Once the school year starts, it feels like a whirlwind of activity and then all of a sudden it is June. It takes a lot of effort to organize and keep track of all that is going on. As an administrator, there are endless tasks and multiple groups of people that you need to connect with in a day. At times, it can feel a little bit like groundhog day or at least like you are a hamster on a wheel. I have found that I had a lot more difficulty making time for visiting classrooms or making connections because I was constantly trying to keep up with deadlines. It wasn’t until I found the magic of batching sessions that I began to find clarity in my calendar and time to breathe.
Batching is when you dedicate chunks of time to work on similar tasks without any interruption. These chunks of time will usually last around two hours but may go on for multiple days. This magical dedication of time will lighten your load and you eliminate stress if you stay dedicated to these focused chunks of time. It eliminates overwhelm and stress and will save you tons of time!
There are many ways to organize your batching sessions and there is no right or wrong way to do it. In fact, you may be surprised just how many tasks are a perfect fit for batching. The opportunities are endless whether it is administrative tasks, writing/creating, scheduling connection and visibility in classroom times, project management, etc. Streamlining through batching will free you up and provide clarity to your days.
You might decide to schedule two hours to do administrative tasks. Be sure that you schedule it into your calendar in advance so that you make it happen. Choose the area of the administrative task that you want to focus on and close your door on that scheduled time and batch it so that you are at least four to six weeks ahead of time.
If you are working on scheduling in your classroom or team teaching visits. Again, schedule it into your calendar and then get to work on that day. Schedule your class visits into your calendar and the purpose/intention or content that you want to work with those teachers on. I always try to schedule at least six weeks in advance so that I don’t have to plan again for at least five weeks. I just follow my plans and curate as needed.
Emails might even be a batching session. These may be a little more time sensitive so I actually batch my email sessions daily. I do thirty minutes at 9 am and then I batch the last thirty minutes of the day to check my email again. I always make sure that my inbox says zero. That way I do not miss a thing.
The benefits to batching are game changers my friends! They will save you time, stress, and unnecessary extra effort. We all want that right? Batching also allows for increased focus because your distractions are majorly reduced because you are focusing on one area. This will equal quality work. Now it will require some will power during these sessions and so you need to make sure that you are distraction free and that you place boundaries around your batching time to get the tasks done.
A rule for batching is that you are not switching into different contexts. Switching back and forth between tasks will take more time because studies say that it takes you 23 minutes to get back on task once you switch. Trust me, we do not want to waste any time during these sessions!
The productivity will increase once you start batching. You will save hours and hours of time! Now you can reorganize your day so that you are not always catching up, but rather you are actually ahead. Batching will also give you time away from certain tasks. Because you are always trying to do everything all at once before you discovered batching, your creativity and focus was never on par because there was no space to just breathe. It is so important to provide space to be creative and to allow your brain to focus on new and different ideas and to refuel. If you are constantly touching the same projects each day, you not allowing that creativity to flow because it is the same thing over and over again. Batching allows you to get in, get it done, and then free your mind to think of the next thing. Batching will help you make a bigger impact, build momentum, and get more traction.
Think and be creative about all of the areas that you might want to do batching sessions with. Planning is a great area. You know what it takes to plan meetings and professional learning communities. Well, rather than doing this every week, schedule a batching session and plan for the next six weeks. Planning connects to creating content for those meetings. Well, that would lead into a different two hour batching session.
The same goes for miscellaneous tasks. These are also perfect for batching. This might be a batching session for answering emails, phone calls, paper work. What is important is that you set expectations and stick to them to get the work done in those two hours.
Moving on down the list, you may want to schedule your coaching time in with teachers or within meetings. If you work with teachers you can batch those times and schedule up to 6 weeks in advance. Try to do all of your planning and scheduling in one batching session. Then notify teachers of the times you are coming into team teach or coach. Focus on content creation, vision, and strategy. You can even batch your meetings with them! Once you get going you will find more and more opportunities to batch!
Now there are steps to batching that will help to provide clarity if you are new to this batching thing. Keep in mind that each step could be it’s very own batching session. Like I stated earlier, there is no right or wrong way to batch! These steps for batching originally came from Amy Porterfield who is a batching guru! I adapted them to make them my own.
Step one: PLAN. Plan your batching sessions as far ahead as you can in your calendar. If you do not put it into your calendar it will never happen. You have to make it happen. I always try to have at least four batching sessions scheduled into my calendar.
Step two: BRAINSTORM. Two hours need to be set aside to come up with ideas, content topics, strategies, etc and flesh them out. Some examples of brainstorming sessions might be, deciding how many visits you need to make, topics of staff meetings, professional development ideas, visioning and milemarkers, action steps, etc.
Step three: OUTLINE. In this session you are going to take what you brainstormed and gut the ideas into an outline or a roadmap with actual mile markers. You may actually have a script or a lesson plan if you are planning meetings. You might have criteria built for developing a team teaching module with a teacher. It could be an outline for staff meetings or professional development days. Like I said, the opportunities are endless!
Step four: RECORDING or CREATING. This one may not be in your wheelhouse but it is in mine. I have now started recording slide deck lessons for teachers to help to expand my reach so that I do not always have to be there. If I find a need or a space of uncertainty, I always plan to do a workshop however, I also do a slide deck to give to teacher teams to help them with further support if needed. Your recording might be where you are creating or writing at this time. The creating is producing the content for the pd day or the staff meeting. It might be a research session where you are looking further into professional development.
Step five: PRODUCING. This is where you are visible and in front of the people taking action on all of your batching sessions previously. You may be in classrooms team teaching or working with students. You may be delivering the content at the meeting or professional development day. Set aside two hour time frames where you give the value to the people in this batching session.
Step six: REVIEW. This is a reflection batching session. This might be where you review documents or teacher observations. You may be looking at marking if you are teaching or ways to get teachers reflecting on their work. This is where examine the evidence of impact.
The work will expand to fit the time. So give yourself fully to the time you intentionally set aside to focus and do not stray from that intention. Be true to your word and to yourself because you deserve to have more time. The goal is to get the work done in the time allotted. Trust me you will never go back once you find the magic of batching! Now happy scheduling!
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