← The How To Podcast Series - Podcast Co-Hosts, Practical Podcasting Tips, and Podcast Community
The How To Podcast Series - Podcast Co-Hosts, Practical Podcasting Tips, and Podcast Community
E734 - Batch It - Leverage Doing Repeatable Tasks in Groups Instead of Context-Switching For Your Podcast Workflow - Practical Podcasting Tips
00:18:10
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Okay, we're rolling. Hey, welcome back to the how to Podcast series. It's Dave with you. Hope you're doing well. Episode 734. We're doing the podcast thing every day, right? This year, 365 days in a row. Are you still with me? Wow. It's a lot of content. I realize that. If you're new, welcome to the show. Why, Dave, are you doing this? It's to be in a creative state in 2026. It's just a challenge for myself to see what I can come up with in 365 episodes in a row. I know, right? There's daily podcasts and then there's daily podcasts, and that's what you're getting here. And I'm glad you're here. There's a lot for you to go back and listen to. There's a lot of great guests on the show as guest co hosts. There's a lot of fun things we've done on the show, and I. The goal, the whole goal of this podcast is to inspire you. Whether you want to be a podcaster for a period of time or this is something you really want to focus in on and maybe turn this into something that's more than just creating a podcast. There's a lot of opportunities that come to you because of a podcast. So, yeah, you're in the right spot, and I'm happy you're here. I want to talk about batching and that we should batch it. And that sounds kind of like I said something else, which is wrong, but it's not. I didn't say that. I said batch it. Maybe I need to put a pause there. We need to batch it. See, it sounds. Still sounds funny. Leveraging doing repeatable tasks in groups instead of context switching. And that's one thing that I've noticed that I think some people struggle with is they do some. They do their podcast in a certain way. And then when somebody says you should batch, record or batched something around your podcast, they look at you like, what is that? So simply think of. Let's. Let's go to a baking metaphor here. When you make cookies, how many cookies do you make at one given time? Right. When you make a recipe, you pull it out of your recipe box, or you look on your phone and you come up with a cookie recipe. I love chocolate chip. My wife likes to make peanut butter cookies as well. How much we really enjoy. And when you make cookies, you usually make a batch of cookies, right? You don't make just one that Would be really weird. You just make one cookie. Yeah. That's a lot of work for one cookie. And you usually make like a dozen or two dozen. I like five dozen. That'd be great for me. I'm getting hungry. So. Yeah, I like when we make batches of cookies. It just makes sense. You got all the stuff is there on the counter. If all the tools, all the ingredients, everything you need. The oven's warming up, you might as well make more than one. Right? Everything's in front of you. It just makes sense. And when we come to podcasting, we can batch things in our show. And there's a lot of opportunities for us to do multiple of the same thing on repeat while the oven's warm. That's kind of the idea with batching. So there's multiple things that we do in podcasting that can be batched. There really is. There's the recording of the podcast. So this is like 3 o' clock in the afternoon for me. I worked last night, I worked tonight. I have a night job. So I work from 11 o' clock at night till 7 in the morning. Came home this morning, slept for a couple hours, got up, and I've been podcasting all day. And I've now recorded in this one day alone from about 10:30, 11:00 clock this morning, till about 3:30 now in the afternoon. I've recorded seven different podcast episodes for my different shows. Yeah. And I've edited a couple podcasts. I've done a bunch of other stuff as well. So I've been batching my episode recording today. That's one thing you can do. You can edit more, you can. Sorry, you can record more than one episode at a time. That's one option for you. That's one thing. Another thing you can batch is, in the podcasting process is your research. So you're researching topics and you could research all of your content for the month in one sitting. Plan out your episodes, get all your outlines figured out, get all your resources, all your links, all your information, your stats, whatever it is you're talking about. You could do all the research at once and plan out all of your episodes in one shot. Now you just have to sit down and hit record. Awesome. That's great. You can batch out all of your artwork. Then for your episodes, if you're gonna do thumbnails on YouTube, you're gonna do episode artwork that shows up on Apple and Spotify and Audible. Great. You can do all that artwork in one shot and do them for multiple episodes at once. Wonderful. You can do all of your emails at one shot. Those are all batchable, where you can just sit there and just spend the day clearing out your inbox, responding to guests, sending out information, responding to those weird emails where some stranger wants to come on your podcast, and they have nothing to do with your show. Thanks, AI. There's a lot of things you can do is you can batch these things and work your way through it. And the beautiful thing about this is you're not having to do context switching. Now, what is context switching? Basically, you're. When you context which you're going from one task. So let's say in your podcast you have. Let's give yourself five tasks from beginning to end. From start, recording, edit, publish, post, all that stuff, you have five steps. So