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Hey friend!

I have to be honest with you…lately my productivity has taken a nosedive.

I’ve been flitting between projects like a caffeinated squirrel.

Tons of tabs open, working on 4 tasks at once, answering emails mid-task and then forgetting what I was working on.

My ADHD brain has reached the end of its rope.

And there’s a reason for that. It’s called:

Context Switching.

In short, it’s when you switch tasks before a task is complete.

It’s kind of like those optical illusions where you stare at a dot on a piece of paper for 30 seconds and then when you look away you see the imprint of the dot burned into your retinas?

Yeah, that’s your brain on context switching.

Every time you switch mid-task you’re leaving an imprint of it in your mind.

So while you THINK you changed tasks, you’re actually still running the brain-code for the previous task simultaneously.

BUT…

There is a cure for this (and I promise it’s Notion related).

It’s called:

RUTHLESS TASK BATCHING.

And if applied correctly, it will change your freakin’ life.

Here’s are 3 simple ways I’m applying this in my business (and building Notion workflows to help me) so I can kill the overwhelm and get myself to actually FOCUS:

I absolutely THRIVED in college.

Why?

My days were themed.

Some days were all about classes.

Some were about work and studying.

I had control over my schedule and I could create a weekly “cycle” of days that allowed me to dive deep on ONE type of task at a time.

So now that I’m a full-time solopreneur, I’m doing the same thing.

Here’s how:

Will I stick to this perfectly?

HECK NO!

But what it does is it allows me to focus on breaking up tasks into “chunks” so I don’t have to context switch more than once per day.

It allows my mind to enter the proper “Mode” early in the day so it takes less work to stay focused.

The best part is, I already have specific workflow pages for most of these tasks, so when I click into my “Client” page for instance, I’m able to stay there until it’s time to switch to a different task.

This is the beauty of building your Notion space like I laid out a few newsletters ago (check it out here if you missed it…but only after you finish this one 😉).

I do this in a few simple ways:

→ Put everything I need for a certain workflow in ONE place

→ Use sequential Page Templates and sequential Database views

→ Automate tasks that pull me out of Notion so I can stay focused

Here’s what I mean:

When I’m writing content, I need to zone IN on content.

I can’t be fighting through a sea of unrelated pages.

So, I have a dedicated hub page for content that houses – you guessed it! – all of my content related stuff.

That way, when it’s time to write I can access every page and workflow I need to in my Notion setup without having to click back to the main dashboard (and thus…get distracted 😅).

I’ve talked about sequential database views a lot.

They’re my pride and joy.

If you’re not familiar, in a nutshell:

Sequential database views are views that you create in a database to take you through each step of a sequence. Each view is tailored to the needs of that step.

My best example of this is my content workflow.

I have views that go like this:

Ideas > Plan > Draft > Write > Edit > Media > Schedule > Multiply

It might sound like a lot, but when you’re batching tasks?

Each of these views serves a purpose. I can work through the queue of posts to write in each step and then move on to the next step.

(Side note: this also makes it WAY easier to work in smaller chunks of time. I can sit down and write for 60 minutes, come back and edit for 30 minutes, then do all of my media and scheduling on another day.)

I also started using what I’m calling: Sequential Page Templates.

In my database page templates, I create steps that are Toggle Headers.

This allows me to work through each step on its own without having to think to myself “what’s the next step again?”

It also allows me to follow the same process each time to ensure I’m consistent.

Finally, I automate tasks that take me out of Notion.

How?

Zapier.

I created zaps that allow me to:

All within Notion.

If you want me to talk more about this in a newsletter issue, just reply to this email “Zap!” and I’ll be sure to write a guide on how to do this.

One of the best ways to figure out how to batch tasks is to pay attention to your energy and focus when you’re working through a series of steps.

For instance, I realized just how granular I needed to get with my content task batching because I kept getting DISTRACTED!

For me, writing a Newsletter is wayyyyy different than writing a thread.

So I write ALL of my newsletters at once.

Then I worry about breaking them down into threads.

Same with tweets (or, er, X’s? what the heck are we calling those now?).

But I also realized that DRAFTING content is far different than WRITING content which is different than EDITING content which is different than creating MEDIA for content.

Are you catching my drift?

Each of these gets its own step in my process now.

And it’s reduced the amount of time I need to spend on each step significantly.

Get ruthless about your batching and pay close attention to when your focus shifts or when you start to get overwhelmed by a process.

You want to maximize your ability to enter a flow state with your work.

I sincerely hope this long-ass newsletter has inspired you to start batching your tasks and saving time, my friend.

I’ll be sharing more about this as I build out specific workflows and tutorials in the coming weeks.

But if you don’t mind, reply to this email with any questions or ideas you have for me that would be helpful for you!

I’m about to start working on my next content batch, so maybe your idea will make it into next Month’s content 😉