Bernskiold Media

Batch Processing – A Path Away from Procrastination

photo by TMAB2003

Perhaps the worst enemy for all of us when it comes to work and time is procrastination. You rarely want to do the things that you really need to do which winds up hurting you in the long run, either by stressing out or doing bad things. Lately though, I have found batch processing to help me get control of my life.

Batch Processing is ideally a simple thing that just arrives here in a different and new form. For an example of how it works, I take a regular week of mine here on the blog. I have more article themed posts here just about every other day. Before, I used to write them the day before they were being published, best case scenario. Sometimes I would even write them the same morning. This, I realized caused me to stress out over all the things I needed to fit in my day, especially getting that blog post up and running and as a result, it was much harder to think of topics. My brain was just going on about all the things I needed to do. It took tenth of times longer to start and complete something than it should have.

How does batch processing help this?

Well, the idea is that I plan days where I’m going to be writing these posts. For me, this means either Saturday or Sundays. It isn’t fully finished for me yet, but it is looking to become Saturdays only in my more finished schedule. So, sometime during Saturdays, I sit down think of some topics for the week and write all the articles for the entire week. I do have some days that I’m planning on doing news posts only on, and those days I naturally leave until later in the week, but my main rule is to have posts lined up for the week by Sunday evening.

How does this help me?

It makes me a whole lot less stressed. No longer do I need to write that article in a very short time on the evening. It also makes me able to do all the other things, more, during the week. I can give my schoolwork extra time, give my business some extra time and give my music some extra time as well. Everything in my daily life gets a boost for the better, something that is well needed.

Can this be used for more than blogging?

Oh sure it can! I use it for a lot more as well. Most homework I do I use the same things on. It’s a little less applicable to the design work I do as it generally is larger projects and not as many small ones. So I guess the answer here would be that yes, it can be used for more things but it fits mostly smaller, repetitive tasks that you can batch together and do at once. It will save you the start-up time and just allows you to get your head into it once and then keep going!