Sunday, 17 June 2012

TIME MANAGEMENT 101 - Batching

Batching is a fundamental concept in time management. We are all aware of it and are most probably using it in various activities in our everyday life without even realizing it. So what is it?

Batching simply means to group similar activities together and complete them all in one go or “batch”. Any activity that we start requires a warm-up period similar to a fitness workout where in order to avoid injuries and perform at our best we need to warm-up our muscles. Our mental habits function the same way. We require a period of adjustment when we switch between different activities. Once we learn to minimize this context switching we will notice an increase in our efficiency in getting things done.

If we take email for example, most people tend to keep their email applications open all the time. Then any time a new email arrives they immediately jump and try to respond to it. The current task is dropped and then picked up again in 5-10 minutes to discover that we need at least a minute or two of “warm-up” in order to remember where we left. As far as email is concerned try to allocate 30 minute slots dedicated to processing emails. Once you start doing this, you will notice that you will be able to get more things done and catch up on your email faster.

In addition, try to measure how much time you are spending on managing email folder hierarchies. Some people take pride in how organized their email is and being organized is great as long as you are aware of the hidden cost of your time that is built into managing this level organization.

I myself used to maintain such detailed email folder structures that people will see my inbox and start asking me to teach them how I do it. Then one day I spoke to a friend of mine who had 3,000 emails in his inbox and most of them were unread. My world collapsed. My friend was so busy with his day job that simply didn’t have time to even open the emails, let alone organize them in folders. Yet, he was able to easily locate all important emails he has received.

The search available on the desktop has become so powerful that you find the email you need almost immediately regardless of the location where you store it. Try to keep everything in your inbox and simply search for the information you need. I am not saying this will work for everyone but once you test this strategy measure if it improves your efficiency and saves you time, which is the ultimate goal of the exercise anyway.

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