Incremental vs. Batch Processing: Examples, Dos, and Don'ts

I'm thinking about when we should do things in small bits during the day/week, and when we should "save them up" to process as a batch. Following are some thoughts.

• Email: Email management is the canonical "batch is best" time management example. We need to differentiate processing (emptying), monitoring (triage), and checking (read, don't act, and leave in inbox - waste). I suggest using monitoring for incremental (but don't go nuts), and processing for batch (use the minimum # times that you can get away with, given your job).



• Custom workflows: Switching my financial workflow (incremental processing of receipts weekly, reconciling as a batch for monthly statements) was a big productivity improvement for me. Details under "Balancing your checking account" in Custom Workflows For Knowledge Workers. Are there repeated processes in your work that can be split up into separate incremental and batch portions?



• Projects: Incremental! Trying to do a task that's too large is demoralizing, and leads to procrastination. That said, there are times when you're in the zone, and you should consider changing your plan and staying with it until productivity drops. Most of the time incremental is best - "making simultaneous progress on multiple projects" is how I put it. Even 10 minutes can help.
  



• Around the house: A lot of incremental opportunities, such as putting things away when done with them. Batches include washing laundry and doing dishes after a meal. Related: Waitress as Organizational Guru, via Collection Habit Infection, Routines, And The Value Of Creating Space.



• Writing: A specialization of project execution, I'd vote strongly for incremental: In general, steady, small steps work much better than binging. My academic clients in particular are susceptible to the latter ("I'll get this done this summer/on sabbatical.")



• Blogging: A specialization of Writing, I made this shift a while ago, and it's really helpful. As Chris says in How to Blog Almost Every Day, "Find 20-40 minutes in every day to sit still and type." I enter items into my idea capture system throughout the day, and have ~20 of them pulled out into draft HTML files at any one time. I add to these during the day as thoughts on the topics come come to me, or if I get the urge to do some image surfing.

Can we abstract some heuristics? To get you thinking: Use incremental when the job is large, or when breaking into small steps has a big payoff for the final project. Use batch when many items of the same type can be done more efficiently together. For example, when set-up and take-down are significant percentages of the job.

I'm curious: What's your thinking around incremental vs. batch? Any examples? What Do's and Don'ts can we come up with?

Blast from the Past: Academic, GTD Tidbits, Change, Hats, Math, and Bitstreams

I invite you to enjoy these past posts from the IdeaMatt archive (the last blast is here). -- matt

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  For my new academic readers: Matthew Cornell answers to your academic productivity questions via My Academic Productivity Post Is Up and GTD And Faculty Productivity: Notes From A Small Pilot Project

  
  



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  With 2009 coming to an end soon: Track Completed GTD Projects (plus Some "greatest Hits" For 2005)
  

  
  



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  In the gratitude experiment department: Use Gmail's "star" To Highlight Your Good News (I continue to use this three years later)
  

  
  



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  Thinking of (or forced to) make a change in career? Genius, Purpose, And Cool Job Descriptions - What Are *you* Built To Do? and Where Are You Going? Use Your Actions And Projects To Reverse Engineer Your Goals
  

  
  



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  For engineering fans: Some Tasty Morsels From The Ideamatt Self Help Formulary and Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide: Productivity Lessons From Basic Math

  
  



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  In the watch yourself category: Debbie Downer And The Six Thinking Hats (Great book: Six Thinking Hats.)

  
  



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  On paying attention: "Interesting, But Not Useful," Or Does It Pass The Scribble Test?, What To Do When An Excited Person Person Is Waving Something At You, and Pickle Jars, Text Files, And Creative Idea Capture

  
  



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  In the ironic naming category, a media contribution: The Science Behind Procrastination | The Cornell Daily Sun

  
  



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  If you don't have enough bitstreams: I'm honored in Top 100 Personal Development Blogs. ("bitstream" is from Mark Hurst's helpful little book Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload. I interviewed him here.)

