most of the advice you hear in the realm
of productivity boils down to work more
intensely and get rid of distractions
but amongst all that more pedestrian
advice there is actually one technique
that can truly help you get more on your
to-do list done in a lot less time with
barely any additional effort in fact it
might actually make your work quite a
bit easier all it requires is some good
planning today i'm going to teach you
all about that technique but first let's
start things off with a story more than
a hundred years ago henry ford adopted a
technique that would change
manufacturing forever the assembly line
taking a cue from meatpacking plants
from places like chicago and cincinnati
ford placed workers in stationary
positions and then brought pieces of the
car to them along a moving line and the
results were incredible when ford
applied this technique to the building
of the chassis for the model t workers
went from taking more than 12 hours to
assemble a single chassis down to just
93 minutes allowing cars to not only be
produced much more quickly but at a much
lower cost as well and while ford
certainly didn't invent the assembly
line he did popularize it and what he
also did was give us a tangible nuts and
bolts example of a technique that we can
actually apply to virtually any kind of
work would ford's assembly line really
leveraged was task batching task
batching means organizing your tasks
into groups or batches so that you can
work more efficiently and get more done
in less time batching similar tasks
together saves you time first by
bundling the startup and the cleanup
costs associated with each task see
almost anything you do requires some
kind of setup time a startup cost you
have to get out the correct tools you
have to set up your workspace sometimes
you even have to get yourself to the
correct location in the first place for
example when i'm filming a video i often
have a list of shots that i have to get
that goes over the a-roll this talking
head portion so it's more interesting to
watch the video and i could film all
these shots in their chronological order
the way that you'd see them in the final
video but a better way to do it is
actually to figure out first what
location each shot needs to be in and
then film all those shots in one big
batch batching also has a couple of less
obvious benefits one being that when you
batch similar tasks together you deal
with less cognitive switching now if
you've seen any of my videos on how
focus works you probably know that when
you switch tasks you get this cognitive
switching penalty where your brain takes
a while to really sink into the next
task and you're a little bit less
productive for at least a few minutes
and i've absolutely experienced this
even when filming videos from the times
that i've been gathering shots for a
video and i was too lazy to batch them i
remember getting a shout out to with my
camera and then going over to the
computer to take a screen recording but
of course i couldn't help checking
twitter for a few minutes first and when
i batch everything together i gave
myself far fewer opportunities to get
distracted like that another interesting
benefit comes when you batch by time so
say you decide to process your email at
9am every single day by setting a time
for that task you're also implicitly
defining when you don't check your email
so how do you start batching your tasks
well the first step is to find different
contexts for your work a context defines
different aspects of a task and there
are all sorts of different contexts that
we could use but for now i just want to
cover some of the most useful ones first
there is energy some tasks require a
huge amount of mental energy while
others are a bit more low energy for me
writing is probably the highest energy
task that i do while something like
doing my bookkeeping is a much lower
energy task and by batching my tasks by
energy level i can be a bit more
efficient and batching task taskbar
entry level is especially useful if you
know your biological prime time which is
a term from chris bailey's book the
productivity project like most people
you probably have a window of time
during the day where you feel the most
on the most focused so if you can figure
out what that window is you can do your
high energy tasks then and save the low
energy tasks for later another great
context is location where you have to do
the task like i need to be right here on
set to film these videos while i can be
almost anywhere where i can get an
internet connection to research or write
the scripts for them tools required is a
similar one for some tasks i need a
camera and lights like here on the set
for others i need my computer and for
some i might even need a power drill and
finally i'm going to mention social
interaction when i'm writing i'm almost
always in total isolation but for other
things like answering my emails or
checking with my team i have to be in a
more social frame of mind so it's good
to match things that way as well editing
tom here and realize there was one
additional context that i didn't want to
leave out of the video and that is
batching work that does require the
internet
and work that doesn't remember that your
environment is a huge factor in your
