B – Brain Dumping and Batching method for Working Moms

It is an everyday story. So much to do every day and so little time. The mind is everywhere and we are constantly trying to manage everything in our head. Instead of overthinking and losing sleep over what all needs to be done, try the Brain Dumping and Batching method.

Brain Dumping and Batching method for Working Moms #BlogChatterA2Z

What is Brain Dumping?

Brain dumping in simple terms is putting your thoughts, ideas, plans to paper or in this digital era on a document file may be. Many writers, poets, creative people do it and trust me as a busy mom is it equally helpful for all the moms out there.

Brain Dumping involves breaking down your life into different sections like work, business or side job and personal or home stuff. Once you have these sections write down for each of these sections what all had to be done in those sections.

So what you have to do is, make sections for

1. Work
2. Kids
3. Family
4. Home
5. Self-care
6. Others

Brain Dumping and Batching method

Now for each of these sections, you ought to think of what all needs to be done for each of these sections and write those down.

For kids, you can further section in terms of school, homework, playtime, bathing, head to toe.

Pickup each of the family member and see what all needs to be done for them.

When picking up home , divide based on each room of the house including the bathroom.

Lot of things to take care of, do not forget your own care list down what all you need in terms of food, physical health, mental health , pampering.

In the other section, list out things for friends and other people in the world.

Once you get everything from your head on paper, you can move to the next step.

How to get the most done

With Brain Dumping, you have all your thoughts, ideas and tasks out of your brain and on paper (or a Document file). I know so many things may make it a little too overwhelming but now we are going to get things done based on how much time we have.

Batching

We often feel multitasking allows you to get more done. However, if you observe carefully since you are not focused on the task, you often spend more time doing it since you are more likely to make mistakes when you multitask. This simply means which means you will have to spend more time redoing the task to correct the mistake.

Batching is a time management strategy. It can be used widely at work and at home. It allows to maximize and utilize your time most productively.

With task batching you keep your focus on tasks that are similar and hence get more done overall.

You need to break your days to smaller batches and then work on similar tasks in batches.

That is where Routines come into the picture. Having a set morning, evening and night time routine plays a really important role in anyone’s life and working moms are no different here.

Time slots

What does time slot mean? It means block time for a certain task and then you need to work on that task in the particular slot only. When you have time slots assigned for tasks, you know you have limited time to get it done and you focus better on the task.

Something Shailaja calls as Time Blocking. I have used her tips in the post and worked really well on managing my day well.

Now racing the clock to get the task done as quickly as possible may get a little overwhelming at times but not if you make it a game.

Even then make sure you pick up the most important tasks of your list and work on your list of tasks accordingly.

Overestimate time

When we have a list of tasks in hand, we may also have the feeling that we will conquer it all and think that we can do things in the time we a lot for each of the tasks.

As a working woman make sure you consider those breaks you need at work to find out about your kids, those washroom trips for your little one. Hence, I would suggest always overestimate the time you would need to do a task.

At the end of the day, you will be proud of how much you achieved and not beat yourself because you couldn’t do tasks due to the interruptions.

Take Help

This is one tip I will give to everyone. There is no harm or shame in asking for help. Do not think of being judged or troubling anyone. You need a support system around you.

Understand you are not a supercomputer ( Which also needs maintenance and downtime), you cannot do this alone.

Take help from your kids, your spouse and other members in the house.

To summarize

• Make a brain dump in categories out of your head on a paper.
• Minimalize mistakes by avoiding multitasking.
• Use batching to minimize multitasking. You do things most effectively this way.
• Use time slots or time blocking to get tasks done in time.
• Always consider interruptions and overestimate time.
• Take help whenever you think you need it.

This post is written as part of the BlogchatterA2Z challenge

Comments

comments