to lots of to-dos either forgotten or being done at the very last minute. Hello unnecessary stress! Errr yuck. And stress is not good for us. Running a business or blog or working a high paced job does NOT have to be this way. It doesn't need to be stressful and doesn't have to cause burnout. You do not need to be the busiest person on the planet.
Fast forward to now and we're ticking off a hell of a lot more goals MINUS the 12 hour days, minus the stress PLUS a whole bunch of fun. Say what? True story. Less working hours. MORE productivity. This year our key focus was focus. Ha! No, truly, we wanted to focus on focussing.
We used to work like this: Oh! Let's work on Project A for a day... but Project B sounds fun, let's do that for an hour... oh shiny, pretty things, look at Project C! You know what? We should REALLY work on Project Z, that's the most important.
Can you see how our multi-tasking 'skills' actually stopped our progress? 4 weeks would pass and we hadn't accomplished anything.
We just had all of these quarter finished projects. According to WPCurve "Multi-tasking damages your brain and makes you dumber." Ahh. Yep, no more of that.
Halfway through this year we turned our working style upside down on top of its head. NOW we get A LOT of shit done and we want you to get your shit done too. Ready?
How to get MORE Shit Done.
Shit = awesome stuff you do for your business or life that gets you closer to your goals.
BATCH YOUR SHIT.
Put similar tasks together and do them all at once, rather than jumping from one thing to the next. You'll get in a rhythm and save SO. MUCH. TIME. One example: we batch our blog posts. One day we'll write, another day we'll cook and photograph and another day we'll input everything and schedule it to go live! Boom. Another example is batch your errands. If you need to go to the post office, the bank, do the groceries... then batch your errands in one outing! Batching changed our lives and it can change yours too. The best thing is that you can batch EVERYTHING. We even batched Nashville once (but that wasn't very productive... or maybe it was).
SCHEDULE YOUR SHIT.
Batched, tick. Now you gotta schedule your batched tasks. Marie Forleo (one of our fave biz mentors) preaches "If it's not scheduled, it's not real." In other words it ain't gonna happen if it's not in your calendar! Every Sunday afternoon (in our calendar) we have the task 'ORGANISE WEEK'. Basically we both sit down, work out our tasks for the week, batch them together then add them to our calendar. Here's what our calendar looks like: Try and stick to your calendar BUT be open to change and flexibility. Don't beat yourself up if something takes you longer than first thought. We're also flexible in moving entire tasks around based on our inspiration that day.
GET RID OF YOUR SHIT.
Dan Norris told us that "Deciding to work on something new when your project isn't working is not the same as giving up. It's just common sense."
Get rid of the shit that isn't working so you can make room for the shit that will. Do a stocktake on all your tasks. Take note of the things you enjoy, the things you hate, the things that are necessary and unnecessary to run your business/blog. It's fun to do this with post it notes or a giant white board.
When we did this we realised that we were spending WAAAAAY too much time trawling through Instagram and Facebook (like 3 hours a day), and with what end goal in mind? Um... nothing.
Once you've got your post its/white board done it will be easy to delete the shit!...
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