What are you batching?

[Vagabond]

I think this is a great concept. I tend to waste a lot of time doing tasks that I could easily batch... the weird thing is that even though I know i'm being more efficient its hard to break the cycle.

So, have any of you implemented this and if so, what?

[ardor]

Like most people I batch my Snail Mail
I get the mail from my box weekly to bi weekly
I sort and toss.

about once a month to once every 2 months.
I process the mail that is sorted.
I am often late paying my bills,
and often pay 2 months worth at the same time.

I paid my water company 140$ when i signed up, and have had a negative bill for over 6 mths.

I am still working on located more things to batch. So any ideas would be helpful.

As far as batching email goes, I have yet to really try, as noted above its hard to break the cycle.

[kindwomanxx]

For those of you into productivity p0rn, there is a methodology called
"getting things done" or gtd. One of the main ideas is batching things by
place, i.e., phone calls, shopping, computer work, reading.

Here's the website for the author. It's got quite a following on the net.
http://www.davidco.com/

Joann

[Webzu]

Like most people I batch my Snail Mail
I get the mail from my box weekly to bi weekly
I sort and toss.

about once a month to once every 2 months.
I process the mail that is sorted.
I am often late paying my bills,
and often pay 2 months worth at the same time.

I paid my water company 140$ when i signed up, and have had a negative bill for over 6 mths.

I am still working on located more things to batch. So any ideas would be helpful.

As far as batching email goes, I have yet to really try, as noted above its hard to break the cycle.

Paying bills late isn't a good side effect of batching. If you have a lot of 30-60-90 day late pays on your credit history it will affect your credit rating. I batch my bills together, I have them all due around the same time. You can call them to change your payment due date so you can have them all be due around the same week or so. As they come in, I batch them together then about a week before they're due I setup payment online. I only have to do these with a few since most of my bills that are recurring like mortgage, car payment, etc. I have set for automated payment.

[Marcie]

I thought he meant he prepaid his water bill???

[Webzu]

I thought he meant he prepaid his water bill???

He also said:

about once a month to once every 2 months.
I process the mail that is sorted.
I am often late paying my bills,
and often pay 2 months worth at the same time.

I'm not a fan of prepaying either, I like to hold on to my money, why pay them early!

[read]

Joann,
I never thought of GTD contexts as batching. I'm wondering how you end up using this? I tend to have many tasks under @office, and since I have a home office, when I'm @office, I'm not only @phone and @computer, but I'm also @home. Any ideas on using this to help batch more?

Batching is something I do need to work on - especially when it comes to email. I've had some luck with voicemail, though. I've used Tim's latest blog post to successfully batch phone calls -- without having to get into long conversations.

[kindwomanxx]

I don't do much in the way of batching myself, since I mostly program. I don't get many phone calls (or emails either, for that matter). I would guess
I would batch depending on what I HAVE to do next. I.e., if I have to make a phone call due to timing constraints, I'll try to make a bunch of them at the same time. Then I move back to programming.

The batching in programming is sort of built in in the design phase, so I don't have to think about it after that.

Joann

[MariaG]

@ Read - I've been using GTD for a while, and my understanding is that it is good to batch tasks by context. For example, if you have 4 phone calls to make, you could get them taken care of on the train.


I batch a lot of household tasks (if I had more money I'd outsource this!). Short list:
- Laundry - both washing and folding
- Vacuuming/Mopping
- Dishes
You have to have a certain tolerance for messiness, but it does save a lot of time.

[Paul Theodorescu]

Bitcomet Files
Email
Daily Learning & Blogs
Mail & Bills
Physical commissions
Cleaning, Laundry

[final_id]

My standard things are

Outsource:
laundry (all of it; dry-cleaning the suits; wash-dry-fold service for 100% of everything else)
cooking (nearly all of it; I "eat out" in the sense that I eat pre-prepared things, or fruits and nuts, or at a restaurant)
travel (I want someone else to do the driving)

Batch:
internet entertainment (including this website; if it doesn't have a "view all new posts since your last visit" then I don't use the forum)
emails (three times a week)
shopping (one full day about twice a month)

Done by me with neither outsourcing nor batching:
bathroom and kitchen cleaning (I just constantly wipe-down after use; thus no scunge ever appears and the cleaning is 10 seconds every day instead of twenty minutes once a week; use CLR brand scum remover in a spray bottle)
personal letters (by email or by written correspondence; this is my real self, the most important thing to me; I take all the time in the world)

Interesting concept:
on a dating site (or in a book on dating) I once read that a partner will appreciate five minutes of dedicated high-quality time more than two hours of distracted low-quality time. In other words, you should "batch" your attention to your loved ones, too. Either be IN their face, or OUT of it, and you'll both be happier for it.

[MyOwnSuperhero]

I batch plenty, it's the only way to go!

I batch:
e-mail
voicemail (actually, my business phone goes straight to voicemail, also allowing me to batch my calls when responding)
client meetings (Mondays and Tuesdays only)
laundry (once a week, I also "outsource" it to my wife)
grocery shopping (once every two weeks)
cooking (it's not too difficult to make more of stuff to eat later)
bill paying (once per week)
errands (and the driving that accompanies them)

[inntee]

I work from home so, among other things, I'm able to batch shaving. I shave about 3 times a week; compared to shaving every day, that saves 15-20 minutes over the course of a week.