if you were to come to a single episode and just do all of the steps in order from beginning, middle, and end, and you did them all, and then you got to the end, and then you went to the next episode and you went right back to the beginning and you start it all over again throughout all the path. It's. It's fine. But there's. You gain some leverage when you do the same task multiple times, because your headspace is already there. So when you're researching, you're researching. So you might as well research more than just one episode. You might as well do two, three, four episodes while you're in the research mode. When you're editing, you might as well edit. Just sit down and edit and edit multiple shows at once, because you're in that mode. Sure, get up, have a coffee, come back. But you're in the mode of editing. You are in the mode of recording. Like me, I've been recording all day. So I can just pound out all these episodes, get them done, and then I'll set them to go do the editing tomorrow. And I'll come back tomorrow and edit all of the podcasts that I record today. Pick one thing that you like to do in the moment and do that. The one thing about doing something from big start to finish is there. There might be something in the process that you just don't feel like doing today, and it gets in the way. So step three, editing. You don't want to do step three, and. But you did the first two, and you want to finish, but you're like, I gotta edit. I. I don't feel like editing. I feel like recording, but I can't record because I got to edit first. No, you can batch anything and do whatever you want. It's your show, and I would encourage you to do the thing you're doing when you're doing it, and then do it more often. Does that make sense? I think so. Most often people are going to refer to batching as both just the recording part, and they ignore all the other parts of podcasting. And yes, batching is often associated with the recording part, and I get it. But I'm a big fan of sitting down and knocking out several recordings, multiple episodes, all at once. It goes far beyond the recording, though. It really does. Batching can be applied to every repeatable task in your podcast process. Instead of recording, editing, creating artwork, writing show notes, and publishing one episode from start to finish before moving on to the next one, you can group similar tasks together. I love working on this. I like writing all my descriptions, I like writing all my show titles, I like doing all my show notes. I like doing all that stuff at once. The same approach works really good for outreach, scheduling, research, transcriptions, and even platform updates. The key benefit here is focus. When you stay in one mode, your mind isn't constantly shifting between different types of work demanding different parts of you. You reduce friction and you increase your efficiency by doing what you're doing and doing a bunch of them at the same time. Go back to the cookies. Making more than one at a time, it just makes sense. You're able to build momentum, stay in the right headspace, and get more done in less time because you're repeating, not restarting. For me, with limited time, I have my career, my night job, I have podcasting, I have childcare that I do for my two grandchildren during the week, five days a week, I sleep occasionally. All of these things really eat my time up. So I find that batching allows me to stay ahead, keep my workflow organized, and and adapt my day depending on what's happening around me. If I can't record, I can edit. If I'm in a creative zone, I can design. I can do the things I can depending on what's happening. My. My neighbor decides to cut the grass right now. I'm going to stop recording and I'm going to go to editing. Throw on the headphones, get on some nice music in the background while I'm editing, and I'm just going to pound out edits for episodes that need to be finished. I'm going to do client work. There's a bunch of other things I can do, and it's just focusing and being able to adapt to the situations around me in real time instead of getting frustrated that somebody else is interfering in my workflow. I just change gears and move. And if you get bored easy, this is a great way to just a shift and go, okay, I'm done with editing for now. I'm going to go do something else that's different and interesting and gets a different part of my brain going. I'll come back to the editing later when I feel like doing it. It's really fun to be able to switch around and do that. This flexibility is, is a superpower for you as a podcaster. So I want you, I'm encouraging you today to think about this and think about your workflow. And if you're like me and you only have limited time to do your podcast, then you're looking for every way to shave off a few minutes here and there and to somehow cram in podcast and, and do a full week childcare, being places, working, limited time off time with family, eating, sleeping, all that stuff. You're like, how am I going to fit this podcast in? Well, maybe batching is going to be the answer for you. It might be. I would encourage you to try it. If you've never done this before and, and give me feedback. I'd love to hear what you did, how you changed your workflow, what did you batch that you normally didn't do before? All that stuff would be great to hear over at howtopodcast. Ca. My speak pipe link is there. Leave me a voice message. I'd love to hear what you're batching. Tell me about your show as well. I'd love to hear about your podcast so I can go listen and support you as a listener of your show. But I do encourage you to try this, to try it on your next episode, to try it on your next podcast. Workday is that you're going to