In How to Get Ahead in Your Business and Stop Playing Defense, Avram and Rachel dive into one of their greatest tools in getting ahead—batching. They explain the idea of batching tasks and give several examples of practical ways they use batching in their business and even in making this podcast! Learn how batching and being aware of switching costs helped Avram and Rachel get more time back in their life and not fall behind when inevitable things like sickness in the fam happen.

Show notes

1:41 A refresher on batching and how it helps you be more efficient

4:25 Getting into examples of batching—including this very podcast!

5:50 Intro to switching costs and how it sucks so much time from your biz

7:28 What are those non-negotiables that you’re going to fit into your life, no matter what

9:34 Tips for breaking batching down even further for max efficiency

11:38 Rachel & Avram’s divide and conquer hack for days with a lot of meetings

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Welcome back to the Babies and Business Podcast. It’s Avram Gonzales here with my lovely co-host, Rachel Gonzales.

Rachel Gonzales: Hello.

Avram Gonzales: We’re talking about ultimate time hacks today. We have some great stuff to share with you, maybe some concepts you’ve heard of before, but perhaps not in this particular vein. I know that you’re excited about it, Bain.

I am. Why are you so excited about it?

Rachel Gonzales: Well, because we kind of stumbled on this out of necessity, you know, it’s not like anybody goes into really anything thinking, let’s batch stuff, you know, let’s do this or that. You kind of, we just stumbled on it. So that’s why I think it’s really exciting because of that.

Avram Gonzales: Well, we ran into this situation having a child and a business

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Where we had no time for anything.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Sometimes not even time for each other.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, exactly.

Avram Gonzales: Sad face.

Rachel Gonzales: I know.

Avram Gonzales: So out of necessity, started looking at different ways to get time back, and we found that we’re actually really good at a couple different things, one of which is this concept of batching.

Now I know it’s, you’ve probably heard of batching before. We’re gonna give you some really cool insights I think today that you haven’t heard of before, to get more time back. Time back with your spouse, time back with your children, time back to do whatever it is that you want to do. Instead of just working all the time. Right?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: So really for us, life has transformed as a result of batching more of our work. We’re gonna give you some examples today of how you can do that. Things that you can take away today and start implementing in your business or even in your home, that would help you get back time. The thing I would encourage you to do is to not just immediately fill the time with something else, right.

Be with that time. See what maybe you would like to do instead. One of the big things that we’ve also achieved here is no longer being in emergency mode. In the business and the house more often than we have before. It sucks playing defense and feeling beholden to, I must do this, or I must do this right now.

Because you weren’t prepared for it

Rachel Gonzales: Well, and when you feel like you must do this or you must do that, it, it never fails. You never have time to do all the musts and all the shoulds. You’re, you always have more of those things than time.

Avram Gonzales: And then

the things that you wanna do seem to get pushed to the side.

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly.

Avram Gonzales: That’s why this episode’s important to us.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And then your stress level goes up and just so many things. And you know, when we say these shoulds, it can, for me, it just makes me feel so depressed and anxious and frustrated. So many different feelings that I feel and I just don’t necessarily want to avoid those feelings. But I definitely want to get ahead of the things so that we can just being off on offensive. Is really powerful because then you really have choices. We can choose what we want to spend our time on.

Avram Gonzales: That’s right. So let’s drop some knowledge on you here. What is batching, first of all? Well, for those of you who don’t know, batching is simply taking a process, like baking cookies and making a bunch at the same time. Yeah. So you wouldn’t make the dough for one cookie and then bake that cookie to completion, take it out, and then make the dough for one more cookie and then do, that would be ridiculous.

Rachel Gonzales: Even if you just wanted one cookie right now, you would not do it that way.

Avram Gonzales: I wouldn’t. Yeah, because you don’t just want one cookie. It’s true. So batching, I think is a great example, is with cooking. Yeah, right. We batch things with cooking all the time. As a matter of fact, we have an episode coming up where we’re batching our podcast episodes right now. So if you didn’t know the last six episodes of the podcast, we batched at one time when the baby was sleeping, like right now, and we did them all at once and didn’t have to record another podcast for about two months.

Rachel Gonzales: And that was such a relief in our household. We had, I mean, Lincoln got sick at the beginning of February and then sleep went downhill for both he and I. We were in pretty rough spot for the last two months. So it was actually incredible that we had that time.

