In episode 362, Bree Pair teaches us about batching and how can time-management tools like this can be a game-changes for food bloggers. 

We cover information about defining what batching is, different techniques used to batch, how it allows you to have more time in the future and how to break tasks down into more manageable parts.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Bio Bree Pair is a coach for bloggers and entrepreneurs! Her company, Thrive, educates and empowers bloggers and influencers to build their brands so they have financial freedom and the flexibility to live their lives to the fullest. She’s passionate about helping female entrepreneurs live out their dreams and helping them with the strategy to do so. 

Takeaways

  • Batching doesn’t work the same for everyone. Learn one way and tweak it to be the best version for you.
  • A certain task that you break down and do the same portion of it over and over to get faster at it is batching.
  • This process allows you to stay in the flow of working on a project without forcing your mindset to switch.
  • Make batching fun for yourself.
  • Change your environment if you’re feeling tapped to get yourself re-invigorated.
  • Lighting and sound can impact the work flow and do some of those things so you do better, quality work.
  • Stress and overwhelm can translate to your audience with your content so working on improve enjoying the processes as best you can.
  • Start with a pen and paper. Write down all the pieces of work you do – start with blog posts. Then go onto the next task. Look at what works best for you and make a plan to work on them in sections.
  • Look at your calendar to determine how you want your week to flow and your week to be structured.
  • Be willing to set a timer for yourself to keep yourself on task.
  • Eliminate distractions as best you can to be productive.
  • Remember you are driving the bus so push yourself to try batching, but adjust your goals as necessary and give yourself grace too.

Resources Mentioned

Groove App

How To Batch Blog Posts

Take the Quiz: What type of blogger are you?

Learn what rate you should be charging brands 

Transcript

Click for full script.

Episode 362 – Bree Pair

Bree Pair: Hi, this is Bree Pair from Thrive, and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Sponsor: Clariti is a powerful tool that allows you to organize, optimize, and update your blog content for maximum growth. My food blog, Pip and Ebby has nearly 1000 posts. I have learned so much about constructing an incredible, valuable blog post since I began my blog in 2010. It should go without saying that my older blog posts are not quite as solid as my current blog posts. Some of my older content is missing nutrition information, alt text, internal links, no follow links, video, and some are missing all of the above. Clariti allows me to easily identify those posts that need those elements, create projects to make sure that the updates are made and track how those updates impact my traffic. I already have great recipes. Clariti helps me add the frosting that takes those posts from great to outstanding. If you are interested in learning more and potentially becoming an early adopter of Clariti, you can go to clariti.com/eatblogtalk to sign up for the waiting list and receive 50% off your first month. Go to clariti.com/eatblogtalk or check out the resources page on eatblogtalk.com/resources to learn more.

Megan Porta: Hey food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 362. And my dog Buddy is with me today.

Today I also have Bree Pair. She is my guest, and she is going to talk about how batching and time management can be game changers for food bloggers. BRI Repair is a coach for bloggers and entrepreneurs. Her company Thrive educates and empowers bloggers and influencers to build their brands so they have financial freedom and the flexibility to live their lives to the fullest. She is passionate about helping female entrepreneurs live out their dreams and helping them with the strategy to do so. Bree, thank you for joining me and my dog buddy today. I appreciate you so much. How are you? 

Bree Pair: I am so good and it doesn’t bother me at all. Hopefully it doesn’t set off any other dogs for people that are listening, but…

Megan Porta: yeah, I was telling you before we started that I just don’t have an option today. I have to, maybe this is part of our theme, like you have to stay on track sometimes and just do things, even if it’s not perfect. Keep with the time management situation. So yeah, Buddy’s here with me today. I apologize. We’ve gotta get this done and I’m so excited to chat with you because I love this topic. But before we get into it, what fun fact do you have to share with us? 

