Here's the bottom line. We are so tired of conversations about balance. We all know the answer: we can't do it all. Also, is it just us or are questions about balance always directed at women? No thanks. But we're here to tell you that we can optimize what we can do.

There are some things we absolutely have to do each week. If you didn't read our blog post on Content Creation, you'll want to start there. If you've done the exercise and narrowed down your "pillars of content" and *weekly, nonnegotiable musts* then read on...

So now you have an overwhelming list (thanks Backdrop Stock!) of every piece of content you create for your business. How do you go from putting fires out every day to thriving and feeling less overwhelmed than ever? Enter: batch work.

Have you heard of it? We were first introduced to it via this podcast by Jenna Kutcher. If you're not sold on it, go listen to that and you will be.

HOW TO

You'll use your pillars of content. Again, for us that looked like: Newsletter, Blog, Instagram, Instagram Stories (yes, they are separate), Pinterest, and Paid or Outsourced Content.

STEP ONE

Then we looked over our personal schedules. I (Ellie) am going to share my schedule, because my mom and I have very different schedules. Here are some questions I asked myself: When do I have the nanny scheduled/full days that I could work? What days do I need to be available in the morning for my kids? It started to look like this:

Monday: Mom in the morning, Backdrop in the afternoon

Tuesday: Backdrop all day

Wednesday: Mom in the morning, Backdrop in the afternoon

Thursday: Backdrop all day

Friday: Backdrop in the morning, Mom in the afternoon

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STEP TWO

We added things that were already scheduled and working for us in our business. For example, our newsletter goes out every Wednesday and we didn't want to change that.

Monday: Mom in the morning, Backdrop in the afternoon

Tuesday: Backdrop all day / Meet with mom + Mastermind with mom and sisters

Wednesday: Mom in the morning, Backdrop in the afternoon / Newsletter goes out + New Collections released each month

Thursday: Backdrop all day

Friday: Backdrop in the morning, Mom in the afternoon

STEP THREE

This is where it gets a little bit tricky. You need to combine your pillars of content that have a reciprocal relationship. The best example we could give you is the relationship between our newsletter and blog.

When we realized that we needed to be able to recycle our content (because reminder: our/your time is valuable), we decided that every newsletter had to be written in the form of a future blog post. Remember: newsletters will live for hours or maybe a few days, but blog posts can live on Pinterest (a search engine) for years. People who search for "batch work schedule," for example, may find this blog post in 2021!

What this looked like for us: we create newsletter and blog drafts at the same time, on the same day - each time you receive a newsletter from us, we've also drafted a "hidden" blog post that we'll publish after a few months (because subscribers come first!).

So if I added this into my work schedule, Monday would look like:

Monday: Mom in the morning, Backdrop in the afternoon / Draft newsletters, draft blog posts, make Pinterest covers for blog posts

Everything related to our newsletter and blog is finished on Mondays. When I'm done - I walk away from my computer and go live my life. I don't start working on Instagram or Pinterest, because I have set days for those. If something comes up related to the newsletter/blog I simply add it to a "to do" list in my google drive and save it for the following Monday.

Tuesday would look like:

Tuesday: Backdrop all day / *ALL meetings take place, IG and IG stories in the afternoon

*Since I was already meeting with my mom and our Mastermind on Tuesday mornings, it made sense to meet with everyone we contract out with that day too. And because it's one of my longer work days, I'm able to tackle IG and IG stories that day too. Mornings: meetings. Afternoons: IG and IG stories.

 

Here's what the rest of my week looks like, all organized in google drive:

 

NEXT STEPS

Automation and systems! We have the next month of our IG posts scheduled out in advance. Pinterest is scheduled out a few weeks in advance. We could tell you what our newsletter the third week of October 2019 will be about. Our artisan collaborations are scheduled through early 2020. How??? We've got systems in place.

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