Batch the small things.
I had written previously on my blog around prioritisation (you'll find the post here).
However, I've changed my tune on one of the points… and wanted to share it with you.
In the previous post I shared that if you've a task that would take 1-2 minutes to complete, to just go ahead and do it… and that getting something scored off your to-do-list will feel good and give you momentum to keep going. (This is a common productivity tool, the 2 minute rule).
However…
Stopping what you're doing, e.g. if you're in a block of focussed work for instance, to attend to an email that's popped up that will take a minute to respond or whatever it might be, I've now decided isn't a great strategy.
(Also, if you're doing focussed work… go ahead and stick your phone into aeroplane mode to avoid the distractions! I've actually got the majority of my notifications switched off on my phone, and I love it!).
Batch the small things
Instead, block out some time to batch the small things.
This is a strategy from Laura Vanderkam, American author and speaker in the time management space. In her latest book, Tranquility by Tuesday, she shares 9 ‘rules’ that she tested with a group of 150 people. Batch the little things is one of her rules.
“Much of the stuff we busy ourselves with does not actually take much time. A few calls, a few forms, a few responses. We often spend more time going over these tasks in our minds - agonizing over their existence and expanding their mental real estate - than actually doing them.”
Know that the list of small (non-urgent) tasks can be attended to at your designated time, and it's ok to leave them until then… e.g. paying an online bill, replying to non-urgent emails etc. (When the small tasks come in, write them on your to-do-list so you don't forget them; as Laura rightly points out “the human brain is a terrible place to keep lists”).
Why is this approach, of batching the small things, helpful?
What tends to happen is that we underestimate how long things take… so what you might think is a 2 minute email reply, may actually wind up being 15 minutes to consider what you're writing. Or if you jump into Instagram to reply to a notification, you might end up in a scroll hole and lose even more time.
If you're in the middle of a task, and then jump into something else (even if it really is just a minute), it can take 23 minutes to get back into the original task in hand. An unproductive day of continual task switching and interruptions can make us feel more exhausted and stressed compared to a focussed day of quality work.
