Why batching is so important for you and your business

Batching is so useful for you and your business. And at first glance, you might say it has nothing to do with pricing. But actually, it makes an enormous difference to you, your business and the prices you charge. Because we all like to think we can multitask, but if you want to create your ideal business, you need to drop the multitasking and start embracing batching instead.

Why should you bother with batching?

No matter how much you may try to convince yourself otherwise, multitasking is not a good option. It’s really difficult to flick between different tasks all the time. Not only does it play havoc with your focus, it also produces less than stellar results.

Batching helps you keep your focus on one thing. It stops you getting distracted, and it makes it easier for you to block your time according to your energy. And that’s both practical and smart. For example, I don't work Fridays, so I can block that time off completely. However, I know my energy for focused work is best first thing in the morning, so I record my podcasts on a Monday morning and book focused client calls on other mornings, when my energy is high. I can then take meetings in the afternoon, as I feed off the energy of other people.

Batching makes it easy to build space into your day

Batching enables you to easily implement buffers of time into your day. These are those slots of time where you can relax and refresh your mind. When you have space in your diary, you can breathe a little easier or write your daily email - the choice is yours.

It also helps give you clarity on when you’re available for clients. For example, I like to open my diary for bookings during summer holidays. I’m usually unavailable a lot of the time, so I do this to forward plan a lot of my appointments. But I also don’t want to get inundated with appointments either. This is easier and more manageable for me, as I can use Calendly to restrict the number of appointments I have in any one day.

Ensure you’re being disciplined but flexible

When you batch tasks and build space into your day, you’re giving yourself some much needed flexibility too.For example, you may decide to do client work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only. However, it can then leave a big gap before you respond to clients. You can easily solve this, by keeping a free slot for urgent client work that crops up where you can pick up anything that’s really urgent.

Because you need to learn how to be disciplined with your time - that’s why you should package your services. You’re then not tied to client time and can work when you decide to work. You can also set the right boundaries in place to suit you. This helps you clarify when you’ll respond to emails, when you complete your client work and how you manage your workload.

Create your ideal week

I love the idea of creating an ideal week. It’s something I heard Amy Porterfield talking about on her podcast and it really resonated with me. It’s a great way of managing your time and energy. When you know how you want to spend your time, you have clarity over how you act and how you run your business.

It’s not something that works every week, but it helps see how much time you've actually got for a client or for client work. It’s about being more mindful over how you work and your available time and energy. Because it’s so easy to say ‘Yes’ to everything - but you may not have the time or the capacity to actually do the work! 

And if you’re looking for more help with packaging up your services, check out my packages masterclass. It’s going to help take you away from trading your time for money so you can start implementing batching into your business to help protect your time and energy.