The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
The Beginner's Guide to Batching
Ever feel like you're running in circles trying to get everything done? What if there's a way to finally conquer that chaos and boost your productivity? Join Lauren Fulton on the Rebranded Teacher Podcast, where we promise you'll learn the art of batching to transform your Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) business. By grouping similar tasks together, you can minimize distractions, reduce inefficiencies, and achieve more in less time. Imagine creating multiple products, covers, and previews at once, just like preparing a feast in one go, to keep your entrepreneurial spirit alive and kicking!
Discover actionable strategies to optimize your workflow with effective batching techniques. Lauren shares how breaking down large projects into smaller tasks such as content creation, cover design, and SEO can streamline your process. With insights into preparing an entire year's worth of emails or dedicating specific days to mass-producing videos or blog posts, you'll learn how to minimize repetitive prep work and free up valuable time. Whether it's adopting a structured batching schedule or dividing your yearly strategy into quarters, these methods ensure each aspect of your business gets the spotlight it deserves, allowing you to maintain a balanced work-life rhythm while making significant strides towards your TPT goals.
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Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, Pay Teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started it.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about batching.
Speaker 2:What is it and how can you use it to get more time and more time in your Teachers Pay Teachers business? So if you're brand new to selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, you may not have heard about batching, but if you've been around for any length of time, you've probably heard about what it is. Maybe you're even utilizing it in your own business. But if you're like me, I kept hearing this word like batching, and kind of a loose definition of what that was and how it can be beneficial for me, and I'd be like okay, great, yeah, but how do I implement that? Like? What does that look like in my life? What is that going to look like in my schedule? Because I already kind of felt like I was doing that already, like I felt like I am batching tasks, like I'm grouping things together, doing them all at the same time, but I still feel like I don't have enough time, and that's because I really wasn't batching effectively. I was utilizing some parts of the batching method, but I really wasn't batching effectively in order to get the results that I wanted inside of my business of having more time to do the things that were working and spending less time trying to switch tasks. So let's back up what is batching. Batching is essentially grouping tasks together. So instead of creating, say, one product and creating the cover and preview for it and getting it uploaded to TPT, instead you would create five or even 10, sometimes products. Then you would create all the covers, then you would create all the previews, then you would upload all of them to TPT and do all of the SEO product description, writing all that stuff at the same time in order to eliminate or greatly reduce task switching during your work time.
Speaker 2:We all know, whenever we try to multitask or we're task switching switching from one task to the next, to the next we become less and less effective. And if you think that's not true, then let's talk for a second about cooking dinner. Right? Most of you guys here have to cook dinner at some point in time. Maybe you don't do it very often, but when you do, you know that most of the time it's not just as simple as cooking dinner. If cooking dinner were as simple as walking into the kitchen, pulling out the ingredients that you need, taking it to the stove and fixing an incredible meal, because we all know whatever meal you're creating is going to be wonderful, regardless of what your toddler says. If that was as simple as that, then cooking would be great. In fact it would even be pleasant, you know, with the exception of doing the dishes afterwards, it would be a really wonderful, enjoyable task.
Speaker 2:But whenever you add life into the mix and suddenly you're on your way to the refrigerator, your three-year-old asks can I have a snack? Can I have a snack? Or, in my case, I need a little snacky snack. Mama, that's how my four-year-old says it. Mom, can I have a little snacky snack? So you go over, you pop into the pantry, you grab the little snacky snack, you grab the few items that you need for dinner, you bring it over to the counter and the next thing you know, your spouse has come in and they've said hey, did you know that your registration needs to be renewed? Or what about this problem over here? And they bring it to your attention. You've got to kind of think about that and handle that, while simultaneously still trying to make progress with dinner.
Speaker 2:In the meantime, you realize that during your trip to the pantry to get the little snacky snack, you forgot one of your key ingredients. You've got to go back and go get that key ingredient. In the meantime, someone spills something on the floor. You've got to stop, you've got to clean up the mess and then you've had to answer five or six different questions, had to settle three or four different arguments between siblings. And what you're doing there is your task switching. So you're getting a whole lot done, right, but it doesn't really feel like you're making a whole lot of forward progress on the one goal that you have because you keep switching tasks. So in your TPT business, what this looks like is it looks like I want to create 50 resources and get 50 resources on my store shelves by December 1st. Great, that's fantastic. But if I'm constantly stopping and starting like, okay, work on creating this product over here, now I'm going to stop and I'm going to go work on marketing over here, now I'm going to stop and now I'm going to go work on creating that cover and preview, and then I'm going to stay up late tonight and I'm going to get it listed. Then tomorrow I've got to start all over again with the very next product, you can see where that task switching is really becoming not only ineffective, it's becoming exhausting and it's making you feel like you're not getting a lot done. You're not making a lot of forward progress with that goal because of all the stopping and starting that you've had to do.
