Anyone else as obsessed with productivity hacks as I am? Batching has totally streamlined my productivity and increased my work-life balance.

Batching is something I’ve always done, I just didn’t know there was a name for it. Not to mention, such a buzz around it. It’s praised as one of the best productivity hacks. And when you work from home and run your own business, you need every productivity hack you can get your hands on.

Productivity Hacks I Love: Batching

Below is a list of things you can start batching that’ll save you SO MUCH time.

Updating old blogs

SEO is the backbone of running a successful website/blog. But it’s a super tedious task. Well, recently I bunkered down and updated my entire site and every blog post (91 to be exact) to be SEO friendly. Not just for Google, but Pinterest too! I devoted a few hours each day to this task. Here’s how! First, I tackled each blog post one at a time. Then I updated things like keywords, graphics, headlines, titles. It was a task that’s been weighing down my to-list for months, and by simply batching it up and devoting a certain amount of time to it each day…its finally done! And I’m already seeing results from the effort.

Pinning

Like I said, I’ve been updating my site for Pinterest. I recently worked through Melyssa Griffin’s “Pinfinite Growth” course and I am getting so much more daily traffic to my site from Pinterst. Part of the strategy is to have a automated software consistently pinning for you. I use Board Booster. With that, I have to keep the boards populated so it has something to work with. So every Monday morning, I take about an hour and fill up all my boards with relevant pins to share with my audience and let Board Booster do the rest. My Pinterest analytics have been soaring ever since.

Blogging

I like to keep a running list of blog posts I want to write. But I don’t always have the time to sit down and write them. So, I batch them! I usually pick a couple of days a week to write blog posts. So, I’ll choose 2 or 3 from my list each day and I write them, from beginning to end. Now, I say this, because I was making a habit of writing bits and pieces of blog posts and never really finishing any. So this helps me get them really done.

Stock photos

It important to have high quality imagery to go along with your blogs and online content. And finding it can be tricky. I use a few trustworthy sites like Pexels.com and Unsplash.com for all my images. But there are so much to choose from I can get lost in the options. So choosing them while I’m writing my content can get me super distracted, keeping me from actually hitting publish when I want to. So I batch it! I devote about an hour a week to scroll through their free images and save all the ones I know work with my brand and content. That way, when I write a new post and need an image, I can just choose one from the STOCK folder on my computer.

I’m not much of a photag…but this system also works for taking your own pictures. Set aside some time and shoot all your pics for the week!

Meal prep

I know, I’m not the first person to tell you about meal prepping. But as soon as I thought of it as batching, or as productivity hacks, it was way more likely I’d actually do it. Sundays are my day in the kitchen. I prep all my meals and snacks for the week so I don’t find myself grabbing whatever is around and making myself feel sick and sluggish.

Social media posts

Schedule. Your. Posts. It is the biggest time saver there is. Running your own business online means you need to be showing up online like all the time. But most of us can’t afford to be sitting at our computer posting content at all hours of the day. That’s why things like Buffer and Hootsuite exist. Use them! They’re free (with paid versions, if you choose). I also schedule my Facebook posts directly on Facebook to save time!

Blog ideas

Like I said, I keep a running list of blog post ideas so that I’m never without something to write about. When I see my list is running low, I’ll take some time to sit with it and fill it back up. I’ll think of some things I’ve helped my clients with lately, questions I’ve answered in groups, new things I’ve learned, and write them all down for potential future posts.

Newsletters

I use Aweber for my emails and it makes scheduling out future blasts super easy. I like to start the month coming up with my email list strategy and setting up the newsletters to execute that strategy. I’ll schedule them out throughout the month. And then I just have to set it and forget it!

Videos

More often than not, I’m in a baggy sweater, no makeup and my hair is up in a bun. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t translate online film so well. So when I do take the time to make myself look presentable, I employ one of my favorite productivity hacks…batching! I make sure to record as much video for my business as I can. Facebook lives, course content, webinars, content upgrades for existing blogs. Video is a huge medium online and it’s important to take advantage of it. Rather than putting make up every day, I wear it every so often and knock out as many videos as I can.

Have you used batching to boost your productivity? What sort of things do you batch? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to add things to this list.