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The idea of a "vacation tax" -- catching up on things that have piled up while away -- is now a common one. But wait, batching is good! It lets you focus on the task at hand and make gruntwork more efficient. Is it possible and beneficial to intentionally create a weekly backlog of things to batch? Maybe! I'm going to try to find out. |
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Identify everything that can wait until the end of the week. Stock it up in the appropriate waiting place(s). I'm especially thinking of emails that need to be acted on or replied to, but this could also apply to stuff that needs to be put away around the house, brought out the to car, whatever. As part of my weekly review / wrap-up, I'll handle all of this stuff. I may even designate Friday "batch day". Weekly review in the morning, batching the rest of the work day. |
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I have a feeling this will either result in a major feeling of liberation, or things will quickly start falling through the cracks. I'll try to stick to it until February at least. |
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If nothing else, it's an interesting experiment in personal productivity, and I'm explicitly giving myself license to 'play' with how I do things. I try to rein that sort of thing in, normally. |
Extreme Batching - Intentionally Creating a Weekly "Vacation Tax"
Created Dec 31, 2009
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Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell I love it! Let's think - it's a form of deferring action, a kind of weekly ticker, maybe. Very much looking forward to your results. The Brock Tice Action Method.
Jan 01, 2010
Brock Tice I'm having to retrain myself. I keep catching myself starting on things that can be deferred until the end of the week. It's a nice feeling to put those things away and get back to the day's plan, though.
Jan 05, 2010
Brock Tice It's nice to be able to defer things till the end of the week, but I really have to make sure that I then do them, and don't let Fridays get *too* free-form. This needs to keep running.
Feb 04, 2010
Matthew Cornell How's it feeling so far, Brock? Recommendations?
Feb 07, 2010
Brock Tice Works well during the week, but unfortunately Fridays keep getting usurped by other things, so the put-off things don't get tended to. Needs more observation.
Feb 07, 2010
Brock Tice Got down to business on Friday this week. (I run my weeks Mon-Sun.) Worked great! It's still a weak spot in the process as (a) my wife often has to work all weekend, leaving me busy with child care and (b) I don't want it to spill over into the weekend anyway.
Feb 14, 2010
Brock Tice Got down to business again today. This works great when I do it! The problem with GTD's 2-minute rule is that a lot of things are just over two minutes, but adding them even to the lightest of project management systems incurs more overhead than the actions are worth themselves. So far this approach (mostly to email) is working well.
Feb 19, 2010
Matthew Cornell I totally agree te two minutes. I wrote about it a while back as a "hole" in gtd. I usu stretch it out to five or so. But I probably have less paperwork than David Allen.
Feb 19, 2010
Brock Tice I'm starting to see (though I've been practicing as such for a while, I guess) that GTD is in practicality more of a framework or template with which to start than a comprehensive system. It needs to be customized to every person's individual needs and practices.
Feb 25, 2010
Matthew Cornell That's surprising, Brock. I see it as totally comprehensive wrt workflow. I think the Doing phase is ultimately most challenging (which argues for daily planning, I think), but adoption is the first hurdle. I agree it needs to be customized, though my recommended customizations usually don't stray too far from the ideal. It depends on the person, of course. I have clients who have adopted only pieces of the system, and they're happy with that. As a consultant my perspective is to start with, "How well is this serving you?" and use that to focus on our efforts.
Love to hear more of your thinking!
Feb 26, 2010
Brock Tice I mean, it is comprehensive w.r.t. workflow, but because everyone's workflow needs are different, the actual implementation may have to vary pretty substantially to work well.
Mar 02, 2010
Brock Tice This continues to work well, for the most part. I think I know what there is to know for me about this practice by now, so I'm going to mark this complete. I'll continue to do it for now, but I get the feeling that if the influx of stuff during the week rises (which I will fight, hard), it won't work anymore.
Mar 20, 2010
Matthew Cornell Congratulations! Have one on me :-)
Mar 21, 2010
Matthew Cornell A meta-question on completing experiments and celebration (which is essential to TTL): Do you find valuable the Facebook feature (or add-on app - I'm not sure) that lets you "give" a gift, which is usually just an image?
Mar 21, 2010
Brock Tice Hm, thanks for the congratulations, I just saw that. Re: facebook, I haven't used the gifts really. My wife gave me one just once, I think. It seems like a neat idea, but I generally try to keep my facebook use to a minimum. I like your TTL stuff being piped into facebook, btw.
Mar 25, 2010
Matthew Cornell > Re: facebook, I haven't used the gifts really
OK, good experiment: I'll use the FB Gifts feature for you as an experiment. :-)
> I like your TTL stuff being piped into facebook, btw
Cool! Care to try it on your own experiments?
Mar 26, 2010