Speaker 2:While I might get a little bit of a dopamine hit here or there from those micro tasks, completing those and knocking them off the list, what I'm really doing with batching is not only working more effectively and more efficiently, I'm also setting myself up to make a tremendous amount of progress towards my goal in as little time as possible, which keeps me moving forward, it keeps me motivated and it makes me feel like I'm getting a whole lot more done. In the same way that if I were to segment, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to cook three meals and then I'm just in the next hour settling arguments between my children. Or do I were to segment? I'm going to sit down and I'm going to cook three meals and then I'm going to spend the next hour settling arguments between my children. Or do I want to settle arguments between my children while cooking one meal and doing the two of those interchangeably? I'm going to pick the former. I would rather batch three meals, cook all three meals, then spend an entire hour settling arguments between my children, versus having all of that chopped up and kind of thrown together in some sort of like crazy life salad and trying to make it work. Okay, so in our business what we want to do with batching and how it saves us time is it allows us to focus on one single task, to become hyper-focused on that task, knock a whole lot of it out, so I feel fantastic about it, and then move all of those tasks forward to either the next step or move on to the entire next task all at one time.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about items that we can batch. So I just kind of listed a couple of different ways. I can batch by taking one task like I want to create 10 products and breaking it down into different sections and batching by section. So I'm going to create the content for all 10 products and fill that into the template. Then I'm going to create all my covers and then I'm gonna create all my previews and then I'm gonna get them all uploaded to TPT and search engine optimize them right. So that's taking one project and batching it by step.
Speaker 2:I can also just batch by project. So for me this looks like it's a Saturday and on Saturdays I get a good chunk of time to work on my business and so I try to batch things on Saturdays, particularly content. So, like, this is one of four videos that I'm creating. When I'm finished with this, I'll have all of the videos created. We're in September. I have all the videos created for the month of October, so that the rest of the Saturdays of the month I can batch something else. So I can sit down and I can batch content for a new membership I'm not telling anybody about that yet. I can batch out content for a new membership or for a new course or for whatever it is that I'm doing. I can sit down and I can focus, hyper-focus, on creating a sales page and really focus on that one task, because I've already marked the other tasks off my to-do list.
Speaker 2:Okay, common items you can batch. You can batch email marketing. I love batching emails. So you can write out four, five, six, even eight, 10, 12. You can batch as far in advance as you want to. We were on a call back during Teacher Seller Summit with Crystal Griffith and she was talking about how she batches emails I think by the quarter, and somebody else said that they write an entire year of emails and they just have the whole year of emails right there and they don't have to think about it again, which is fantastic. They spend a lot of time doing it upfront, but that is permanently marked off of their to-do list. So you can batch big tasks like that, like emails, writing emails. You can batch product creation, you can batch out creating a whole bunch of reels, youtube videos, blog posts, and then you're just focusing on doing that.
Speaker 2:One thing Can you imagine, rather than knowing every single week I'm going to have to write another blog post, and great, it's Thursday, my blog post is due on Monday. What the heck am I going to write about on Monday? Rather than doing that, I write down five blog post topics and then I sit down and I only focus on writing blogs for the next three hours and I write all five blogs and they're done. And now for the next four or five weeks, I don't have to think about it again. I don't have to think about blog posts until it comes time to do the very next one. And what this allows me to do is when I'm batching content like that, like for emails or for marketing things and things of that nature, I can do all of my research all at the same time, so I can decide all of my reels. I decide all of my reels, I can choose all the hooks for my reels. I can do my makeup one time, which is like next Saturday, I'll be filming some content. But the Saturday after that, no content, no filming. Don't have to put on makeup, don't have to get up early and fix my hair. I don't have to do any of that because I'm doing it all now.
Speaker 2:And so if you do all the prep work at once, take care of all your filming at once, take care of all your writing at once, it takes you so much less time. Can you imagine, for example, let's say that you're filming all your reels, right, you want to look great, you want to look your best. You're going to be presenting yourself, you're going to be a talking head. Let's say we're making a bunch of talking head reels, right? So it's you, it's the camera, you want to look great. You want to look great and look your best. If I set aside 40, 30, 40 minutes, however long it takes you to do hair makeup, pick out a couple of cute outfits. If you want to have more than one outfit and do a little outfit change, right? Pick out a couple of cute outfits and then set up your camera, set up your lighting. It took me 10 minutes to get my lighting set up today.
