How grouping your work into batches can help you to recapture lost time

Herman Hollerith revolutionized the US census . A statistician with a doctorate from Columbia University, Hollerith worked alongside one of his professors on the 1880 census. There, he realized that the census bureau’s process of tabulating people’s data, hand-counting one by one, could be vastly improved—point in case: the bureau didn’t finish the 1880 census until 1887.?

The experience inspired Hollerith to invent the machine that would use punch cards to process census data in batches, automating the nationwide count. The tabulating machine was a huge success, shaving a full two years off the process. Hollerith won a medal at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. He also secured contracts to implement his device in Canada, Norway, and Austria.?

As the founder of an online form company, Jotform, I’m a big advocate for the power of automation. I even wrote a book about automating your busywork to give readers the tools to spot opportunities to speed up daily tasks. Because even if something seems like it’s plugging along just fine, automation can help you to recapture valuable time—be it two minutes, two hours, or two years—and save your brain for the big stuff. Applying the concept of batch processing , a technique for automating and processing multiple transactions as a single group, can help you to streamline both repetitive tasks and more meaningful work.?

Here, a closer look at how batch processing boosts efficiency across the board.

Batch your repetitive tasks

At home, my sons love playing with LEGO? kits. For my part, I love watching their creativity in action—that is, until a tiny plastic brick inevitably ends up jammed into my heel (ouch).?

On its own, a single LEGO piece doesn’t serve a purpose (and can be a walking hazard). The point of LEGOs is to join them together to form a coherent whole, be it a helicopter, a dinosaur, or a magnificent castle.?

Similarly, grouping tasks into clusters can help you to form your day into a coherent whole, rather than working on things in a piecemeal fashion.?

In my book , I show readers how to reimagine their daily tasks as workflows: series of interconnected steps that lead to specific results. This exercise does two things: for starters, it helps you to picture all of the steps in any one task, enabling you to accurately estimate how long it will take. To-do lists only offer a surface-level view of your workload. A single item is rarely just a single task—writing an email, for example, can require multiple steps (researching, drafting, editing, etc.) Workflows help us to visualize the entire picture.?

And second, mapping out workflows can help you to distinguish between different types of tasks—in particular, busywork and more meaningful stuff. I’m sure you can guess which you should prioritize. Once you identify your busywork—aka, repetitive tasks that don’t need your personal touch—you can batch them together and schedule them during times when your energy isn’t at its peak. For me, that’s at the end of the day, but each of us has a prime time. Take a moment to consider when yours is.?

What’s more, once you start envisioning your work in these “batches,” you can quickly and easily tweak the processes and swap things around. Back to my earlier example, the beauty of LEGOs is their modularity. Every piece connects to every other piece, so you can snap that helicopter onto the head of a dinosaur or whatever you’d like. A well-designed workflow is also modular, which means it’s composed of self-contained blocks or components. These components can be rearranged, stacked, repeated, and moved as needed. For example, in building out your workflows, perhaps you realize that a content template for one task can be repurposed for another—snap off that LEGO (or rather, find a second, identical block) and attach it to the second task.?

First, create the batches. Then, refine them as you go.

Batch more meaningful work, too

When we talk about batch processing, we’re usually referring to manual, rote, repetitive tasks that don’t necessarily inspire us—what I like to call “busywork.” You know the type: billing, payroll, inventory processing, data conversion, etc.

But more meaningful work that requires deeper thinking can also be grouped into batches, and doing so will boost your efficiency. Then you can schedule these batches during your prime time.

For example, Harvard Business Review reports that when we have a meeting coming up in the next hour or two, we get 22% less work done compared to when we have no upcoming meetings at all. The logic follows that if we space out our meetings throughout the day, we stand to lose time and productivity. That’s why author and Wharton professor Adam Grant groups his meetings into batches. Said Grant, “On a teaching day, I hold all my office hours in the same general time frame. I schedule a five-minute buffer between each just to catch up on email and to have a safety net in case a meeting runs long. Other days, I have no meetings at all and can really focus and be productive.”

Author and workplace expert Cal Newport likewise recommends blocking out time for meaningful work—with absolutely no interruptions. Because when we take a second to scan our email or check Twitter, we lose more time than we realize. As Newport told the New York Times , “When you looked at that email inbox for 15 seconds, you initiated a cascade of cognitive changes.”

He continued, “[I]f you have to work on something that’s cognitively demanding, the rule has to be zero context shifts during that period. Treat it like a dentist appointment. You can’t check your email when you’re having a cavity filled. You have to see it that way.”?

Once you batch and schedule your meaningful work, give it your full focus. Close the extra browsers. Turn off notifications. Do whatever you have to do to take full advantage of this time you’ve set aside for the stuff that matters to you. In the end, automation isn’t about doing less work. It’s about freeing you to go deep into work that harnesses your unique talents and interests.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to check out my new book,?Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff