- Good morning, good life, welcome back to Amy TV,
where we come together to help you go
after the life you want.
I recently shared a video with you
about how I get back into a routine.
I'm not gonna lie, I felt so nervous posting that video
cause I was all over the place,
but I read the comments and I was looking
and I'm like, man, you guys really liked that one,
so thank you so much for receiving that
and for sharing that with me.
I thought we would do something similar today
where I kind of take you around with me
on different days that I do different things
so you can see all of the ways,
the big ways, that I time batch in my life.
If you're not familiar with time batching,
it is one of my favorite things
that goes in that same little books with planning
and calendar blocking.
And so basically the idea is that instead of having to do
lots of different things all the time
and just doing them whenever you think of them
or doing them at the last possible second,
you're chunking together like tasks
so that you can do them as efficiently as possible.
So I'm gonna show you the big ways that I chunk tasks
so that I am efficient and continuing
to therefore go after the life I want.
So this used to be my least favorite thing
in the world to do, but now that I've batched it
and started taking it more seriously,
I'm actually loving it
and that is my accounting.
Twice a month, I set aside time
to go through all of my accounting,
whether I have to run payroll
or even pay just my own personal bills.
Whatever it is,
I do not do it just whenever I think of it,
I set aside the time
so I can truly balance all of the books
the way that I need to.
I actually got this tip from the book Profit First
because he talked about that.
In business, we don't necessarily have to stop everything
just to pay a bill or to run payroll.
We should be doing it on set days every month
and looking at all of our numbers as a whole.
And I just thought if I'm gonna do that in my business,
which has changed the game for me,
I'm also gonna do that in my personal life.
So on the 10th and the 25th of every month
or I reschedule it if something happens,
but I usually reschedule it for earlier,
not later so that I'm not really cutting it close
on any due dates,
I set aside a couple of hours to go through expenses,
pay bills, run payroll, all that stuff.
And that has been one of the most game-changing
time batching things that I have done
to make myself feel better
and not wake up in the middle of the night
going oh my God, did I pay that?
It is so great for peace of mind
and taking your finances more seriously.
I don't think it's any secret to anyone
that much of what I do in my career
consists of using the internet and posting things.
So on a regular basis,
not only do I schedule time to film videos
or write blog posts or stuff like that,
I also have to schedule time for Instagram.
It sounds a little funny
because Instagram is such a fun place to hang out
and just like share your life
and see what other people are up to,
but it's actually part of my work as well,
so I have to allocate time for it
and I try to batch it once a week,
otherwise it's really easy to forget about
just because if you're not thinking about an Instagram post
in the moment and like getting it out,
then when are you actually going to make time for it?
So I always schedule one hour of my week
to go to Instagram batching.
Basically I'll pull together all the photos,
any videos I want to post
and plan out when they're going to happen.
And for this, I use Later.
Thanks to Later for sponsoring this episode of Amy TV,
they are such a huge help
in making sure that my Instagram
is looking good and happening on time every time.
If social media is a big part of your career success
like it is for me, Later is a great tool
to streamline your content
and make sure you set yourself up for success
and more sales in your business.
Their goal is to simplify Instagram marketing,
so it's more accessible to all types of businesses,
whether they're small, freelance,
entrepreneurial or otherwise.
One of the most important things for me
is making sure that I still feel like the aesthetics
are on point with my Instagram
even if I'm using a different tool
to schedule the content to go out.
That's why I love the features in Later,
which include visual scheduling and media management
as well as going back into your marketing and analytics
and really seeing what actually works.
My posts are not ready to go
until I look at the visual preview.
You can see what your grid will look like
once you've scheduled posts to go out
after it's all said and done.
And when people go back to your profile
and see how it all looks together to me,
I think that's such an important thing
to take into consideration
when you are scheduling your Instagram posts.
The good news is that it's not just about me
and my Instagram.
We actually have a lot of social accounts
that we manage at Gatluw,
not just my Instagram, but others as well.
You've probably seen Amy TV Book Clubs,
Shine Squad secrets.
We also have Twitter accounts, our Pinterest account,
and Later helps us to schedule across all of these.
So not only am I able to batch my time
to schedule content on my own account,
which I like to post by myself,
but we can batch as a team
the other accounts that we all do together.
We don't just talk about productivity here,
we do it in house as much as we can.
So since Later simplifies Instagram marketing
for businesses of all sizes,
we were able to choose a plan
that worked best for our business,
so my team can use this as well for all of those accounts.
Check out the link in the description below.
If you use my code Amy2020,
you will get to try their growth plan for one month free.
This is available to new users,
so definitely check that out.
And then your Instagram would be popping all the time
because you batched it and it's done.
This takes a little bit of work.
I try to make it as easy on me as possible
by having one set studio in the house,
which is why I set up a corner of this room
to be where I filmed, but it still takes some time.
