How Task Batching and Time Blocking Can Give You MORE Time To Get Stuff Done!

🚨 PLEASE NOTE: The last section of this blog post contains spoilers for the “Busy Doing Nothing” Subscription Box. Proceed with caution! 🚨

The Productivity Series: Busy Doing Nothing

Welcome to a series of blog posts where we will explore a range of productivity and time management techniques and how to implement them within your journal or planner. Check out our other posts here.

Ever find yourself in need of extra time in your day? While we can’t promise to make the day longer, utilising Task Batching will free up blocks of time you never knew you had!

What is Task Batching?

Each time you switch from one task to another, there is a period of adjustment as you refocus on the new task. By batching similar tasks together, you free up blocks of time you never knew you had!

How it works

1. Create a brain drump of all of the tasks you need to get done. (For more info on how to successfully create a brain dump, check out our dedicated blog post).
2. Once you have a list of tasks, grab your highlighters and highlight all the tasks that are similar in the same colour. For example: Tasks that require using your computer, household chores, phone calls, etc. You can group your tasks whichever way makes sense to you.
3. You have now successfully “batched” your tasks!

Top Tip:

If you have a lot of task groups, create yourself a key! For example, pink = phone call, blue = email, etc.

Now it’s time for Time Blocking

With your tasks batched, it’s now time to allocate the tasks to slots in your diary. You can do this across a day, week or monthly basis. This will really depend on how you and your diary work best.

Top Tip:

Where you schedule each time block should compliment your style of working. For example, if you find you are most creative on a Monday after a weekend of rest, this should be when you schedule your creative tasks (and maybe avoid scheduling boring or difficult tasks for a Friday afternoon!)

Implementing Task Batching and Time Blocking in your journal:

Your journal is a really handy tool when using the task batching and time blocking approach.

Here are some ideas!

1. Use your journal to create the initial brain dump of tasks.
2. Utilise highlighters/Washi tape/pens to colour code the tasks and time blocks.
3. Use your Daily, Weekly or Monthly spreads to schedule time blocks for a particular type of task (i.e. every Monday morning 9-11am could be dedicated to admin).

Why it works

• Saves time switching between different types of task.
• Allows you to get “in the flow” by repeating actions in similar tasks.
• Ensures that you allocate time for all types of task.

Busy Doing Nothing?

To celebrate the dispatch of our June 2024 Quarterly Subscription box “Busy Doing Nothing”, we have been exploring different strategies for productivity and time management within our blog.

If you are interested to learn more you might want to grab the box!

Want a little sneak peek inside?

We designed a bunch of supplies that help you incorporate different productivity strategies inside your journal. Here are just a few of the items we included:

Any new subscribers to the quarterly sub before the end of June will receive ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ as their first box!