Law Technology

Streamline Your Work - Batch Process

By Andrew Flusche

How many simple, repetitive tasks do you have each week? Don’t they take up a lot of time? There IS a way to get them done quicker!

Easy as building cars

The assembly line revolutionized manufacturing because it broke down a complex project into a series of small, batchable tasks.

Instead of lots of people working on all parts of the car, each person was given a discrete task that they’d do repetitively. Each worker could do his task quickly because he was geared up for it all day, every day. The tools were close at hand, and he knew exactly how to tighten his bolt in the most efficient way. It’s even a good way to make pins.

Batch your life

The same principles easily apply to tasks in your to do list.

Here’s a great example: ironing clothes. I pretty much hate ironing, but many of my dress shirts need it. And since the public service life doesn’t lend itself to outsourced laundry, I iron.

Setting up the ironing board, plugging in the iron, and warming it up are pretty big time hogs. Multiply that time by 5 days a week (who irons their weekend clothes?!), and you’ve just wasted a chunk of your life. Ugh.

But if you iron everything for the week all at once, you save that setup & break-down time. And if you get in the flow, your ironing might even speed up during the batch. If you iron in batches, you’ll save time!

And if you have a big batch of ironing, you can set up in front of the TV. Reward yourself for doing this grunt work with a great episode of your favorite show. Not a bad trade-off.

What repetitive tasks do you batch process?

Photo by northbaywanderer

Full post as published by Legal Andrew on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).