Speaker 2:So set up your camera, set up your lighting, get everything all set up and then you batch out all of those videos, all of that film content for marketing. You don't have to do it again for another, even just say two weeks. Great. So, rather than every single day or a couple of times a week, having to spend that 30 to 40 minutes getting your lighting set up, fixing your hair, fixing your makeup, looking presentable, you're saving so much time in the prep, rather than having to go back and try to review every single week, like what's going to be a good blog post, what am I going to write about this week? You do all at the same time and you don't have to go back and do the prep work for everything again. All the foundations are all just laid there and you can batch them all out and then you're done until you run out of content. You've got to do it again, right? And those are a lot of common items that you can batch Now.
Speaker 2:Within that, I would say that there are kind of some subcategories. I would say there's like bulk batching. That's going to be like if you're going to bulk record like dozens of videos all at the same time, right. Or if you're going to bulk write 10, 20, 40 blog posts, or if you're going to bulk write 10, 20, 40 emails or create 50 products on TPT. So there's kind of like big bulk batching. Those are like much bigger projects.
Speaker 2:Then there's like routine batching. That's like I'm going to create five products this month. These are the five products I'm going to create and I'm going to batch them out to say like, rather than creating five products from five different product lines I'm going create and I'm gonna batch them out to say like, rather than creating five products from five different product lines, I'm gonna make sure all five products use the same product template. That way I can efficiently produce those this month and then, if I want to use a different template next month, I can use the different template next month and create five different resources, right. So it's kind of like more routine batching. I'm gonna go ahead and schedule out my emails for the month. Or I'm going to go ahead and take care of all of my marketing for the week on Monday and then the whole week is taken care of. So that's like routine batching and then within that I would also say there's like micro batching.
Speaker 2:So this really applies to those of you who get like a lot of customer support and you have like a lot of small fires that have to be put out throughout out the course of a day or even the course of a week. So I will sit down routinely during my morning slot. That's when I do my micro batching and I try to take care of those small tasks. So by the time I sit down, I've got about an hour each day where my older daughter sits next to me and she crafts or reads books or listens to her Tony or whatever, and she hangs out next to me while I take care of micro tasks. I answer emails, I touch base with my assistants and get them whatever it is that they need and I just kind of put out all those small fires that way, whenever I sit down in the afternoon I don't have to go through in like task switch. I can literally just sit down and focus on the one thing that I need to work on that day. Most of the time doesn't always work out that way, but most of the time it will.
Speaker 2:So that's what I would call micro-batching, and this can really help you if you fall victim to checking your email too often, checking your stats too often, or if you've got a lot of customer support tasks trying to stay on top of them throughout the day. The vast majority of people are okay with it taking up to 24 hours before you get back with them are okay with it taking up to 24 hours before you get back with them. Don't feel like you have to get back to people right away, immediately, otherwise they're gonna be upset. Just don't check your email, like if you find yourself checking your email multiple times a day, or checking your Instagram inbox or checking comments on your post or whatever, multiple times a day and trying to keep up with it. That is a really ineffective use of your time. So pick one time a day and say, like, at this point in time, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to respond to all of these comments, or I'm going to clear out my DMs and respond to all of my direct messages. Do take care of customer support or whatever it is, and pick one time a day rather than doing it all throughout the day.
Speaker 2:That's what I would call kind of like micro batching, because you're really not like getting ahead on anything. You're just really kind of like keeping up with items but without having to add multiple stop starts within your day and break up your workday, because a lot of those things can be really detrimental to your stress level If you're constantly going up, down, up down and trying to check little bitty things off of your checklist. Do not recommend. So. Those are some common items that you can batch out and they all kind of fall into different categories and you can kind of batch at different levels. We'll talk in a minute about how to take that information and set up a batching schedule. That's going to get you started with batching.
Speaker 2:But let's go ahead and talk real quick about one of the drawbacks to batching, because this is something that not enough people talk about when it comes to getting started on a batching schedule, and it's one of the reasons why a lot of us kind of put off moving to a batch type schedule, like moving to a schedule where everything revolves around batching tasks. The reason we all tend to kind of put it off is because we know that if I take today to only film content, then I'm going to get behind in X, y and Z over here. So if I take today to only write emails, then I'm not going to be able to post that Instagram reel, I'm not going to be able to work on that product that really needs to go out, and especially if I'm taking like an entire week or in my case, on Saturday six hours, like that's the only day a week that I get six hours to work on my business in a row, right? So when I'm looking at that, I'm going, oh my gosh, I'm going to spend that entire chunk of time working on just creating content, just filming content. If I do that, I'm going to get behind on some of these other projects that I really need to be working on. But you just have to know that that's going to happen and that's kind of part of it.