ability to focus on your work so if you
can batch your tasks and get rid of the
worst influencing factor on your ability
to focus
all the better you can actually use
these contexts by applying them as a
label on each of your tasks todoist even
lets you do this by default you can
create labels you can apply them to each
task and then you can view each label to
see your task batches really easily next
you want to decide when you're going to
take care of the tasks in each context
there are a couple of good ways to do
this first you can set up a specific
time like processing all of your email
at 9am each day or even simpler you can
just decide the order in which you're
going to tackle each context and to give
you an example that let's actually go
back to how i batch the different shots
for my videos and i actually want to
show you the system that i have set up
to do this inside a notion so here is a
video project for the tmc's video we did
last year here in our notion setup and
we've got a whole lot of stuff here in
the project area we've got project tasks
we've got an area for our script and
research but what i want to show you is
this little area called b-roll this is
where we create ideas for all the
different b-roll shots animations little
on-screen text pop-ups anything that
isn't just me talking straight to the
camera and you will notice i can make
this bigger here that we have a
chronological ordering based on the
timestamp in which it's going to go in
the video this is actually great for my
editor tony because once we have all the
b-roll gathered he can just go on down
the timeline and drag and drop things on
in chronological order it's fantastic
for that purpose but again it's not so
great for actually gathering the
different shots because sometimes we
need to film things sometimes we need to
take screen recordings sometimes we need
to develop animations what have you so
what we actually do is take about five
minutes before we start gathering to tag
each of these ideas with things like
film or overhead whiteboard archive for
pulling stuff from our server stock
footage from different stock footage
websites like story blocks and then we
can actually create a different view
with a different sort criteria so note
that this chrono view is sorted
by timestamp first but when it's time to
actually gather that b-roll we switch
over to our gather view and this view as
you can see is sorted by the tags so we
have a sort criteria where tags our
first and then location is second and by
doing it this way i can see everything i
need to film in one big batch and i can
even break it down further so for this
video we had several different locations
uh one being the office so here are all
different things we had to film in the
office and then i can move over to the
edit bay into the studio and then move
on to other action types overhead shots
whiteboard shots things we're going to
pull as archival footage from the server
and by batching we were able to gather
this stuff much more quickly now you
probably noticed that like the video
project we just looked at in notion this
video also contained a lot of that
b-roll i was talking about and some of
it was b-roll that we did shoot
ourselves but we were also able to get a
lot of it from storyblocks which is a
service that i've been using for years
and who have been kind enough to sponsor
this video if you're a creator you
definitely want to check out storyblocks
they let you download unlimited creative
assets stock footage sound effects music
after effects templates from a library
of more than one million assets to
choose from so if there's a shot that
you just can't get for a video project
they probably have something you can use
for just one example back in 2020 we
shot this video that i am insanely proud
of called the skill you are slowly
losing but one shot that i couldn't get
while i was there that i really wanted
was an aerial shot of all the trees in
the mountain area i couldn't get that
because number one i don't have a drone
license and number two a lot of the
mountains in colorado are actually
illegal to use drones in because they're
state parks so story blocks to the
rescue i found this great shot that fit
in perfectly with the video with just a
little bit of extra color grading and it
made the video so much better and in
addition to getting you shots that you
just couldn't get on your own storybox
can also simply help you save time in
the production process they have this
diverse ever-growing library of assets
for nearly any purpose and the best part
is that they have subscriptions that
will fit any budget so whether you're
just getting started as an indie creator
or you're running a small team like we
are or even if you're looking for
enterprise licensing for a bigger team
they've got a plan for you so if you
want to check out their library and
start producing better content head on
over to storyblocks.com thomas and sign
up if you found this video helpful hit
that like button for the youtube
algorithm and if you're looking to learn
even more check out this video right
here which is the ultimate guide to
managing your calendar or here's that
one we just looked at on my notion setup
on how to optimize your workspace for
better productivity