Tips for Batching

To batch your email:

Choose several specific times during your day to check and triage your email. For some people this might be 2-3 times a day – or maybe its every hour. Otherwise, close your email system completely (no notification popups!) When it is time for your scheduled Batching, dedicate your entire focus to this activity using a standard triage process, such as this three-step process:

First Review - Cull: delete all junk or obviously irrelevant emails

Second Review – File: Quickly scan the emails you believe you won’t have any action’s coming from to ensure you are correct. Once that is confirmed, file the email appropriately. If you need to read it again later, put that action on your to-do list.

Third Review – Address: The only messages that should be left are the ones you believe require some sort of immediate action on your part. Read through all of them to document the resulting next steps on your “to do” list before getting started on anything.

Triage of ALL emails should be complete before you get started on any action that culminates from it. This ensures that you have a full picture of what needs to happen before you get started.

NOTE: This requires that you do NOT use your inbox as your “to do” list.

To batch your meetings:

You can approach meeting batching in one of two ways that are essentially two sides of the same coin 1) Intentionally scheduling your meetings to be on specific days or times of the day, or 2) Diligently protect the time you DON’T want meetings on your schedule.  

To schedule meetings strategically: Start by identifying the meetings on your calendar that are driven by other people’s schedules: This might be the availability of the most senior or critical contributor to the meeting or the number of people in the meeting might make it too complicated to influence or change. These meetings will be markers of what you will “batch” around. Then, infill the time around those meetings with the meetings you control or influence.  

To protect your non-meeting time diligently: Look at your calendar to find the larger segments of time you typically don’t have meetings (or have fewer meetings) and schedule that time for your deeper work. I recommend naming it for the specific task or type of work you plan to do. A more nebulous name like “Deep work” is more likely to get dismissed or ignored. BONUS POINTS: Mark off additional time on either side of those hours to expand your “protected time”.