Bree Pair: Yes. So I was trying to think. I’m like, okay, something fun. Let’s pull this together. I love to bake and I basically have a huge section in my pantry dedicated to baking cakes. I’m not a professional by any means. I don’t share this, don’t go head over to my personal social media and expect to see pictures of cakes, but I just love it so much. It brings me joy and it helps me to relax. I feel like I don’t think about work or anything else when I’m decorating a cake. So yeah, it’s my random fact.

Megan Porta: I love that. I love making cakes too, for enjoyment. I only have a few on my blog. But it is so relaxing for me as well. What kinds of cakes do you like? Do you like layer cakes or what’s your favorite? 

Bree Pair: Yes, I love doing layers. I like doing small, five inch, just little brown layers, three layers. I am obsessed with sprinkles. Sweet of paulita is one of my favorites. I have. Their advent calendar, and I’m trying to stop myself from buying the next advent calendar that gives you all the sprinkles. I think I love that fun, creative aspect of it. My background is in graphic design, and so this is me getting to play with art, but with food, and so I just love it.

Megan Porta: Oh, I love that fact. Yes, I could talk about cakes all day, but I suppose it’s a little bit different than batching and time management. So we’ll get to that topic, but I want to hear how you got started. What put you on a journey of being really interested in batching and time management? 

Bree Pair: Yeah. For me, when it comes to batching, I have been blogging since 2011 and have had different things happen in my life that, as we all do, you go through different seasons where you have more time than other times based on what’s happening. So because of that, I just realized that I need to get some type of system to help me save time because I want to enjoy the creative process of whatever I am doing. Oftentimes when it comes to creating a blog post, when it comes to writing things for social media or even your email, It can start to get draining when you feel like you’re on this constant hamster wheel of content creation. So I knew that I needed to figure something out so that way I didn’t lose that spark and lose that love of my craft and love of what I do and what I teach. So that’s really why I came up with my batching method and how it works for me. A disclaimer up front, it doesn’t work for everyone, my exact system, but what I always encourage people that I coach is here, listen to how I do it. But then let’s figure out a way for it to work for your life and for your brain. Because everybody works differently and so I know batching can look different for everybody, but I think when you start to introduce this concept into everything you do, that it can be a huge game changer. 

Megan Porta: I love that you said batching doesn’t work the same for everyone because I think that there’s a stigma there. Oh, she batches this way, so I have to do it exactly like that, and if it doesn’t work, then there’s something wrong with me. That’s not the case.

Bree Pair: Right. Yeah, exactly. That is the last thing we want to do. We get enough of that on social media every time we’re on it, right? Feeling oh, because somebody is doing this, I need to be doing this. It’s just too much pressure. Like it doesn’t work for me and my mental health, and I know it can’t work for everybody else too. You have to do what’s best for you and just because you see somebody else doing it one way doesn’t mean you have to follow that exact path. 

Megan Porta: Can you give us a definition? What would you say batching is? 

Bree Pair: So batching is when you take a certain task and you break it down or you do a bunch of one exact type of task at one time. So to explain a little bit further, if we just take a blog post, right? Because that’s what we’re talking about here. If you take a blog post and you break it down, the easiest way for me was to think back to when we were in English class in high school or college, and they’re teaching you how to write a paper. The first thing that you had to do was do some research and figure out what your subject was gonna be. Then you had to write a first draft, or you had to write an outline, and then you had to write a first draft, right? Like you took this daunting task of writing a paper and you broke it down into manageable tasks. That’s what we wanna do with a blog post. So what batching does is for each of those tasks, we’re gonna do it for several blog posts at a time. If you are sitting down to do research for a blog post, and you’re gonna sit down and look at, okay, I’m gonna figure out what the keywords are gonna be for this blog post. Instead of just doing it for one blog post and then moving on, since your brain is already hyper focused on that one task, you’re gonna do it for several blog posts. That’s what batching is. It’s doing several of one specific type of task for multiple things. So it could be scheduling your social media. Okay. Instead of just sitting down writing one post real quick and posting it, I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna go into my planner, and I’m gonna type out captions for five posts because my brain is already hyper focused on it and I’m in the zone. Whenever we get in the flow of something, we don’t want to stop. We wanna keep running with it. So that’s what batching allows us to do is close off all those other tabs of everything that we’re gonna have to do in a few minutes, or what’s coming down the road next, and be able to just really focus on one task. When we do that, you’re gonna find that it saves you so much time and you’re able to enjoy the process a lot more. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. You just gave the most perfect definition of batching that I’ve ever heard. That was so well said. I could never have said it like you did. So nice work on that. Also, I wanted to say that I love the flow. Don’t you love that? That feeling when you’re in the flow of batching and you’re like, this is it. This is that batching flow that everyone talks about. 

