Double your Recipe for Work at Home Efficiency

Experienced cooks know that making a double recipe isn’t much more work than making a small portion. Chopping an additional carrot or onion takes minimal time compared to the overall work of making a pot of soup.

Our work at home ventures are similar. Regardless of what you do to earn money at home, if you can do it in batches—grouping similar tasks and making a “double recipe” of that task—you will discover greater productivity.

Doubling Recipes: An Example

In my case, I am a blogger and content writer. These are some of my recurring tasks:

• Dealing with photos:  taking the photos, downloading and editing the photos, uploading photos online
• Writing articles and posts:  brainstorming, drafting, editing
• SEO:  researching keywords, tagging articles and posts, updating and pinging articles
• Social Media:  scheduling tweets, bookmarking

Instead of writing a single blog post by taking a linear trip through all the steps one by one, I can make a “double recipe” at each step and increase my productivity. The completion of that single article may be delayed a bit, but overall I will complete more work relative to my time investment.

Here is how that would look:

• Brainstorm multiple ideas for different platforms
• Do keyword research on lots of ideas at once
• Spend a whole hour on photos and images for a variety of projects
• Focus attention on drafting several different articles

Set up Takes Time

Think of the time it takes to get ready to work before you even begin—getting your materials arranged, finding passwords, remembering how to use a certain computer program, setting up a camera, etc. These necessary precursors to our work take precious time away from the more important tasks.  You can minimize the negative effect of set up time by working in batches.

Shifting Gears Wastes Time

I have found that distractions are most apt to creep in when I am between tasks. It’s too easy in those in between times to be lured away by something that is not on my to-do list. By continuing on a single task, making that double recipe of it, I prevent the downtime of shifting mental gears.

How to Apply Working in Batches

Look at the work at home tasks that you perform regularly and group them into categories. Think about how you could do a double or triple recipe of a task before moving to another, especially when you find yourself in the flow.

In your day to day goal setting, focus on time management instead of fully completed projects. With this batch method, there may be days of working at home when you don’t bring any single project to completion because you have been working on batches of preliminary steps. For example, I may spend all day working on photos and drafting but not publish a single blog post. Since I know I have used my time most efficiently by working in batches, I don’t lack a sense of accomplishment. I know the payoff is coming when I have a huge burst of completed projects to show for my investment.

Working in batches is a strategy that pays off in the long run. Take the holistic approach to your work at home goals and give it a try.