Time Batching: Boost Your Productivity by Grouping Your To-Do List Items – Free Template
Batching your to-do list items or actions will help you become more productive and efficient throughout your workday, which in return frees up time to hang with your kick-ass family and friends. Time batching is when you group similar activities or tasks together and then do them at the same time.
Contrasting actions and tasks require different tools, ways of thinking, and energy levels and can often result in the anti-productivity gremlins sneaking in to disrupt your efficiency. By grouping similar actions together, it will help you build structure and boundaries around your precious time so you can optimize your energy and focus and launch your productivity rocket to space.
You probably wouldn't do two dishes in your sink, then drive to the bank, and then come home and pull weeds before returning to your dishes...right? While you naturally group certain obvious chores, you may be surprised how much more efficient you can be with your digital, creative, and career life too.
How to Start Time Batching with Themes
Again, the idea is to group together similar to-do list items so you can accomplish them all at once. This is easiest to accomplish if you create specific themes and then organize your tasks under thier appropriate themes.
For example, you could create a time blocking theme of “communication” and put tasks such as checking your email, replying to your co-workers about a project, checking your LinkedIn messages, calling your space-squid friends on Uranus, and even returning missed voicemails or calls from others. All of these communication actions can be completed with your computer and/or phone in one block of time.
Other Examples of Organizing Your Theme:
- Personal Life (laundry, cleaning the house, paying bills, yard work, prepping food).
- Specific Projects (anything under the umbrella of the project that utilizes similar energy and resources).
- Running Errands (grocery store, post office, feed the neighbor’s pet goat, pick kids up from school).
- Self Care (meditate, read a book, play an instrument, journal).
It is key to not allow actions or tasks outside of your current theme to disrupt or distract you. If a distraction or new idea pops up while you are working within a theme, simply write the task down under a different time batching list with the correct theme and complete it when you work on other tasks in a similar nature.
Download the Free Time Batching Printout!
How to Use the Free Time Batching Template & Schedule Blocks into Your Calendar
To help you maximize your productivity, we've created a free print-at-home time batching template. To use this printout, put your theme/type of action in the theme section and then list all the actions that fit under that theme. Once you have your themes set up, you can add more to-do list items to them as they pop into your head. This will help you stay organized and crush any anti-productivity gremlins that try to sabotage your time.
The “Date Added” section is the date that you add the item to the list, but it can alternatively be used a "to-do-by" date even though ideally most actions on your list will be completed around the same time. It’s completely normal to have 5-10 different batch action theme sheets working at any given time. When one of the sheets seems like it is relevant to complete, simply set aside a block of time on your calendar and rage! Or, if you really want to level up your productivity, schedule out time blocks throughout your week to work on specific themes that are correlated to your batch action sheets.
Communication Tuesday? Sunday Funday? Hump Day? The possibilities are endless!
Download the Free Time Batching Printout!
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