Bree Pair: Oh yeah. Because that’s ultimately what we’re wanting. The worst thing that happens, like I was talking about earlier, is we start to lose that creativity and we lose that spark because we just feel like we’re always in this hustle mindset. I know that’s something that we all deal with constantly because we are content creators, we’re always creating content. So if there’s something that we can do to protect that and to really figure out how to stay in that fun zone and that fun flow when we’re in it, batching really allows you to do that. It allows you to get yourself off of that hamster wheel and to start to enjoy the process again, and to just love every piece of it.

Megan Porta: Okay. We wanna hear your batching method. What method do you use for it? 

Bree Pair: Yeah, so I, I don’t know if there’s an actual, anybody’s coined any type of method or anything. Maybe I should. But for me it really starts with, what I was talking about earlier and started to go into is starting with breaking down a blog post. So what we wanna do is we want to do that for every single aspect in our business. So just like we break down a blog post, which I can dive into a bit more, we’re also going to sit down and be like, okay, what else can I batch in my business? Maybe it’s Pinterest. Oftentimes what I like to do is help people figure out, okay, let’s be really realistic with our time. How much time do you have available to you every single week? Then I help them figure out, okay, here’s what’s important. Here’s what we need to focus on. So let’s say somebody comes to me and they’re like, okay, I really wanna focus on Pinterest and I am gonna dedicate X amount of hours per week to it. Pinterest is one of those things that we can really easily batch. So what you can do instead is you’re gonna be able to see as I walk through these different things that, okay, instead of me sitting down to do Pinterest every single week, or to write an email newsletter to my audience every week, really, I could do that once a month or twice a month if I have a shorter chunk of time. So that’s what batching allows us to do, and then that’s going to save you time. So where you can spend more time in other creative areas. So going back to the blog post. So we think of it like an English paper. So we wanna break it down into those different steps. So the first step being usually, that research and SEO step. So being able to do that, let’s say that we’re going to do this for three blog posts instead of one. And normally if we were just to do one blog post from beginning to end, let’s say it takes you anywhere from four to six hours, and that includes any photo editing or anything else. Maybe it’s longer, right? I’m sure we have a lot of food bloggers listening, so you’re like, yeah, I wish. But obviously that doesn’t include the recipe creation and all of that goes into it. But what you wanna do is you want to break down those little pieces. So you’re gonna do it for three tasks instead of one. Then what you’ll do next is you’ll create an outline. But you’re gonna create an outline for three blog posts instead of one. Then you’re gonna walk away, you’re gonna go get your cup of coffee, you’re gonna go check your recipe, you’re gonna go do whatever else you need to do. But what we’ll do is we’ll break this into manageable time chunks throughout the week, throughout the month. Then that way you’re able to really sit in that flow. So what happens here too is, if you’re just having an off day where you’re like, I literally cannot sit down and write a blog post, like it is just not going to work. But your brain is going to allow you to focus on batching. Instead, yeah, I can sit down in front of Canva and I can crank out 20 templates for Pinterest. You know that I can do. I can turn on a podcast. I don’t have to think about anything. I can just plug in some pictures in my text and go. So batching allows you to make it work for you so you can really be like, okay, this is where I’m feeling creatively inspired right now. I’m in the flow. I wanna keep going because that’s what happens a lot, right? If we start to do one thing. We’re like, oh my gosh, I’m just in the flow. The words are flowing. This is going so well, and it just feels easy. The worst thing that happens is we have to stop that flow. It’s okay, I finished that so I have to move on to the next task. Batching allows you to stay in that flow because when you’re in that flow, you’re able to work a lot faster. So that’s how you’ll see, if you break it down, I wrote it down before for our Facebook group and I, I can’t remember the exact times, but basically you can break your time down almost by half of how long it would take you to normally write three blog posts. You can pretty much plan on cutting it in half because you’re able to stay in that one mindset and focus on that one thing. When we’re focused, it’s like when we have a bunch of tabs open on our screen and we’re jumping from thing to thing, it takes us a lot longer to get something done, right? 