Hair, makeup, getting the video idea to come to fruition,
coming up with photography that I need
and setting up the lights.
So I really, really, really need to batch, film, and photo,
which is what I'm doing today.
So if I'm spending time on getting ready
and I'm gonna sit down and film a video
and the camera's on and the mic is on,
I might as well do as much as I can
in that moment as possible.
So sometimes I will film two videos at once.
I'll definitely try to do one video
and a little bit of photo,
whether it's for the thumbnails that I use for the videos
or for Instagram posts that I'm going to promote it with,
stuff like that.
Anything that I can do to get the most mileage
out of this makeup is really great,
but also it's kind of hard to get into camera mode
and then be taken out of it to do something else,
which is why I try to have as many
of like tasks like this as possible.
Even if I'm going to take like a Zoom meeting today,
I'll save it for the afternoon,
I'll do the creative stuff in the morning.
That way, if it's something where I needed to be on
because it was a video interview or it's a video call
that's gonna take longer than 20 minutes,
I really want to make sure that I look the part.
Dress for success.
So I will sometimes package those together in the same day,
but for the most part,
film and photo always get their own chunk of time
at least once or twice a week.
The nature of what I do, it's usually twice a week,
but I would love it if it was only once.
I really would, no makeup day every other day, yes.
I'm sure a lot of people can relate
when I say that there's a lot to balance
to also be the one in charge of all the meals.
So not only am I running a couple of businesses
and constantly on the go trying to batch my business life,
I also have to make sure that we eat in this house.
I'm the one in charge of all the meal planning,
all the grocery shopping.
Who'd have thunk I would be the expert on that ever,
certainly not me.
So it is vital or not only am I annoyed,
but I have to hear about it from other people,
like my husband, if I don't set aside time
to do all of that, which is why it's my Sunday ritual.
I come down here to the kitchen,
I open up my notion spreadsheet.
I've got like a notion spreadsheet that allows me
to keep all of my favorite recipes, my go-to stuff.
Like I'll definitely make the same things for dinner
a couple times a week, because we're happy with that
as long as it's mostly healthy eating.
Every once in a while,
we'll phone it in and we'll get takeout,
but if I can mostly plan the meals for the week
and have options for lunch and breakfast
so I'm not constantly down here having to cook every meal
because who does that in real life?
Most people leave the house to go to work,
so I'm not gonna sit here
and act like I have nothing to do just because I'm at home.
I have to compartmentalize, I have to batch.
So there's some things that I create
in advance of the week to make sure
that I set everyone else up for success, right?
Not just my husband, but me.
I gotta be able to come down here
and just grab a bite to eat
for a morning that I don't have time
for a longer breakfast.
If I do, I might stop down here,
make some eggs and make some bacon.
But most of the time, I don't.
So on Sundays, I do all the meal planning.
I figure out what I don't have,
go through all my cabinets,
my refrigerator, order the groceries.
I don't go grocery shopping,
I batch like the order essentially
and then hopefully it comes in a couple of hours,
so that if there's anything I need to pre-prep,
I can do that when the groceries arrive.
So in the morning I'm planning everything out,
I'm ordering groceries
and then in the afternoon,
I come back after I've done some laundry,
change the sheets and all that kind of stuff
to start prepping some stuff we'll need for the week.
What I like to have at a minimum
is enough hard-boiled eggs for both of us.
We like to start the day with protein,
so that's what Vin and I will both have to start the day,
especially if like we're hungry early in the morning,
which I hate when I feel like that,
I have to have protein if that's the case.
I'll also make our favorite breakfast cookies.
They're a little bit healthy,
but they're also nice and like filling
so you can kind of get past the feeling of hunger
if you're in the middle of something.
I'll also poach some chickens,
so that we'll have that ready for any salads
that we want to make for lunches,
which is what we typically try to do.
I will prep a couple of salad bowls
in the morning, each morning.
Just throw a little bit of fruit in,
throw a little bit of lettuce in.
That way, if you're down here and you're starving for lunch,
you just have to throw a protein and a dressing in
and you're ready to go.
And I always make my protein granola.
I can not get enough of this granola,
throwing it into a yogurt as a snack is so good
and it's also got protein powder in it
so that it gives you that extra little bit of something.
It's not just regular sweet, sweet granola,
it's also got a little bit of protein in there,
so those are the basics that I try to create.
I batch that on Sundays.
I batch all my meal planning
and grocery shopping on Sundays,
so you can find me in here for much of Sunday.
And by the way, on Sundays,
I'm typically doing something that slow cooks.
Like in the Dutch oven,
I just became a recent newbie to the Dutch oven,
but my crock pot is my fall and winter best friend,
so whatever is actually for dinner on Sunday
is already basically cooking itself
because I'm dealing with enough meal prep,
it makes it a lot easier to then also figure out
what we're eating that day.
This is one of my favorite things that I batch.
It is what I like to call an audio day.
So whether I am recording a podcast,
doing an interview with someone, taking conference calls,
just all of those things that typically have to do
with making good on external promises,
but would be extremely disruptive if I did them
when I am trying to be creative, come up with new ideas
or if I'm filming something.
I like to have an audio day
because it means I get to sit here,
talk in the microphone, take calls,
just bang it all out at one time.
I would much rather have 10 back-to-back phone calls
all at once and do them altogether
than have them sporadically placed throughout the week
because they really do take me out of the mode
that I'm in so much to be able to engage with somebody,
give them my undivided attention
and be able to deliver
on what they asked me for my time for.
So audio days are really, really important to me.
They tend to be at the end of the week
when my attention span is a little bit sparse.
I really have to save all of those momentous moments
where I am driven and ambitious in what my vision is
at the beginning of the week.
And then when things are starting to falter at the end,
I'm being held accountable by external sources.
Taking the phone calls,
delivering on any audio things that I need to do,
it's just better served for me on like a Thursday
for me to do this kind of thing.
I realize a lot of people can't batch this kind of thing
a lot of the time
cause your job may mean
that you have to interact with people a lot,
you have to take calls when they schedule the calls.
Just sort of depends on your situation,
but because I'm sort of like the person
that decides what my calendar looks like,
I can basically choose hey,
if you want to set up a phone call for me,
if you're my assistant or anybody else,
then let's do it at the end of the week
because that's when
I'm gonna be able to give it better attention.
Still something I think
we could all take into consideration
even if we have other people who are holding us accountable
on different levels.
If you can still have some boundaries like that
in place for yourself as like a personal policy,
any way possible, I think it is really helpful overall.
I know what you're thinking, you're ready to get started,
you're ready to start batching different areas of your life.
You probably had a lot of ideas
while you were watching my examples.
And then later on, you're gonna go, you know what?
It just doesn't work for me.
And a lot of times when I get questions
from people saying like, how do you stick with it,
how do you maintain that routine of batching?
When do you set aside time to plan, to batch
and all this kind of stuff, that's all just the nuances.
If you truly want success in time batching
and calendar blocking,
it comes down to communication.
I know you're probably thinking, Amy,
what are you talking about?
Well, usually when we get held up
from making good on the things we want to do,
the good habits we want to get into,
we don't have the conversations with the influences
around us who might disrupt it
and therefore make us want to call it quit,
so that could be your significant other, your kids,
anyone around you in the house.
It could be your boss at work
who thinks you need to do things a certain way,
which they're probably right,
but you can still work time batching into your strategy
so that you can be as efficient as possible
because life always happens.
The best thing that you can do is show that initiative
with those other people and say hey, I have this idea.
I would like to give it a try.
And so I'm planning on batching these tasks,
which means I need to have completely uninterrupted focus
as much as possible.
I realize emergencies happen, I realize you need me,
but if I can get that focus during that time,
it would be very helpful.
We often don't have that conversation
because we're afraid to, it feels confrontational
and it's okay to do that.
Another thing you might want to communicate is to yourself.
I do little things on my calendar,
like put audio day at the top of my calendar
for every Thursday,
so that way both me and my assistant know
we need to try to put those types of appointments
on this day as much as possible, especially you, Amy,
who wants to do all the things all the time
and will find any pocket or any moment to make it happen.
Sticking with that time batching is really good for mindset
and certainly efficiency,
so communicating it to yourself
and anyone else that might be able to help you is huge.
Let me give you a really good reason
why you're gonna love time batching.
It's not always so that you can do more.
It's also so you can do less.
A lot of time, I'm excited to time batch
a bunch of things at one time and get it done
and move on so that I can literally go Netflix and chill
with my husband.
Like I just want to go and sit on the couch and eat popcorn
and like catch up on The Bachelorette, like whatever.
It's okay if that's your motivation as well.
You can feel good sitting there saying,
look at how much I got done, look at how much I batched,
so I deserve to take a load off and have a glass of wine.
I'd love to hear what you thought about this.
Let me know in the comments down below,
what are you planning on batching?
What are you going to be trying to communicate
to those around you to help you batch in your life?
Share that with me.
If you enjoyed this video
and you want to see more videos like this,
please hit the thumbs up button,
that tells me we're doing something right
and it really helps our community grow here
as well as having you subscribe and turn on notifications.
I don't have my notifications turned on most of the time,
but when it's time to go for a scrolly scroll,
I like to see my favorite uploads from my favorite creators,
so hopefully you'll do the same and come back.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in, I appreciate it.
As always, remember subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love and go after the life you want.
Cheers.
I feel like I hear an ambulance coming.
I'm getting distracted by the Amazon truck outside
cause it's always coming to my house.
Oh, I think it is coming to my house.
No memory card, but there was a memory card, you liar.
Frisky business.
Auto-focus, yeah!
It's a little bit of a mess over there.