  
  



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  Finally, In the spirt of helping new bloggers out, a young college student asked me to mention his writing about AIDS at healthlifeandstuff.com
  

  
  

Indecisiveness is a bi-product of thinking [IdeaMatt Reader Series]

(I get some insightful emails from readers - you're such a smart bunch. I thought I'd share this one from Michael Nicolls which is in response to When You Don't Want To Decide. I've not edited it. Related: Three Indecisiveness Phrases, And When (not) To Use Them. Keep 'em coming! -- matt)

Indecisiveness is a bi-product of thinking. It is a way of dancing around and playing with your resistences (e.g. expensive, unpleasant, and time-consuming) and desires (feel better) to a subject rather than fully experiencing yourself as discomfort, fear, anxiety, happiness or whatever. The circumstance is something to feel yourself as, and inside that feeling, inside how your holding that in your body, is the wisdom of the experience. As you allow yourself to reintegrate this energy the wisdom will come as impressions into your body, not just words in your mind. It will come when you quiet your thoughts, settle into your body, and allow every impression to consume you without creating separation with evaluations and judgements. In truth it will never separate from you, this is just a way of describing it so you might be able to notice how you have shaped this in your consciousness.

There are two things you can allow yourself to experience. The first is your not having a decision. So what does it feel like to want a decision but not have one? You describe the decision as 'damn' and your resistence as 'torture' These are handles to your resisted experience - starting points for your contemplation. The reality is that in present time you don't have a decision and you don't have the wisdom you desire. Feel what it feels like to not have that wisdom and accept yourself as unwise. This will open up opportunities for you. It will free all the energy you are now using unproductively. It is a way to become unstuck. It is freedom from your battling thoughts. It is enlightening.

The second thing you can allow yourself to experience is the issue you've built indecisiveness around (the 'Procedure'). Without indecisiveness what do you have left? Do you desire it or not? If so then schedule it. It not then don't. If neither yes or no then go back to the last paragraph.

When you separate your actions from your feelings you will no longer demostrate your anxiety with the need to do something and talk about it, or evaluate other peoples doings. Your blogs will have infinitely more meaningful content because there is infinitely more data in feeling than in thought, which will help others solve problems at deep emotional levels.

You Know You're Experimenting When...

• When asked, you say "This is the first time I've done this."
• You have no map. Or as Mark Shead once said to me, "We're in unknown territory here."
• You think, "I wonder what would happen if..."
• You are learning something significant. (Question: What does it mean if you're not experiencing this regularly? Why not? Is it time to shake things up?)
• You had an epiphany or insight. (Check out Jonah Lehrer's New Yorker article The Eureka Hunt. I love this: "Insights are quiet and are drowned out by having to do stuff." - my emphasis)
• You made a mistake or experienced failure (insert quotes around both).
• You were surprised.
  

  The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...' -- Isaac Asimov
  

• You are measuring something.
• You have anxiety or are afraid of something.
• You have a (any!) problem. (See Why Every Problem Should Be A GTD Project.)

I'm curious: How do you know when you're in the midst of an experiment? Does realizing/acknowledging it help? How do you enjoy the ride? (Check out 18 Ways To Enjoy The Ride At Work, One Way To Enjoy The Ride - Celebrate Surprise!, or Coffee, Booze, And Sex: Is It The Journey Or The Destination?)

When you don't want to decide

You should have a reaction immediately, one way or another. If you have to think about a dress to say you like it or not, then the dress doesn't really mean anythying. I make up my mind very, very fast about things, because anything that takes long thinking doesn't really interest me. -- Oscar de la Renta, on dress shopping in Time Tactics of Very Successful People

Have you had the following happen? You have a decision to make, but you don't want to make it, so you put it off or avoid it, but it leaves you unsettled and disturbed until you deal with it. This had come up because I have two such decisions pending right now - committing to some relatively minor surgery, and whether to accept someone's application for a project.

Of course the right thing to do is buck it up and make the damn decisions, so why do we torture ourselves? Two general categories come to mind: a) We don't know what we want to do, or b) we know it, but we're putting off taking action. In my two cases, I have one of each. I know I want to undergo the procedure, but it's expensive, unpleasant, and time-consuming - I'm nervous committing. I.e., category b. For the second one, I'm not sure whether I want to turn the person down or not, i.e., category a.

For decisions we aren't ready to make yet, make sure there are good reasons to put them off. There are a few situations where it's valid to do so, mainly when you need more information. But that can be a trap. Will gathering more information really significantly alter what you decide? (There's definitely an opportunity for 80-20 decision making here.) Beyond gathering information, "I just need more time" is also valid and also a trap. Why do you need more time? A good heuristic I share with clients is the "one-time pass" to put things off. Push it out as far as you need, but when it comes back you have to decide.

Of course there are many techniques to help make decisions, from love/hate at first sight (like de la Renta) to "T-tables" comparing alternatives across binary dimensions. That's a book chapter.

I'm curious: Do the two cases above cover the spectrum? Do you have trouble making decisions? What techniques do you use? When has putting off a decision helped a lot, and why?