This is a time management and productivity post about the benefits of batching or time chunking.
Time Management and Productivity: Batching and Time Chunking
I spend a lot of time in the car and I love learning new things. Because of this, I’ve become a little addicted to podcasts. I almost never listen to music anymore in the car because I try to squeeze the most out of every minute of the day. I listen to podcasts for personal and professional growth. One of the common topics that keeps coming up is batching, or time chunking.
What is Batching?
Batching is a way of managing and maximizing your time. Batching is the grouping of similar tasks that require similar resources in order to get them done in the most efficient way. You can use batching at work or at home.
How to Use Batching?
One of the ways I use batching is for food prep. Each week, I prepare all of the kids’ lunches ahead of time. I spend about 1 hour on Sunday cutting, bagging, and organizing all of their school food for the week. If I were to break that up and spend each night or morning making the kids’ lunches, I know I’d spend more than 1 hour combined. I save time by washing and cutting all of the fruits and vegetables at once. Otherwise, if I did it each day, I spend time on each of those days getting everything out of the refrigerator, taking it out of the bags, washing individually, cutting, then cleaning up. By batching, I only take out all of the food once, wash once, and clean once. You can read more about my School Lunches Organization System here.
If you want to learn more about batching, get some books and other great resources for batching.
