Friday tends to be my mop up day. I mostly leave it open, so it can absorb anything I don’t get to earlier in the week. I also tend to keep a running punch list of little things that I’ll batch together on Friday. I can plow through these with focus and purpose…or I can spend a lot of time on Twitter in between them.

To avoid the latter, I’ve started planning some early finish fun. If I get through the list before the kids are home from school, I can do something I might not normally do during the workday. Read a book. Work on a puzzle. Now that the weather’s nice, it might be a little adventure — a walk somewhere new, a longer run.

The goal is not necessarily to rush through things (though sometimes that might be justified). It’s just to provide an incentive to get stuff done so I can then have some real fun, rather than the procrasti-fun that tends to stretch work out. I’ve got a place in mind to go walk this afternoon if I manage to figure out how to get a Real ID driver’s license and renew my school volunteer clearances (I don’t have to finish both – just have appointments made and such), and pay some invoices, so wish me luck!

What do you do for early finish fun? What motivates you to finish fast?

In other news: Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes for my mom! She appreciated them. And yes, my father scored points for the public words of affirmation (here and on Facebook). I was also told that it was good I chose the photos I did, and not the one of them in swimsuits from the 1970s, which I love, but I am not allowed to share.

I had several of these building up on my task list. So I designated the window right before lunch today as the time to tackle them. Doing them all at once, rather than here and there over the last few weeks, meant I spent less time on these tasks, total. I’d like to think it helped with keeping time open for other things too.

“Batch processing,” according to my dictionary, is the processing of previously collected jobs in a single batch. In considering workflows, it’s always good to look for opportunities to do this. I usually write my Before Breakfast podcast episodes for the week in a batch. I practice them in a batch, record them in a batch, and listen to and send in the sound files in a batch. I know some people with daily podcasts record a little bit every day. That can work but I like to get in the flow and have my equipment up and running and then be done until next week. There are often transition times associated with activities. Batch processing minimizes these. Transition costs might be worth it for some activities. But not for everything.

That can be reason enough to try batching the little things, but I think there’s an important psychological factor at work too. We all have lots of administrative or small tasks we need to tackle. When these are always options to do, we can either feel overwhelmed or sometimes we elect to do these little things instead of deeper work because of the lure of easy accomplishment. I should be working on my next book manuscript but…I need to send in my vehicle registration renewal form! And send in the balance for the beach rental! Lots of stuff gets crossed off the list, but the big main thing isn’t getting done. The little stuff does need to happen eventually — but probably not exactly at the moment when these little tasks become useful for procrastination purposes.

Set a time to batch process the little stuff, and you can tell yourself — nope, not now. Now is the time for book writing. You’ll write out those checks at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday. Not before.

Do you batch the little things?

Photo: Batch processing the Easter eggs…

Of course, that knowledge doesn’t mitigate the fact that I really hate doing this. So every year, I face a dilemma. Do I log my receipts diligently as I go? Or stick them all in a pile, and then log them all at once?

I used to think that the former option was the more virtuous one. Do a bit at a time and the task never gets overwhelming. That sounds like something Benjamin Franklin would say. But then in 2009, I decided not to bother. The receipts piled up and I had to log them all at once.

But you know what? It wasn’t that bad. It took me 5 hours (I’d check receipts against my work calendar and credit card statements to confirm what any ones I’d forgotten were for). There were hundreds of receipts, which means that if I’d logged each one individually, even if it only took 2 minutes each time to open that computer program and then file the receipt, it would have taken me more than 5 hours over the course of the year to keep on top of them. And I’m guessing it might have taken more than 2 minutes. Once we use the mental energy to start a task, it’s hard to get back into the flow of work (even checking your email often involves a 20-25 minute break from the flow of your main project).

The downside is that I may have missed receipts, so that would have cost me money. The question is how many receipts I missed, and the dollar amount I thus owe in additional taxes, and the amount of time I save by not logging frequently. I’m not entirely sure how this calculation would turn out, but in general, batching tasks is more efficient. You focus on one thing, get it done, and move on.

ShareThis