Avram Gonzales: In talking about offense versus defense, because we were so proactive and batched a bunch of episodes ahead of time, even though we got behind the schedule of what we wanted to be in creating new episodes, we had all this extra bandwidth to work with. We don’t have to be stressed about it. Yeah. In creating new ones.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, and also this podcast is a passion project for us. We really love talking with each other. We like to just talk about all sorts of things, and that’s kind of how this podcast came about, is that we just love to talk and we think. The things that we have to say and even our energy can just really spur people on to do what matters and works for them.

Avram Gonzales: We found that when we record one podcast, we feel so good about it, we might as well just roll onto the next one. And that’s kind of the brilliance around batching is something called switching costs. Yeah. Now, switching costs, if you’re not familiar, every time you have to switch tasks, your brain has to start over and think a little bit different than it was before. Now, you might not think that’s a big deal, but I promise you the more decisions that you make in a single day, having to go back and forth between things is taking its toll on you. Yeah. Whether you recognize it or not.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, for sure.

Avram Gonzales: When we looked at certain things, and we’ll talk about this in an upcoming podcast, like meal planning and meal prep and things like that, we realized we were revisiting these things, these same themes over and over and over again on a regular basis, and we’d have to make brand new decisions almost daily on, well, what do we eat tonight? What do we need to go shopping for this week? We were having to revisit stuff all the time, and I think that’s another place where batching comes into play.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, and we, we get, we were on defense most of the time with that. And then add in any of the stressors of lack of sleep and lack of planning, all the things. And you know, with a baby, unpredictable, that is the name of the game really. You know, you roll with the punches. So planning has been incredible.

So it’s just a teaser because we’re gonna be talking about the meal planning more in depth but batching has really, really helped us to have better space in making those decisions.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. So how would you identify places that you could use this particular method of time hacking?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You know, it’s a couple of different ways.

First off, you need to find out what matters to you. Okay. What are some of the things that maybe are what do you call it? Non-negotiables. Like for me, I go to the gym twice a week. That’s not something you can batch, but what are the other things that matter to you that you would like to have in your life in consistent manner but maybe you might not have time for, or you think you might not have time for? Okay. Sometimes it’s around time, sometimes it’s around money. So maybe your money situation is constrained or your time situation is constrained. For us, our time situation was constrained. Yep. So we really had to find out what mattered to us and then come up with a plan on how to use that time efficiently. Sometimes we only have 30 minutes, but if we’ve planned and we know that we wanna record a podcast, maybe we might be able to get two podcasts done in that time. And you get your time back immediately, almost because you get time together and you’re doing something that matters to you, whatever that is for you.

So if your time is constrained, what are the things that you still want in your life, but you feel like you can’t have, yeah, it just takes a little bit of planning.

Avram Gonzales: And what are the things that aren’t dependent on you doing it at a specific time? Yeah. So does it matter if it’s done just in time, like in the moment or are there things and or parts of things that you do that could be done ahead of time?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: So another example of how we batch with the podcast is we batch the ideas at one time. Then we often batch the short outlines of just a couple different points of what we want to talk about in that podcast, and then we batch the actual recording of them right at the same time. So yes, we could do all of that at once. We just decided we’d break down these three different parts of it because it takes a different part of your brain to engage right in those different processes. So I. That’s another way to attack it. Like what are the things that you could do in advance that just they’re not time, they’re not actually time bound.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. And then also understanding that sometimes when we’re doing something, it does take that prep. So not knowing that it takes the prep and just kind of dumping into it. You might actually have a fail. First off, it might be like, oh, well instead of recording, we actually planned. Sure. So it can help us to get really real with our expectations. And to actually help us understand that we have unrealistic expectations of whatever task it is that we’re trying to batch. Yes. So we get some real good understanding around how it actually functions to batch that thing.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. We also did something else that’s pretty interesting. If you feel like you wear a couple different hats in your business or a couple different hats at home. We talked about this a couple times already. Your brain gets in different mode. Yeah, and so one of the things that Rachel and I did that was actually pretty unique was Rachel’s idea. We are both very passionate about a networking organization called BNI, Business Networking International, and she has a meeting that she attends on Wednesdays.

