Time saving techniques are KEY to your fledgling business. It not only gives you more hours in your day to get important work done, but also gives you more time to spend doing whatever it is you love to do. Which is why many of us became entrepreneurs in the first place right? To work less, and enjoy more?

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So I’m spilling the beans on my number one time saving tip for content creators and creative entrepreneurs in this post today.

What is it?

BATCHING!

And what is batching exactly? Simply put, it’s the art of grouping like tasks together to save mindspace and time. But I also teach batching to my students as an acronym.

SHOP ALL MY BLOGGING AND TIME SAVING ESSENTIALS!

Batching = Brings Awareness To Content Hours. Why do I teach it this way? One, because your girl just LOVES acronyms (my college student leadership days are really showing here). And two, because once you learn to batch effectively, you will become acutely aware of how much time you’re losing to content creation and other tasks when you are trying to do everything at once.

Think about your computer. When you open up 27 tabs in Chrome, things start to slow down, a LOT. It’s the same with your brain. When you are trying to multi-task, your brain slows down exponentially. You are spending so much brain power and energy trying to manage all the things at once, that nothing is getting done well, if at all.

Multi-tasking is truly the greatest killer of productivity. So stop bragging about being a “great multi-tasker,” because gf, you aren’t! No one is. It’s not how our brains were built.

Enter the Best Time Saving Hack Ever!

So, what can we do to fix this and get precious hours of our day back?

Yup, you guessed it! Batch all of our tasks.

For example, instead of scheduling half hour meetings at 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM, schedule them from 9AM to 10:30AM, freeing up larger blocks of time in your day for uninterrupted work.

An example of batching in your daily life might be meal prepping – spending one Sunday afternoon preparing a weeks worth of meals so you free up more time in your week for other things. Or, perhaps, you spend one day running all the errands you need to run, so you are spending less time on the road, and saving gas too!

In my business, I batch tasks like photography (I take a months worth of photos in one or two days), photo editing, and blog post writing (I also write 2-3 posts at a time). This way, my brain is focused on one task, and it gets in the groove of completing it, quicker and easier!

Another way I teach my students this is with what I like to call the Boat Exercise.

So I’m sure you probably listen to podcasts, watch videos, and read articles on how to grow your business as a content creator. And you have all these ideas swimming in your head because these teachers online are telling you to do EVERYTHING under the sun otherwise you are missing out. Now, think of each idea as one boat. And these boats are SUPPOSED to take you from where you are, on the left, to the land of business growth, on the right.

But for each idea that becomes a BOAT, that means less time for your family and living life. The image above is a good illustration… Instead of focusing on one boat, you are creating allllll these boats in order to grow your business because that is what you are being told to do.

But by working on all these boats and bringing all these ideas in your head to life you are getting NOWHERE. Every boat is being built at such a slow pace so all you have is a bunch of unfinished boats that are nowhere close to the island of business growth on the right. All your half finished boats are doing are SINKING, and you are yelling SOS because you are EXHAUSTED. And you’re not seeing progress.

Again, you’ve opened up too many tabs in your brain. Things are moving too slow. You aren’t getting the things that NEED to get done, done.

Instead, your day looks like this chart. Each “boat,” or task you work on simultaneously, means time lost to something called context switching. Context switching is a big black hole that takes your time, destroys it, and will never give it back. It’s not fun.

If you instead choose to focus on ONE boat or task at a time, a 10 hour exhausting day can become a 2 or 3 hour easy and productive day. Why? Because your brain was able to focus on one thing, allowing you to get it done faster, better, and with less energy.

And that’s what we really want to tap into! The shorter work days and the efficient work strategy! Trust me, the feeling you get from getting GOOD work done in 2 or 3 hours versus not really knowing what you did in 10 because your mind was all over the place…. Well, it’s a pretty magical feeling.

So the morale of the story in our time saving journey is this: Focus on ONE boat. On ONE task. Once you’ve finished, move on to the next. Break that cycle of task switching, so that you can ultimately SAVE time, SAVE energy, and have more hours in the day to relax, enjoy, and cherish.

Now how do we learn to do this?

Batching tasks can happen within a DAY, within a WEEK, or even within a MONTH. It just depends on the specific tasks you need to complete. For example, schedule time out of your day to respond to emails, or texts, or DMS, whatever it might be.

Now, think about similar tasks in your own business that you can group together. Maybe write a few of them down.

Then get practicing! In the beginning, batching might seem difficult, or even more time consuming than your usual multitasking. Especially because it is a counterintuitive practice for most of us. But don’t give up! It’s like learning any new technique in life. In the beginning, it may feel HARD to not switch between tasks. Or to not check your phone (a nasty form of context switching in and of itself!) That’s okay. Just keep going and I promise you will start to reap the time saving rewards sooner than you think!

SHOP ALL MY BLOGGING AND TIME SAVING ESSENTIALS

Another tip: Take advantage of the time of day when you are MOST focused. For me, this is first thing in the morning. I do my best to accomplish things in the morning that require a lot of focus. Not only am I ACTUALLY more productive, but I also feel incredibly accomplished even before lunchtime! WIN!

So know yourself and your own body clock, and you can work this batching process to your advantage!

I can’t wait to hear about all the time you are saving by implementing this batching technique into your workday!

And if you want more time saving tips, come grab my mini course “3X Your Impact!” It includes 5 audio lessons and a 20+ page workbook. 3X Your Impact will help you SLAY Your Workday so you have more time, more energy, and can actually feel creative again! Currently 20% off!

What time saving hacks do you already use? Share with me in the comments below!

Until next time…

XO,

Ana