On Batching: The Fewer the Better
For this week’s Saturday Archive Aloha, I had queued up Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7 as our article for reviewing/ remembering/ repeating. Batching is a productivity key in the ‘Ohana in Business model of MWA workplace basics (Key 6).
Then I realized, that my suggestion immediately follows an article that was not a good example of that: Goals Change. Values are Forever.
Not only are the values of Aloha a book-batch of 19, I just made them a Hō‘imi-batch of 20.
That’s way, way too much.
Too much to work on at any given time. Please remember my book-written batch of 19 Values, and now, our Hō‘imi-batch of 20, is meant to guide us all year long, and possibly all career long if you seek to be an Alaka‘i Manager prescribing to this calling and these beliefs. These larger batches are outlines, and not really a batch at all. They are reference points, guideposts, and resources.
Values are jam-packed with an abundance of possibilities. In fact, each of the 19 Values of Aloha has an index of its own — click on any one of them in the grey navigational bar atop this page and take a look. [Hō‘imi is not there, to keep the site true to the book, but it has a steadily-populating index now too: Our Hō‘imi tag.]
My coaching business entity, Say Leadership Coaching, can be used as an example. We coach on all the precepts of the Managing with Aloha philosophy, and teach all 19 values, considering these things to be our coaching curriculum. However in the business model of SLC, we focus on just 5 values as our Values Statement:
1— Aloha, 2— Ho‘ohana, 3— Hō‘imi, 4— Alaka‘i, and 5— ‘Ike loa
No matter the batch, batch with fewer.
In our Language of Intention, batching is about grouping like-items together because they complement each other in accomplishing the task at hand. Our Saturday Archive Aloha article, Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7 talks about 4 different tasks that benefit from this strategy of complementary batching.
What does that tell us? That we should clearly define the task at hand, before we assemble a batch designed to work on it. Within that batch which results, the fewer the moving parts, the better our focus is likely to be.
Batching is much, much smarter than multi-tasking — or trying to. Study after study has shown that multi-tasking is usually not a good idea. The professed multi-tasker is fooling themselves into thinking they can handle more than one thing at a time with much focus or efficiency: Our brains just don’t work that way.
On to our Saturday Archive Aloha review:
Please read: Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7 .
Get a task in mind, one you have scheduled to accomplish in the week to come. As we said above, define it well first: What is your best possible outcome?
Now think about what you will need to do, and see if we can make this useful and practical for you:
Batch of 2, including you — Is there someone you will partner with on that task?
Batch of 5 — What kind of ‘Take 5’ listing might be most relevant in your next-stepping in getting the task done?
Optional Bonus Link, because it’s the weekend and Managers are Readers:
Umair Haque is one of my favorite essay writers, and in the best article I have read in this January’s whirlpool of New Years compositions, he suggests a 1-word batch of 3 good questions to inspire our efforts all the year through:
How to Have a Year That Counts, a 6-minute read on Medium.
