10 October 2007 5 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

I always feel that I’m in a rush and theres not enough time in a day. If you’re like me, you’ll know how it feels to be constantly running around. Multi-task is the word of the day, every day. I read, or watched a great post on one of my favorite sites, Life Hacker, which featured a video of Timothy Ferriss speaking in front of a crowd. Tim is the author of The 4 Hour Workweek. He spoke about freeing up your time by batching things and doing related tasks together. The example that he used is email, because he gets about 1500 or so emails a week. Instead of checking email a hundred times a day, which I am guilty of doing myself, he checks it once in the morning and once in the evening. In the mean time he uses auto-responders explaining the fact that he checks email at certain times. By doing this, he drastically cuts down wasted time since he gets in the email mode and hits reply until his mouse breaks.

How I started batching

I applied this technique today, and while I’m rusty, I got a lot of work done. For instance I’ve been meaning to help my parents change phone plans and internet services so they can get a better deal. I’ve attempted to help in the past but I didn’t get anything done because I was constantly distracted. I would look on Comcast’s website for good deals, and after 30 minutes of reading all the fine print I would somehow get distracted and do something else online. To make sure I had a good deal I had to compare it with DSL and other services offered by different companies. I never got around to getting anything done because the work was scattered and I never focused on that specific task.

Today, I decided to give batching a shot so I decided to get the best deal on every single service that my parent’s and I are using. I took out every single bill and for two hours straight just surfed the net and wrote down numbers. At the end of the day we’re moving to DSL by ATT and dropping our Comcast cable internet service. We’re downgrading our phone and cable TV service and taking advantage of bundles. By doing this, they will save about $90 every month.

I also write a lot. I write for articles for this site, a new site I am launching, my retail e-commerce site blingbot.com, and two others where I write freelance articles. All of this work puts a huge demand on my time. The toughest part was when I would write then stopping and doing something else. I would miss deadlines at times and find myself in huge time constraints because of this. Today however, I started batching. I put on my writers hat and my fingers have yet to stop typing. This is my third article of the day. I feel as though I am much more productive when I batch my writing all together.

I’m also going to apply batching when it comes to shipping out orders for my eBay business, ordering inventory, answering emails, marketing my businesses and processing orders.

Batching Ideas

Here are some ideas that you and I can both try in our every day lives to increase productivity.

E-Bills: The first step is to go online or call all of your service providers and switch to paperless billing. Batch this task and just call all of them. Paperless billing is good for you, your service provider and the environment. You’ll have less paperwork for potential identity thieves to steal and you’ll have less clutter in your life.

Paying Bills: If you’re not using billpay services, I suggest you go to your bank and ask for it. Schedule all your monthly ebills to be delivered within a three day period every month and at the end of that third day, batch your bill paying tasks. Sit there for an hour and pay or schedule payment for each and every bill. This makes sure there are no late fees or service interruptions, and you can forget about it for another month.

Groceries: People who go grocery shopping three times a week are not being frugal! They are wasting time and money. Buy all your stuff together, go to a warehouse store and shop once a month. You’ll get better deals that way and you won’t have to worry about it until next month.