Use batching to claw back valuable time and attention
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People are worried that robots or AI are going to attack us someday. Looking at the amount of emails I get from non-humans every day makes me think the war has already begun.
Managers who work at large companies will know exactly what I’m talking about. The biggest culprit is the system generated approval request.
This invoice needs approval. That access request needs approval. Someone, somewhere in one of my teams, logged a ticket for IT support. Guess what? It needs my approval.
Thank heavens people don’t need managerial approval to visit the restroom. I think both my inbox and some poor soul’s bladder would burst simultaneously.
Jokes aside, it’s a real problem. It makes it harder to stay on top of the emails from my actual human colleagues. More email also equals more interruptions and distractions.
My friend Wynand Rabe suggested I try batching as a solution. It’s fairly easy to create rules to move approval mails to a folder and mark them as read. I then have a weekly 30 minute appointment with myself to quickly process them in one go.
Grouping tasks that require similar resources or a similar state of mind streamlines their completion. And it means less context switching and better focus during the rest of the week.
Long live the humans!
https://davidreinecke.com
This invoice needs approval. That access request needs approval. Someone, somewhere in one of my teams, logged a ticket for IT support. Guess what? It needs my approval.
Thank heavens people don’t need managerial approval to visit the restroom. I think both my inbox and some poor soul’s bladder would burst simultaneously.
Jokes aside, it’s a real problem. It makes it harder to stay on top of the emails from my actual human colleagues. More email also equals more interruptions and distractions.
My friend Wynand Rabe suggested I try batching as a solution. It’s fairly easy to create rules to move approval mails to a folder and mark them as read. I then have a weekly 30 minute appointment with myself to quickly process them in one go.
Grouping tasks that require similar resources or a similar state of mind streamlines their completion. And it means less context switching and better focus during the rest of the week.
Long live the humans!
https://davidreinecke.com