Speaker 2:And so when you're switching to a batching schedule where you're saying on Mondays I'm going to write emails, or week one I'm going to write emails. Week two, I'm going to do blogging. Week three new product creation. Week one I'm going to write emails. Week two I'm going to do blogging. Week three I'm going to do product creation. Week four, I'm going to do SEO, for example. If I'm switching to that kind of schedule, then yeah, of course, whenever I'm writing emails I'm going to get behind on doing the other things.
Speaker 2:But the beauty of it is, when I get to those other tasks I'm going to be able to give them 100% of my focus and I'm going to say it just kind of takes you like one period. So if you're setting up a weekly schedule or a monthly schedule, it just takes you one period to sort of adjust and then everything falls into place. So a really great example of this is that whenever we come back from a trip or we go somewhere or our schedule at home gets majorly turned upside down, inevitably what happens is get behind on dishes, the laundry piles up. All of that stuff starts to happen and start to feel really chaotic, and my gut instinct is always to say, okay, rather than sitting down during my one hour time slot today and working on catching up on customer support items, I'll answer those throughout the day and I'll use that hour to try to catch up on things around the house. That way the things around the house are a little bit more orderly.
Speaker 2:When I do that, I get more behind in my business and then I get more overwhelmed and then it just takes me longer to get caught up in everything, whereas if I stick with the schedule and I just say, okay, this is going to be painful for a little bit, but I'm going to stick with the schedule, I just say, okay, this is going to be painful for a little bit, but I'm going to stick with the schedule. Eventually everything finally gets caught back up and then we're back to working ahead again. Okay, so that initial drawback to batching and moving to a batch schedule is that there are going to be a few little growing pains there and that you might fall behind in a few things. But we're going to talk about how to set up an effective batching schedule and part of that is going to be that when you're setting up that batching schedule, take the item that is most pressing. Usually it's going to have something to do with marketing, because you're on kind of a time crunch when it comes to marketing. Right, you either have to post every day, you have to send out a weekly email, whatever it is that you've committed to do, like, take the thing that is most pressing in terms of like, oh, I can't, just not post on social media for the next week, right, and go ahead and put that first. That way you're not worried about like, if it's social media, and you're like, what am I going to post on social media? How am I going to try to keep up with this while I'm bashing out blog posts or focusing on product creation, whatever it is? Then go ahead and do that social media first that it is. Then go ahead and do that social media first so that it's off your plate and you're not having to worry about it, and then move on to some of those other bigger items. And then that way it's done and you don't have to worry about it while you're working on the other things. But inevitably something's going to get a little bit behind, but it's okay. You're going to find it's going to be really easy to catch up when you stick to your schedule and you're able to give that each task your full focus.
Speaker 2:So I like a couple of different batching schedules. First, I like to really batch by focus for the year. So I like to take a year and divide it up into quarters and say quarter one my main primary focus is going to be on marketing and then from there, if I know that in quarter one my primary focus is on marketing, then I can allot my time and batch my time accordingly each month to match that quarterly goal. So, for example, if I say quarter one I'm gonna work on marketing. Quarter two, I really wanna work on product creation. Quarter three, search engine optimization. And then in quarter four, the holidays are here I wanna just kind of be in maintenance mode. I don't really want to introduce anything new or have any real big focuses during that time.
Speaker 2:Then what I can do is for quarter one I can say, okay, how do I want to break this up? Do I want to batch by month or by week? So if I decided to batch by month, then each week during the month is going to have a specific focus. So, week one I'm focusing specifically on getting all my marketing done. Week two, I'm focusing specifically on product creation. Week three, I'm focusing specifically on search engine optimization. And then, because my primary focus for the quarter is marketing, then I'm also going to have a fourth week in there for marketing. Now, you don't have to set your weeks up this way, but this is just an example, right? So that way I know week one, anytime I sit down, I'm working on marketing, and it makes it a lot easier for me to break down my goals. That way I can say okay, I have an entire week that's dedicated towards product creation this month. How many products can I create in a week, because that's all the time that I have? How many emails can I batch, what can I get done in terms of marketing? And then I can set my goals accordingly, because I have two weeks for that right. So I can kind of break down my goal for each month based on the amount of time that I've allotted for that specific set of tasks within the month.
