Increase your productivity with task batching

By Jenna Blackwood, financial and accounting coordinator, Boomer Consulting, Inc.

Do you feel overwhelmed by your never-ending to-do list? Do you have days when it feels like there's no way to get everything done? We've all been there. But one simple change can help boost your productivity and create more capacity to take on higher-level work: task batching.

This powerful technique can help you organize projects, prioritize tasks, and maximize efficiency while helping reduce stress levels on busy days.

What is task batching?

Task batching is a time management method that involves grouping similar tasks together and completing them in one sitting. This allows you to focus more deeply on a single task, saving time and energy by eliminating the need to switch back and forth between systems and tasks.

Maybe you're wondering how much time task batching can really save. Well, a study published in the Harvard Business Review found that, on average, it takes a little over two seconds to switch from one application to another. That might not sound like much, but the average knowledge worker toggles between different applications and websites 1,200 times a day. Over a year that adds up to five work weeks, or 9% of your annual time at work.

So how would you like an extra five weeks of productive time every year?

Group related tasks

Start by gathering related tasks together. This could mean anything from responding to emails to meeting with clients to sending invoices to different elements of client engagements. Once you have a list of tasks, prioritize them according to their importance.

Use the "snooze" feature in your email

Email can become a black hole. And as much as we try to stay on top of it, you can lose a lot of time just filtering through your inbox and deciding what needs a response.

Did you know Gmail and Outlook have a snooze feature? In Gmail, the icon looks like a clock face on the far right. In Outlook, right-click any message you want to postpone and choose when you want the message to reappear in your inbox.

Leverage a project management tool

I've been using Asana for quite a while now but it's been a personal goal of mine to get all of my monthly, quarterly, and annual projects into Asana rather than using it strictly as a daily task list. This offers several benefits:

• I have more peace of mind knowing projects and deadlines will not fall through the cracks because I can clearly see what needs to be done and prioritize.

• It's easy to collaborate with other members of our team who are involved in those projects.

• If I need to be out of the office for an extended period of time, someone else could step in and have a holistic view of all my responsibilities and deadlines.

One note on using a project management tool: resist the urge to put ALL tasks in your project management system. If I can handle something from start to finish in a few minutes, I keep it in my email—snoozing it until a later day or time if necessary—rather than setting up a project for it in Asana. Otherwise, I might spend more time setting up the task than it would take to get it done.