VAs: Start Implementing Batching Skills so You Won’t End Up in the Nuthouse
Once you have been in the Virtual Assistance field for a while no doubt you will have lots of projects going on at the same time. And if you don’t use some kind of system you will go nuts. Before I turned to Virtual Assistance I had been a Project Manager for about 5 years and even so, I was pretty frantic when I got too many projects. I was so reactive. I felt like I spent about 5 minutes on each project before I would get an e-mail that I would have to check right away that would get me immediately into a different project and it would go on like that all day.
I didn’t really discover the whole idea of batching until about six months ago.
Basically, batching means you do all of a certain type of work in one session before you move on to something else. The virtues of batching are as follows:
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It gives you the time to develop focus.
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It removes distractions.
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It prevents you wasting time on re-engaging with tasks
As I spin many plates, I’ve found batching both projects and tasks to be incredibly useful. I allocate one day a week to write posts for my own blog. This means that I can enter a writing flow-state (and not worry about client commitments for the rest of the day). Other tasks I’ve begun to batch are emails, feed reading and, of course, client work. I will do all the work for client A from 9-11 then Client B from 1-3 and so on. I feel much less fragmented and much more productive as a result.If you’re constantly flipping and changing between projects, your attention will be fragmented and you won’t be able to do your best and fastest work. If you’re keeping multiple plates in the air, focus on one at a time, rather than all of them at once. The secret to any great juggler’s skill is the ability to focus only on the single item entering and exiting one hand, regardless of the five or ten items currently suspended in the air. Manage your projects like a great juggler.
Best,
