Batch. Batch. Batch.

When you are job-hunting, batch one type of task, at one time, and forget about the other tasks until the appropriate time. Why? Because it’s more efficient and effective.

When I discovered the beauty of batching in my own personal management, it was a real productivity boon and, more importantly, a great time-saving hack. It saves time due to the mental bandwidth that is lost when you change from one task to another task. This ‘switching cost’ as it is known is the time it takes for your brain to ‘get up to speed’ on the new job.

Work in short batches, not multitasking.

So what should you “batch” in your job hunt?

When batching, you should think about the tasks that you are doing daily or weekly. Break down the process into a range of different tasks. 

When applying for a job, you have to:

1. Find a position to apply for.
2. Log the job into a spreadsheet.
3. Read the job advert and do pre-application research.
4. Create and complete the job application.

5.Log application in a spreadsheet as complete.

This has given us five steps, breaking it down like this gives us the essential components. Now we need to combine some of the elements to help our batch. It would be sensible on this occasion to batch 1 and two together and 3,4, and five together. 

Although this is not the strictest of limits, it will do enough for our needs.

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Thank you for reading this article. This is an extract from the book Political Careers: The secret and confidential guide to Finding, applying and getting a job in British politics. The book is available on Amazon in Ebook and Paperback formats.

 

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