Speaker 2:Okay, I like this method. I think it's really great, especially when your main business, or your only business, is TPT. I think that this method works really, really well, because when you're still in the classroom it really does make it hard to complete an entire task in one day. But if I know I have the whole week, I can come home that day, work on it for a little bit, come the next day and I'm still working on the same task and I don't have to think about what am I going to do each day. And I don't have to think about what am I going to do each day and I don't really get to pick and choose right. I can only work on that one task and I can come home and do exactly what I'm working on. I don't have to think about it. And then the next week I can kind of reset and say, like, okay, what, what are the specific goals, what am I working on this week? And I can kind of go from there.
Speaker 2:Another option is to batch by week, and this is usually the way that I tend to do it. So this would be to say on Monday, I'm working on this task. On Tuesday, I'm working on this task. Wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, etc. Like, whatever days of the week you're working. Whenever I sit down to work on these days, this is what I'm doing. This works really well.
Speaker 2:If you have multiple revenue streams or business areas, or if you're just like a really busy person in general, this method does work really well. Or if you get bored, okay, this one also works for that. But you have to be able to stick to a schedule. So if you say, on Mondays I'm working on email marketing, but then you skip Monday, what are you going to do? Right, like, what are you going to do so you have to make sure that you're going to be very strict with yourself, because you can't really afford to miss a day at that point. Whereas if you're batching by week it works out really nicely, because if you're doing email marketing and your goal for the week is to just focus on batching out emails, then if you miss a Monday you can kind of make up for it the rest of the days of the week without having to task switch right. But if I'm batching by week, I do like this because it does give me a focus for each day and it kind of lessens the panic a little bit.
Speaker 2:A lot of times I will say to myself like I really want to work on this over here, like I really need to get this funnel done, for example, I really want to do it, I have the desire to do it. But if I tell myself I can't do that funnel for three weeks, I'm probably going to end up staying up until midnight one night to do it, or abandoning my batching schedule, like to do the thing that I really want to do. Whereas if I tell myself, nope, today is Monday. Mondays, we only work on the math membership. You could do that on Tuesday, when it's your day to work on your math business, right On Tuesday, you can do that thing that you want to do. You can get it done on Tuesday, and so if you have a lot going on or you tend to get really bored sometimes, doing the weekly schedule is a little bit easier, as long as you know for sure that you are going to be working those days.
Speaker 2:Like you can't take a day off unplanned, like you can't just decide I'm tired today, I'm not going to do that, because then you'll have to try to figure out how to fit that task into the rest of the week and that's where it gets kind of complicated. So, setting up a batching schedule, taking a look at your month, then taking a look at your week, and then ultimately you're going to want to take a look at your days, because no matter how much you start to batch, you really are going to run into those micro tasks, like those macro batching things where you really need to set up at what point in day am I just going to? Yes, monday is my day to just write emails, right, but there are other things like what if I get a Q&A from TPT? Or what if I get this or what if that happens. Like you need to have some sort of plan for how you're going to maintain some of those items, whether it's hiring it out and getting somebody else to take care of it for you or setting aside a very specific time in the day to do that.
Speaker 2:I like having the specific time in the day that is separate from the rest of my work time. Like I said, I have in the morning and not everybody has this luxury, I know. But in the morning at 10 am or 10.30, I am able to have an hour where I can do some of those micro tasks and then afterwards that frees me up to focus on my bigger chunk of time. But you can do the same thing, Like you can take, say, you get off work at four o'clock, you can take from four to 4.30 or four to 4.15, just depending on how much time you need and you can answer those emails, take care of customer support, do those little micro tasks that you need to do, and then you can have, you know, from eight to 9 pm that's my work hour and you can focus on what actually needs to be done for that day without having to catch up before you get there. Okay, that's the beginner's guide to batching.
Speaker 2:If you have batching questions or you have batching tips we love a good batching tip you're going to comment down below and share that with everyone else because we would love to hear it? Thanks so much for being here. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, be sure to share it with a friend. I love when you guys share the podcast. It means a lot to me and if you have an idea that you would like to share, if you have a question that you would like to have answered on the podcast, send me a little message. I'm on Instagram at thelaurenfolton. You can also send me an email. Lauren at the rebrandedteachercom. Ask me a question. If you've got an episode idea, send it on. I would love to answer your question.