Remember last week’s newsletter about the muffin meeting and how my husband and I sit down once a month to talk about finances?

Well, if we are being honest, it didn’t come out of nowhere. It has a lot to do with the fact that my husband is a napkin-math guy, and I am admittedly, a spreadsheet girl.
I love excel. I brainstorm in excel. If you were to look inside my brain when I’m solving a problem, it would be a pivot table.

As such, I cannot talk about money in the abstract. I need the data in front of me.
Him? Not so much. He can launch into a conversation about mortgage payment terms and variable interest rates while we’re driving and have a complete understanding of the numbers, best options and ROIs.

Unfortunately for him, when finances come up casually, without context or visuals, my stress levels spike instantly. I feel slightly combative and like I’m a step behind, which is not the best place to be in what was supposed to be a productive conversation.

So I asked for a change.

Would it be possible to talk about all the questions at once, when we have the spreadsheet in front of us and we can see the numbers?

Enter. The month-end meeting.

We’re not perfect. We still slip into one-off conversations sometimes. But having a designated time to handle everything together made a huge difference.

And that’s when I realized what we were actually doing.

We were batch processing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, partly because I just finished the book Make Time (highly recommend), which talks a lot about grouping similar work together so your brain isn’t constantly switching gears.

Batch processing is exactly what it sounds like. You take similar things and deal with them all at once, instead of letting them interrupt you all day long.

In supply chain and lean manufacturing, this is foundational. Batch processing is when you make a defined quantity of something, and then switch to something else. It lets you get a reasonable amount done, at which point you stop, inspect the line, and tweak as needed. This focus on doing just one batch lets you put all your energy and resources into completing something substantial.

Turns out, our brains really like that too.

Emails I want to read, but not right now
If something is informational but not urgent, I mark it as read immediately and send it to a specific folder. Then I read them all in one go, instead of letting them steal two minutes of attention ten times a day.

Checking my bank account
Confession. I used to check it every day. I told myself this was “being responsible.”
In reality? It was five to seven minutes of low-grade anxiety every morning.
Now I do it once a week. Ten minutes. Same outcome. Much calmer nervous system.

Cleaning
I can get in my head about how long it actually takes to clean my house. One thing I’ve been doing lately is setting a 20 minute timer on my watch, and cleaning as much as I can in that time. I always end up getting more done than I anticipate, and nothing ever takes as long as I built it up to be. At the end of 20 minutes, I’m done, even if there is still cleaning left to do. I can always do another 20 minute batch later.

Batch processing isn’t about being rigid or overly structured.

It’s about giving your brain fewer things to hold at once, and being able to get into a flow of repeating the same action over and over to accomplish a good chunk of work. It’s about reducing task switching, to let yourself relax into a repetitive state.

For me, that meant no more money talks in the car.
For you, it might be something totally different.

But if a small change gives you back a little mental space, it’s probably worth keeping.