[final_id]

I used to want to batch shaving. But now I love it, thanks to the "traditional wet shave" resources on the internet. And having to haggle for a mere 15 minutes of savings in time, is too stressed an existence for me. I guess it adds up, especially on a hectic morning when many are hustling to get to work, but I am trying to choose a less time-obsessed lifestyle in all things. Sure, you got a little bit of time by knowing the smallest of details about your minutes expended. But I'd rather NOT know about my minutes expended ... at all. :)

[MJ1225]

I batch everything!

As for my business. I am making my own fabric covered boxes for the packaging of the chocolate. (The chocolate I buy wholesale.)

I have a pattern for the fabric boxes and cut all of the fabric pieces at one time (usually for 20 boxes at a time). I then use spray mount and cover all of my box pieces and poster board pieces for all of the boxes and glue those pieces together. Last, I glue two pieces of pre-measured and cut trim to each box. (Eventually, I want to out source the boxes.)

I am still in the process of building this muse. But, I hope to average 10 minutes per box, once I get going.

I also batch most everything in my personal life. I make out an extensive shopping list for each store I need to go to and run whatever errands I need to run at that time. Saves time and money.

I clean the house and do laundary one day a week and pay bills on the 1st and 15th.

[Huey]

I batch the following:

-laundry (once a week) (Tim said he does this every other sunday. Wouldnt that require quite a large wardrobe? Doesn't that contradict his Walden/minimalist philosophies?)
-filling the car up with gas (once a week)
-keeping in touch with friends. I have friends from all over the world so every 7 days I pick 10 at random and spend an hour or so emailing or phoning them, keeps you involved in everybodys life and maintains your social circles
-withdrawing money from the atm (once a week, would like to batch further)
-washing my hair. Some people may think "eww gross" but I've read that shampooing every day can be hazardous so I wash mine every 5-6 days (I'm male with med length hair btw)
-cooking. I prepare most of my food the night before (chopping ect.) so its all ready to take with me in tupperware boxes. This also forces me to stick to my diet as well.
-reading my favourite blogs instead of checking everyday for new posts (once every 10 days or so)
-lesson planning. I'm a teacher so I plan all my lessons for the week every monday.

I'm always looking for new things to batch as this has saved me a HUGE ammount of time. Thanks Tim!

[cleverusername]

-I batch cooking, making big pots of soups, sauces, veggies, etc., and then breaking it up into smaller containers
-Errands and car stuff. I've got a list on my fridge I add to throughout the week, usually whenever I think of something I'll write it down. Do my errands, fill up the car, add oil (bad rings-burns oil), maybe run it through the car wash.
-I've only got enough laundry to fill up one load, so I tend to do then when I'm doing the weekly cooking.
-Personal phone calls get down in an afternoon, usually once a week.

Room for improvement, but all this saves me some time.

[Livingstone]

I found that after batching I find it easier to apply the 80/20 rule. For example answering customer inquiries, I tend to focus better on the quality leads when I work through 20 of them one after another. (being bored with it helps..)

Futhermore I batch: shopping (twice a month), email (once a day), small tasks in and around the house (actually a houseboat), bills (once a month), tasks which require me leaving my desk at the office (coffee, toilet, waking up a collegue, etc) and furthermore pretty much everything worth batching..

[indieman958]

I do this with errands - esp. w/ hi gas prices.

First, I try to get the errands as close together as possible in time and place (e.g., go to the grocery store closest to the post-office rather than my usual one, etc.).

Then, based on what I learned in a logistics course, I try to make the routing efficient. (The method for maximizing efficiency of a delivery truck's route was to plot the destinations & start/end point on a map. Then from the start/end point, connect them all so that the route forms as close to a tear-drop shape as possible. If need be, you can make multiple tear-drops if you have to go back to re-fill the truck or something.)

'hope this helps.

[jopinion]

I think this is a great concept. I tend to waste a lot of time doing tasks that I could easily batch... the weird thing is that even though I know i'm being more efficient its hard to break the cycle.

So, have any of you implemented this and if so, what?

Just getting started on this stuff, but here is what I am currently batching:

1. E-mails. Have several e-mail accounts used to test different muses. Use a program called nutshell mail (www.nutshellmail.com) to send me an e-mail report in the morning, midafternoon, and towards the end of the business day.

2. Checking stats of websites. Check the stats once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Look at what is working and what is not and allows me to adjust working on the muses during the day.

3. Outsourced Work/Freelancers. Most of them are in India so I have adjusted to be able to speak with them via Skype. Usually around 10PM EST and 7AM EST are the beginning and close of their business day. If I need to communicate something clearly I will go on Skype to go over project details.

4. Just started to implement this one for social networking... spend at least 10-20 minutes following up on social networking sites (right now, really testing out Twitter). Trying to stick to doing these social networking follow ups about 3 times a day.

Need to batch writing articles and posting on forums!

[Free4Family&Community]

I batch. Grocery shopping once a month(takes 1hour& 15mins 30mins to order & 45mins to pack), check post weekly, check briefly email daily and reply once a week. Sending out post once a month. Buying stamps once a year. I bulk buy stuff for the house like light bulbs & saves on trips to the shop. Big house major clean up & clean up once every two weeks. I too have list that I add to over weeks 7 month like my Ikea shopping list or stuff from the city shops then every 6 months I get everything I need on one go.