Batching is when you do many similar tasks in one concentrated session. It saves you tons of time and helps you keep your focus. David Allen of GTD fame and Timothy Ferriss of the 4-Hour Work Week are advocates of batching. I’ve been using it myself to great effectiveness to manage my schedule (I have a full time job and clients to help in addition to blogging here on Remarkablogger). Bunk Price over at Lifejotter (one of my favorite new blogs) recently wrote about batching, and that inspired me to write about batching for blogging activities.
Blogging activities to batch
Writing posts
Right now, this is the fourth post I’ve written today. It’s the weekend, and that’s when I write most of the posts for Remarkablogger. I future-publish them throughout the upcoming week. It only takes me about 2 – 4 hours a week this way. I also try to write a “spare” post every week so that I have a bank of drafts that all I have to do is publish if I get seriously pressed for time.
Reading feeds, starting drafts, and commenting
I see feed reading as a blogging activity, because commenting on other blogs is the following activity. Reading feeds provides me with quotes for my Overheard in the Blogosphere quote posts, as well as tons of ideas for other posts. You can’t batch inspiration and ideas are quickly forgotten, no matter how good they are. I write quick headlines and a couple words in a post draft to capture the idea for later.
If you really want to power through your feeds, I suggest using Google Reader. Set your display to only show you the headlines. Star the posts that seem interesting to you based on their headlines. Then hit the “Mark all as read” button. Be ruthless when you star a post. If there’s any doubt that you’ll really read it, leave it. It’s probably not important. Then, look at only the starred posts for inspiration or to leave comments on other blogs. I plow through well over a hundred feeds this way.
Commenting on other blogs is also something I do at this time, since this is the only time I’m going to be in my reader all day (this is how I prevent feed reading from turning into a distracting time sink). I spend 1 – 3 hours a day on this, which I don’t recommend if you aren’t a professional blogger, because it will not be as important for you.
You could argue this isn’t really batching if I’m doing 3 things, but because they all stem from consuming RSS feeds and spending concentrated time in the feed reader, it makes sense to me to group them together. Your mileage (or for those of you outside the US, kilometerage 
) may vary.
What not to batch
You can’t and shouldn’t batch everything:
- Batching post writing doesn’t work for those of you who run news blogs or need to post time-sensitive information.
- You have to think carefully about whether or not you want to batch responding to comments on your blog. Leaving someone hanging for too long could be bad for your image and bad for business. If people don’t see their comments appearing in a reasonable amount of time, they will stop commenting and that will make your blog look dead.
- If you employ comment moderation, what can happen if you batch approving them is that instead of a conversation, you get a bunch of similar first reactions.
Why Batching Works
Batching works for me because the time and effort costs involved in ramping up to speed on a task and then shifting back down to change focus on another, different task doesn’t have to be repeated. When I’m doing a batch of similar tasks, I only ramp up and shift down once. Working on many similar tasks means I get up to speed, establish a good rhythm, and achieve high levels of intense concentration. Another way to think of this is getting “in the zone.” When you are in the zone, you can do some of your best work.
My Batching isn’t Yours
I can only offer what works for me. Batching my blogging tasks in the way I’ve described above works for me, but it may not work for you. You might have a different combination of tasks that make sense and work for you. Experiment and try different batching combinations to find your perfect combo. You might have ADD and batching would never work for you (no, I’m not kidding). Batching also might make something you’re doing for fun feel too much like work. Find what works for you. Time and attention are our most precious resources. Use them wisely.