Are you doing the batch?

A few months ago, I started listening to a podcast that I am really enjoying.  The host of the podcast is Kim Roach.  Her Podcast is called the “10 Minute Marketing Show“.  I really find her show to be entertaining and also very informative.  Some of the things that she has on her show confirm things I already know and am doing, some other things are new to me or different from what I am doing.  Those things give me the opportunity to weigh what I am doing and decide if I need to make a change.  Sometimes I go with what Kim recommends, other times I decide that what I am doing is working for me.  But, one thing is for sure, what Kim says is beneficial to me, even I don’t follow her advice every time, because she makes me think and consider what I am doing.

On Episode 13 of her Marketing Show, she talked about 3 habits of highly successful people.  I really enjoyed this podcast.  The three habits that she talked about were:

1. Batch Processing
2. Become an Early Riser
3. Become Prolific

Today, I am going to talk about #1

In the coming days, I will look at each of the other ideas that Kim featured in her podcast.

What is batch processing, or “batching?

Batching is something that I have been doing for many years, and it gives me a huge productivity boost over most people.  I often have people ask me how I get so much done.  We all have the same number of hours, same number of days in the week, etc.  The key to productivity gains is in how we use those hours.

It doesn’t mean that while most people work 8 hours per day, that we must work 14 or 18 hours per day.  No, if we do things in a very highly productive way, we can actually work fewer hours but get more work done!  I can honestly say that I can probably get more work done in 2 or 3 hours per day than most people complete in an 8 hour work day.  You can too if you just aim to do things more efficiently.

In Kim’s podcast, when she talked about batch processing, she had examples of people doing the same job over and over again.  For example, she mentioned John Lee Dumas, who is a pretty famous podcaster.  Kim said that John Lee records all of his weekly podcasts on Monday, then on Tuesday, he does editing of the podcasts.  I do things like this too.  For many years, I have done all of my writing on weekends.  If you see my articles on my various sites post on weekdays, it only means that I (usually) wrote the article on the weekend, then scheduled it to post during the week.  It’s that simple.  I find that when I get into a groove and am writing many articles basically at the same time, I do it much more efficiently.  I am more focused, and the ideas flow to me more easily.  I also get it done a lot faster.

Multiple Websites

Most of you who are reading this know that I have many websites.  Sometimes, I need to make a change to all of the sites that I own.  Maybe I have found a new plugin that I will incorporate into the sites or some other change to the blog.  I open up all of my sites at the same time and make the change on one site after another in rapid succession.  I can then get the job done on 20 or 30 sites in the time that it might take other people to do the same on only 2 or 3 sites.  It is a very powerful way to increase your productivity.

If you want to become more effective and more highly productive, I would strongly recommend that you try to start getting into batch processing.  It is one of the most powerful things that help me increase my productivity.

I also highly recommend that you give Kim’s 10 Minute Marketing Show a listen.  I think you’ll like it.