Steemit Success Strategies #2 - Batching + Parkinson's Law

To succeed in Steemit, and generally in life, you'll need to adopt a few winning mindset. In this series, I will explore and share with you powerful psychological principles and success strategies, and hope that it will elevate your success on the platform, and who knows, in life too.

This is a cumulation of my experience in marketing and also decade long interest and practice in social and organisational psychology. Enjoy!

DEFINITION & ORIGIN | BATCHING

In layman's term, Batching enables you to manage your time better by group similar tasks that require similar sources together. It's also similar to streamlining, and you usually see them in factories. Each person at each station is supposed to only do one thing.

Psychologically, batching is good because shifting focus will cause up to 20% loss of time. Yup, contrary to popular belief, multitasking is bad because in the process of completing three task simultaneously, you could have completed way more than that. Will do a piece on context-switching in another piece.

LIFE EXAMPLE | BATCHING

Imagine you take 30 minute to fold a load of laundry, and you do your laundry three times a week.

Here's what you do the next time. Assuming you have enough clean underwear :) fold all three loads at a go, and time yourself. You will realise that the time taken to do 3 loads is not 3 x 30 minutes (90 minutes). Instead it may take you lesser than 60 minutes!

Muscle memory aside, that's essentially batching.

Another example is inserting 1000 double fold letters into 1000 envelopes, sealing it and licking the stamps. The time it takes to complete one whole sequence - double fold, insert into envelop, seal the envelop, lick the stamp - is probably 2 to 3 times longer than if you batch the process. That means firstly, you double fold all 1000 letters, then inserting them into the respective envelopes, sealing all of them at a-go, and (yums) licking all the stamps.

DEFINITION & ORIGIN | PARKINSON'S LAW

Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Psychologically speaking, we mentally pace ourselves to finish a task in the nick of time, regardless of the complexity of the task.

Let's get the examples to do the talking.

LIFE EXAMPLES | PARKINSON'S LAW

Have you ever been in a situation where your boss tasked you a job and gave you a deadline of 2 weeks. I looked at the task, and made the plans to ensure that you could finish it before the deadline. 3 days in, your bosses frantically came to you and said you need to rush the task and submit by end of the day (in less than 6 hours).

What did you do? You rushed like mad, of course. And you managed to finish the task just in time!

What just happened? You managed to take a task that requires 2 weeks and finish it in 6 hours! And you did not do a lousy job at it. You know the quality is the same even if you summit at the original deadline.

That's Parkinson's Law at work! You essentially "expanded" a 6 hour task into 2 weeks, just because your were given that time frame in the first place.

Oh yeah, if you'd ever cramped for any exams before, you're already a master of Parkinson's Law. :)

HOW CAN YOU APPLY THIS MINDSET STRATEGY FOR YOUR STEEMIT SUCCESS?

Let's take the task of writing a post. Essentially, you can break it down into three main areas.

1. Research
2. Write
3. Edit + Format

As a matter of fact, for a post of 500 words, I would recommend adding a time limit of 25 minute to each of it.

Why 25 minutes?

RESEARCH

For Research, it's important to set a time limit because if not, your "research" can lead you to watching the trailer of Avengers three hours later! By applying Parkinson's Law, you will have just enough time to draft out the points, by doing some quick research. Essentially you only need to fill up the following "boxes" below. Since it's a 500 word post, you don't have to deep dive into too much info.

DO NOT think of what topic to write during research. As a matter of fact, you should have picked your topic before starting the research. If you need help generating over 365 post ideas, check out this comprehensive guide.

WRITING

For Writing, adding a timer of 25 minutes is leveraging on Parkinson's Law. The average typing speed is between 38 to 40 words per minute. Let's take a conservative of 35/minute. 25 minute essentially means you can do 857 words.

And my advice is, don't stop at 500 words. In the Writing stage, write as much as you can, because in the editing stage, you will have to trim off some contents to make your post crisp and punchy.

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EDITING + FORMATING

Ok, some may say you can extend the 3rd stage "Edit + Format" to longer than 25 minutes, especially if you want to some fancy images. I think it's ok because the bulk of the work - research and writing - is done.

However, try to apply Parkinson's Law on this stage too, because rushed work doesn't always meant it's bad, and work that you give yourself lots of time on may not necessary be good anyway.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. Applying two extremely powerful project, time and priority management into your Steemit Career.

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Wait, why's Mav posting on Steemit nowadays?

Well, unlike other blogging and social media platform, Steemit is the only platform that allows me to earn cryptocurrency when I engage with it. Yup, one Steem is about USD7, and you, too, can earn Steem Dollars every time you:

• Create content (articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, photos)
• Upvote (like) other people contents
• Comment on other people's posts
• Have discussions, share opinions etc!

Yup, basically it's the very same thing you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all along!

The only difference? For once you can earn a nice income on the side!

Sign up for a free Steemit account, and you can thank me by coming back and upvoting this article. And guess what, you will earn Steem too for doing that! #awesome