keys to figuring out how to produce at a very high level how to get a whole lot

of stuff done in a short period of time and if there's one change that I've made

in my life it's incorporating something called

batching when it comes to some things in life batching tasks comes naturally we

run the dishwasher after it fills up we water our plants at the same time each

week we do our laundry once the hampers full could you imagine how unproductive

our lives would become if we decided to break these tasks up into 100 different

parts how insane would it be to wash each shirt right after you wore it and

yet that's exactly what we're doing when it comes to many other areas of our

lives and when you begin to think about how you might be able to incorporate

batching into other domains you'll start to find just how powerful it can be by

planning ahead and consolidating tasks we can save time prevent constant task

switching and focus on the things that really need to get done so this approach

did not by any means come naturally to me it was definitely a process of trial

and error as well as pulling inspiration from a lot of books that have written on

this topic before but I do find that when I'm really intentional with how I

schedule my days when I wait until these tasks accumulate and build it up to the

point where I can just knock them all out at the same time I find that I build

a lot of momentum and I'm able to actually get ahead with my work and

clear some space to actually enjoy the work that I'm doing so I want to provide

a couple examples that have helped me out the most from email to meetings

phone calls and my own creativity so let's hop right into it I want to start

with an area that you might least expect to see batching in creativity

so I am a filmmaker by trade as you might have seen from the videos that I

make on this channel but I don't imagine that a majority of people that watch

this really understand what goes into making these videos how long it takes as

well as how much stuff I make across all platforms from social content to my

newsletter to patreon exclusive content the YouTube videos of course there's

just so much stuff that I make in a given week now I've hired a couple

people to help me out to bring into that process but for the longest time I just

did it by myself and I continue to do a lot of this work on my own and I find

that I would never be able to produce this volume of content this amount of

stuff if I didn't incorporate some kind of batching I have a newsletter that I

send out every week whenever I come up with an idea for my newsletter I'll jot

it down on my phone I'm not gonna drop everything and write the whole thing

right there then when I have a collection of ideas I set aside some

time to write I'll work my way through writing for newsletters in a row each of

them typically taking about one hour to write so in just a half day I'll be able

to write one month worth of newsletters now all I need to do is schedule to send

them out over the next four weeks and I'm done that's one less thing I have to

think about similarly once a main video for the channel is completed my editor

or I can go about putting together all the social content creating all the

captions and scheduling them all out at the same time these tasks are similar

they require you to be in the same editing application in the same

headspace to become familiar with the same style of creating now this is

really important I'm not talking about turning our creative work and our

passion into an assembly line that is the last thing that I want you guys to

do what I'm talking about is using that creative momentum that energy that

you've built to continue to make the same thing using that same mindset that

you're already in if you guys remember back to a few weeks ago I did an

interview with Steven Kotler about flow once we enter this heightened

state of consciousness known as flow our creativity goes through the roof

Mackenzie did a 10-year study found that motivation productivity can

go up 500% and flow 500% we see creativity spike four hundred seven

hundred percent learning Japan whose numbers you're going by the partner

defense did some work they found the learning spiked to two hundred thirty

percent in flow and here's the funny thing about the human brain we actually

are horrible by you for peak performance we the body will move in the direction

of peak performance on its own so another way that I've brought batching

into my life is through phone calls meetings and interviews so back when I

was doing the podcast regularly I found that the only way that I could stay

consistent with it was to schedule two to four interviews over the course of

one to two days I found that the kind of energy that I needed for interviews was

totally different from what I was doing with my video editing and by

consolidating them by scheduling with all these people over a short period of

time it just made that whole process so much easier and again now that I have

four interview shot in two days that those are all of the podcast episodes

that I would do for an entire month I do the same thing for phone calls meetings

and social activities and for a very important reason these activities

require a completely different type of energy and focus compared to my solo

creative work if I had to constantly bounce between social meetings and

creative work it would absolutely drain me and I wouldn't be able to bring the

best of myself to either of these areas so I'll often batch meetings and phone

calls on the same day each week I sometimes find myself in a zone of

connecting and meeting with other creatives around Los Angeles instead of

breaking up multiple days of my week driving around LA to meet with people

for coffee or lunch i schedule everything into the same day this way

I'm still able to make those connections but I also don't let it interfere with

my other work now this might be weird this might I might be alone here this

might just be a me thing but I also find that I need to warm my brain up so if

I'm talking to somebody in the in the morning and I'm like getting coffee my

brain is just not working I am not clicking yet it's not the coffee it's

just that I am an idiot and like when I talk to people especially when it's the

first person I've talked to in the day I just don't know how to say sentences but

then as my brain starts to warm up in my brains like oh that's what we're

doing today we're talking to people I feel a lot better about those

interactions and I feel like I can get much more out of them and I can enjoy

them much more I just you know I just start to talk better unlike this video

I've set it before and I'll say it again your inbox is a trap it's one of the

most distracting places on your computer and constantly pulls you back again and

again throughout the day and each time it does it will typically absorb large

chunks of your time but if we decide to instead treat email like laundry the

entire flow of our days would change by scheduling an email once a day we're

accomplishing two things we're preventing the constant distractions

throughout the day of always checking back at our inbox and letting other

people's priorities become our own and to once we actually do go through our

inbox we can just fly through it it's instead of just like the constant check

check check check check check all day it's just check let's just check it

might actually be check cuz it's a little bit longer but it's not gonna be

checked check you get it you get the point

by doing this you prevent task switching and stay focused on checking writing

replying and archiving you can do one quick pass through your inbox

it might take 30 minutes to an hour but then you're done and you can get back to

your work in my experience most people understand that emails often take up to

24 hours even 48 hours to respond to you can even allow up to a week to respond

if you have an automatic email responder that lets people know that you only

check email once a week now I will say that when it comes to your closest

collaborators maybe it's a client should probably have a conversation with them

and let them know hey I'm only gonna be checking email once a day or hey once a

week this way if something urgent does come on the table you can offer up hey

give me a phone call shoot me a text if you really need me but for the time

being I'm gonna really experiment with trying to just focus on my work and this

is something that most people should be happy about especially if their

collaborator you're being more effective more productive during the day and

you're not being as distract by all these requests in your inbox I

understand that not everyone's work allows this if you're a personal

assistant then living inside your inbox is kind of a part of the job but I'm

guessing a huge portion of people watching this video don't realize this

is even an option.

Before I wrap this video up a quick word about our sponsor

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So batching has become a really

effective tool that I've used on a weekly basis to just prioritize my work

and like I said get a whole lot of stuff done in a really short period of time

that said batching is not gonna work for everything I do realize at least for

myself that there are definitely tax tasks that either take too long there's

simply just one offs that I do once and then I'm done or it might be something

where it just drains my energy completely and I'm just unable to do it

back to back to back so when it comes to your own work your own productivity

you're gonna have to experiment with these things and see what feels right

for you above all I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments if you already

do something like this maybe you didn't even think about it you didn't even call

it batching or maybe it's something that you're inspired to do now I would love

to hear about it so let's start a discussion down below in the comments

and that's it for this week's video thank you guys so much for watching and

I'll see you next time Banna I gotta stop doing that it's so

weird