You’ve probably heard people talk about batching social media to save time.
Personally, I think batching social is spoken about in the wrong way.
Not that you don’t want to batch social, you want to understand the principles behind the batching so you can batch more efficiently and apply it to more areas of life.

Out of the 28 thinking skills, the thinking skill most related to batching is categorizations.

Categorization is about taking a big group and splitting it into smaller groups OR taking small groups and putting them into bigger groups.

I’m assuming if I give a bag of marbles you can split it into groups of color. However, if I give a list of tasks can you split it into small groups of tasks?

Here’s the challenge with categorizing - there are many ways you can group the same tasks.
Often, we start splitting tasks in one way and then switch in the middle to another way. Or maybe, when don’t have a space for one of them so we just make a new group, and the categorizing doesn’t end up in our favor.

For example, you split all the tasks you have to do for a launch:
Monday landing page, Tuesday emails, Wednesday social media, etc.
But what about a task that doesn’t fit nicely into a day? Or maybe it’s unrealistic to sort your tasks like that because email tasks triple the amount of time than social media? 🤔

I’m gonna share with you the secret, the question to constantly saving time.
I’m telling you now, if you struggle with categorizations on some level, it is going to be a challenge for you in the beginning, but as you apply this question to more areas of your life it will get easier for you.

Ready for the question?
It’s simple -
What is the best way to group these tasks in this situation?

Most of the time doing the same task at a time is the best way to do it.
Sit down, and write 10 emails to your email list.
Sweep your whole house.
Respond to all your emails in one sitting.

The reason this works well is because every time you start a task your brain uses the most amount of energy.
Just like when you turn on a car or light stitch, the most amount of energy gets used.

If you’ve got ADHD or struggle to start a task but once you’re in it, you’re fine, you can do the task, you see this very clearly.
The struggle to get started is real.

As you start getting better at grouping tasks, if you continue to ask yourself the question,
“What is the best way to group these tasks in this situation?” you’ll find yourself going very deep.

I can group tasks by working on podcast tasks.
I can group tasks by working on writing the podcast episodes (not recording, editing, etc.)
I can group the task by writing the podcast intros (not the CTA, challenge, main content, etc)

Do you see how deep I went there?

If this is way over your head or super overwhelming don’t worry!
Just start asking yourself: What is the best way to group these tasks in this situation?

Now although I absolutely LOVE batching the same task over and over again, in as many areas of my life as possible, sometimes in that situation it’s not the best way to group.
This is where you need to use your own judgment and experience to figure out what’s best.

For example, I often batch record my TikToks.
However, whenever I’m done a session with clients, I always have multiple TikTok ideas right at the forefront of my mind.
Yes, I can save them for when I batch record, but what I found was, that coming right from a high of the session, it always came out better when I recorded them as soon as I got off Zoom.
Another way one can look at it is, after running the group, I'm already in a every extroverted, expressive state of mind and recording also requires that expressive state. Here I'm grouping my energy.