batch one element of your process and see what you can do, see what you can knock out. I think it's going to have really impact your productivity and it's going to help you to, to create a process that works for you long term. This might not be for everyone, but if it does work for you and it can free up time and reduce the overwhelm that you're feeling, that cloud above you that, oh, it's time to make another podcast. This might help you to show up more consistently for your podcast. And you know who's gonna love that? Your audience. Because they want more of you. Because they love you. They really do. They really, really love you. And the more you can show up, the better. If you need any help with this, you just wanna commiserate together over a virtual coffee and talk podcasting. I love doing this. I love it. It's not a bother in my calendar to do this. It's right there on my website. Anytime you want to just sit and chat, happy to do that. Doesn't have to be an episode, doesn't have to be recorded. Could just be us having time together. Really, I love doing that. We'll grab a coffee together and talk podcasting. HowToPodcast CA. I'd love to meet you there. Take care. Talk soon. Hey, thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to the end of the podcast. You're here with me. I'm so grateful. I want to put something in front of you for the person that's listened this far. You're my new best friend. So what I'm trying to do every month is I have a goal and you can help me with this goal. Very simple. What I'm trying to do is have five conversations this month with listeners of the how to Podcast series. You don't have to have a podcast to respond. This can be the first time ever that we're going to have a conversation. But I'm looking to talk to five people now. You're still here, so you're one of the people that I would love to talk to next. So on my HowToPodcast CA website is a calendar and I'd love to have you respond on howtopodcast ca. Just click the calendar link, set up time in my calendar. And in the comment section for, for the meeting, just put something like listener. That's it. If you have a show, put it in the comments too so I can go listen. But if you don't, I. I just want to talk to five listeners every month from now to the end of the month. So if you're. If you're listening to me right now, you're the person I want to talk to. And through howtopodcast ca, you and I can get together, chat about the show, chat about your journey as a podcaster. Where are you at? What do you need the show to become for you? What's missing? Your feedback? I just want to meet you. And as podcasters, I would encourage you to do something similar to this in your podcast so that you can meet and interact with your audience. So howtopodcast ca. I'm looking to talk to five people every month and I would love for you to be one of them. Reach out is free. I'm not selling you anything. I just want to talk to you at how to podcast Ca. Let's get in the calendar and chat. Thanks for listening. You're still here. Amazing. Okay, this is a bonus piece just for people who stick around, People like you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Question came to me in a coaching call this week. The person was saying, dave, how have you benefited personally from being a podcaster? Like, outside of creating content, meeting people, all that stuff, how have you grown as a person? This is perfect. This is really good. Because I don't think a lot of people talk about this. Being a podcaster puts you out into a world of being creative again. While I'm doing 30365 episodes in a row, it's putting me in a place where I gotta show up, I gotta fill my calendar with episodes. I've committed myself to this. And so far in now getting close in July and August, I'm still plugging away, I'm still there, and I haven't run out of ideas. So for me, it's helping me to be more creative. But on top of all that, the content aside, podcasting has helped me to be a better listener. Podcasting has helped me to formulate my ideas better. It shows up in day to day conversations. I think quicker on my feet, I'm able to react better. I have, I have more knowledge because I've spent time with some of the most amazingly smart and talented people in the world that I would never meet otherwise. I have a bigger picture of this big globe that we're spinning on right now and the different cultures and the different things that people do. I learn a lot from podcasting. So even if nobody listened to my show and you weren't listening right now, and there was nobody here, and I had zero plays on this episode, meaning no, no one ever hit play on this. I'm still better as a person because I did a podcast. I did the thing, I showed up, I created the content. And what gets me sad at times is when people put all of the success metrics of a podcast being worth their time based on a arbitrary number of people who listen or how much money I made from my podcast. What if it was just, you're a better person at the end of the episode because you did the thing. Maybe that's all. Maybe that's all podcasting could be for some people with zero listens now, do we want to reach the world? Do we want to have a big audience? We want to help lots of people. Yes, obviously do. I want to help lots and lots of people start a podcast and keep podcasting. Yes, that's why I keep showing up. But if at the end of this podcast episode, the only benefit is for me to show up, stay committed to what I've committed to, and prepare, do my best with what I have where I am, and I'm a little bit better than I was yesterday, then it's worth it. And podcasting is worth it, no matter if anybody listens at all. Just keep that in mind. HowtoPodcast ca let's talk.