Today we are going to talk about task batching & block scheduling, and how they can save you time and energy when it comes to your biz–especially when used in conjunction with my weekly planning template. (If you haven’t downloaded my weekly planning template, click to download!) In order to really get the most of out of using this tool and editing it in a way that fits your needs there are two really important concepts you need to understand: task batching and block scheduling. I recently touched on both in my post about my blogging workflow, but if you are unfamiliar with the concepts I wanted to go into a little more detail.
What is block scheduling?
Block scheduling is pretty self explanatory. It’s exactly like it sounds. It’s cutting your weekly schedule up into blocks where you do specific things every week. You do these typically usually on the same day of the week, at the same time. For example, every Monday morning you schedule your social media posts for the week. Or every Friday afternoon you fill out your weekly planning template for the next week.
If you’re a routine-lover like me it’s a great way to take the decision fatigue out of your days. Decision fatigue is real ya’ll! We make something like 35,000 decisions every day so if you can plan ahead and prepare yourself for what’s to come, you can leverage the time and energy you save from waffling over what to do next to get more done or just to have more time for yourself!
My weekly planning template allows you to edit and adjust the blocks according to the different areas of your business you need to tackle. Let me just throw a little wrench into the mix. I’m gonna give you an idea in case you’re feeling like you’re trying to shove 10lbs of to-do’s into a 5lb bag! A.K.A I have a lot more to do than can fit into a week, and some tasks I only need to do occasionally. In order to solve this problem I’ve actually been doing a “3 week/1 week” cycle each month. Three weeks of the month are focused on business tasks, and one is focused on content creation.
When I’m working on business tasks, I use the weekly planning template I shared with you. I focus on client work, creating relationships, and scheduling intensives. The last week of the month, I follow a different weekly schedule and rearrange the blocks to give me space to create all of the content I need for that month. This allows me to be present for my clients when I’m in weeks 1-3. I can do this because, I use week 4 to “set it and forget it” with my content for the month. It’s during that content creation week where you can see my task batching in action.
What is task batching?
Task batching is the art of “batching” similar tasks together. This way, when you are in a specific mode, you’re focused on that one task. It helps you save time that you would otherwise waste transitioning (you and your brain) between tasks. For me you can really see this during content creation when it comes to writing blogs. (I go into more detail about this in my blogging workflow post here.) That week I sit down and write all of my posts at once. When I’m in writing mode and those creative juices are flowing and I don’t want to stop the flow. Instead I want to ride that wave and soak up every last drop to get those posts created.
I also love batching when it comes to planning my social media for the month. Specifically my Instagram. I have a 5-day cycle I follow when it comes to what I post on Insta. I tend to batch the caption writing process for specific days together. For example, I start by doing all of my Thursday blog day posts. Then my Friday Introduction posts, and so on. I found that it went SO much quicker for me to do it that way; when I went week by week, and transitioned between the different types of posts repeatedly as I finished each week.
So where do you start?
I would start by scheduling out your month and decide if you want to have weeks devoted to specific things like I do. For example, the 3 weeks on/1 week off method I mentioned above. Once you do that, you can decide on a weekly schedule. Block out specific days and times for each area of your business. Then in each block you can break it up further by batching the similar tasks together to improve your productivity. Before you know it, you’ll be a productivity genius!
If you have any questions or need any help with this stuff, reach out! I love helping entrepreneurs create systems and processes for their business that help them find more ease, flow, and TIME in their lives! Contact me today to set up your free strategy session so we can get you organized and back to what you do best, serving your clients!
Thanks for reading,
