Last week, I wrote about my household’s muffin meeting - a monthly meeting to discuss finances. In truth, we didn’t always have a set time for a meeting.
We used to have ad-hoc conversations; out on a walk, in the car… and I found this to be incredibly stressful.
I need the data in front of me. I need to see everything at once. If I don’t have my excel sheets open in front of me, I’m at a loss.
I was also feeling drained, and like we were putting so much energy into these short, spontaneous conversations, which were not just dedicated to finances - we would also talk about the grocery list, upcoming travel plans, dentist appointments, etc.
Switching between topics made me feel like we never actually finished any of them, and I would leave the conversation with more questions than I had started. So instead of dozens of tiny, reactive money conversations, we now batch them into one intentional, dedicated monthly finance meeting.
Where Batching Helps at Work
When I’m working with teams inside a PSA or ERP, my core belief is this:
People should be able to look at their system and immediately know what action to take.
If you were to open any screen in your system, could you answer the following?
Does my team know what action to take next?
Can they process work in chunks instead of one item at a time?
Is it obvious what the most important task/ticket is on this screen?
Instead of staring at a list of 100 tickets and jumping around one by one, the goal is to create views where everything on the screen is actioned the same way.
Examples:
A view of tickets with the same SLA response window
A view of tickets in “Completed” status that need review before closing
A view of approvals waiting on the same decision
A view of projects missing the same required step
When work is grouped like this, your brain doesn’t have to switch modes constantly. You’re not re-interpreting the situation every 30 seconds. You’re executing.
Batch First. Automate Second.
Once work is batched and clearly visible, something interesting happens.
You’ll start to notice patterns, like the same tickets needing the same action, the same approvals slowing things down, the same handoffs creating delays.
Now, you can start to look at automation, because you can now see what’s repeatable and predictable - the equivalent of realizing, “Okay, these five line items come up every single month, and we always handle them the same way. We can probably safely automate this.”
This is where automation removes friction instead of creating it:
Auto-advancing work once required fields are complete
Triggering notifications only when a specific condition is met
Applying templates based on type or status
Scheduling reviews instead of relying on memory
Batching makes it Boring - and that’s a good thing
This isn’t about squeezing more productivity out of people.
It’s about making work feel:
more predictable
less reactive
easier to manage
When people can batch their work, they stop feeling like they’re constantly behind. Progress becomes visible, culture vastly improves, and people are happier.
What’s one thing you’ve done to batch your work?
How has it improved your day/week/month?