I have a meeting that I attend on Thursdays. And then well just tell me what your idea was.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just thought that it would be really, really helpful to keep everything b and I on one day, so I All your meetings or? Yeah. So I’ll take the those one-to-one meetings with another business owner on that day, whether it’s before the meeting or after. I’m also a support person in the chapter, so when new members come in, I help them get acclimated to BNI. The wonderful thing that it is, we have 10 mentors in our chapter one that is a regional mentor and I’m the one that introduces them and then helps to foster those relationships getting built and that information getting dispensed to them.

So it does take some follow-up. Yeah, follow up big time. So I send out emails, introducing the new person in my chapter to these mentors, each and every mentor. So that’s 11 emails that go out and then a phone call every week. So I try. And again, the word is try or strive to do those things on Wednesday.

Sometimes I’m exhausted at the end of the day, but it is the intention. So the idea was that you can do all BNI, I can do all BNI on those respective days, and then we don’t have that switching cost for the entire day. Yeah. So what that means really is like, what does that look for our entire day?

Well, if it’s your day for the meeting, you aren’t in charge of getting Lincoln up in the morning. I am. Excuse my phone, making some noise over there. So I would get him up in the morning. I would be in charge of all of those naps. Even when you get home from your meeting, I would be in charge of all those things.

So I’m taking point on Lincoln on that day so that you can come home and have the assurance that you can do the follow-up that you need to. I think it’s worked really well.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. I mean, when I’m home with him, I feel more present with him because I am not responsible for anything else but him that day.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

And well, and like we’ve talked about in different podcast episodes that, or maybe we have, maybe we haven’t. That we want to build our business around our life, not our life around our business. So being intentional and getting that time with our son, that’s really important. You get an entire day with Lincoln to do what you want with him and have that time to really be present and not be expected, not feel those expectations of mine looming over you.

Like, well, why didn’t you do the dishes? You had like five minutes. Why didn’t you do this or that? Just being able to know that the other person doesn’t have the expectation of working or cleaning, whatever it might be. Having a baby can be stressful on us because we wanna do the very best for him, but sometimes we really don’t know what that is.

Being present is really all that we can do that day.

Avram Gonzales: But Rachel, I already have no time. How am I gonna possibly batch stuff?

Rachel Gonzales: Well, that’s the thing is. We’ve all heard it. If it matters to you, you’re gonna make time for us. That’s right. So I learned early on in my life that, if you wanna do something in your life, you actually have to be proactive about making sure it’s part of your life.

People that are into fitness prioritize that. People that are into health prioritize that. So what are your priorities? Align what you do with your priorities. I think it’s more of a mental shift than a time shift. Because we all are given the very same amount of time in the day. It’s just how we use it.

Yeah. It’s not about really the time, it’s really deciding what matters to us and being true to that. Like for us, again, we we’re, we’re batching this podcast. It matters to us. This is a really fun time that we get to spend with each other. So when we batch things, we are not. On the defense, we’re on the offensive, and it brings about this awesome thing that maybe some of you have never experienced, and you always feel behind.

You actually have the ability to be ahead. Mm-hmm. So that your dreams, your goals don’t suffer. And you’re not in the mode of the, like the crisis mode that we talked about earlier where you have all of these emergencies that are here. You have way more emergencies than time in the day or the week or the month or whatever you’re feeling constrained on.

And so when you batch, you’re using the same amount of time, whatever it is. Maybe you have 30 minutes to be together or just yourself and you’re doing that thing, but you’re being purposeful about what that thing is. Instead of letting things fill your time, be purposeful about what comes into your time. So it’s incredible when you really make this choice. It really will change your life.

You know, what do you get from it? You get the ability to make choices back if you feel like your time is so constrained that your clients rule your time or your children rule your time or your schedule rules your time. Maybe rethink all of those things. Like we had this great reset in our life and that was Lincoln.

What happened was everything that was in our life got, we threw it up into the air because none of it was happening really. And then we got to pick back up what we wanted to have in our life. And that me, that could be the time that we spend in our business. That could be efficiencies and processes, all sorts of things.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, we could obviously talk about this on and on and on. We’d love to hear from you what sort of things that you’ve been batching or things that you’ve tried to batch before that maybe didn’t work out. We’d love to hear that. Please connect with us on social media at Babies and Biz Pod, or hit us up on the website, babies and Biz.

Is it Babies and biz.com babies? Yeah, man, we’re still getting used to it. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning into our episode today. We’ll catch you on the next.

Rachel Gonzales: Talk to you later.

Avram Gonzales: Boom. That’s great.