Megan Porta: Yes. 

Bree Pair: But when we close all those tabs and we super hyper focus on cleaning out our inbox. We’re able to do it a lot faster than if we’re jumping from that to social media, to our blog, to whatever it is. So it’s that same type of concept that I just really apply to every aspect of my business. 

Megan Porta: If anyone is doubtful of this and hasn’t experimented with batching, I say just time yourself. Do an experiment. Do one blog post, see how long it takes you. Then figure out a day when you have the time for three, like you said, and time yourself then and see the difference. You’ll be blown away by how much faster you can get more blog posts done in one chunk of time. 

Bree Pair: Yeah. You also again, like I said. You get to figure out how this works for you. So you don’t have to write three blog posts in a day. I’m not saying that, but when you’re able to batch things, you’re able to even, let’s say, normally in a week you only write one blog post. Now in a week you can do all of these different little tasks, and so at the end of the week you’re writing three. So it doesn’t have to be like this huge, daunting thing that you tackle in a day, but thinking about how many days it takes you to do one blog post and imagining that same amount of days, but you get three done instead.

Megan Porta: Oh, think of all the time. I’m always blown away by the amount of time that batching opens up for me. Here’s another point, and you can probably relate to this, Bree. Batching isn’t always fun. It can be really hard to sit down. Oh my gosh, I have a lot of work to do in this little amount of time. But the reward is just so much time opens up for you in the future, like future time. 

Bree Pair: Making it fun for yourself too. So if it’s feeling oh, I don’t wanna sit down and do this. Going back to asking yourself why? Are you feeling tapped creatively? You need to get out of your own space. For me personally, when I start to feel like that, I know that I need to pack up my laptop and I need to go to a coffee shop. I just work so much faster and so much more focus when I have other people around me for some reason. So maybe it’s that you need to change your environment a little bit. Or maybe it’s that you need to just make your favorite cup of coffee and light a candle. I do that as well, like I’m like, okay, I’m gonna sit down for an hour and I’m gonna do this, but I’m gonna make it really nice for myself and cozy. Maybe I turn on some good music or a podcast if I’m able to listen to something while I’m working. Light a little candle, have my cup of coffee and we’re allowed to do that. You don’t have to make this so rigid and this is work. It cannot be fun. With our jobs. We get to make this whatever we want it to be. 

Megan Porta: I love that. So catering it to your desires, like what makes you work better? You said that the coffee shop makes you really productive. Maybe for some people that would be like sitting outside in silence. So just knowing; self awareness, I think is huge here. Knowing what works for you, what environment works and all of that. Then just tapping into it. 

Bree Pair: That’s what I said, like it can be as simple as lighting a candle. So next time you go to Target, be like, you know what, I’m gonna pick up a little five, $10 candle for myself and this is gonna be my batching candle. Sometimes sense get us in the mood for certain things, right? It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. If you’re limited on time or you’ve got kiddos and you can’t just leave and run to a coffee shop, you can make it work for you to set the environment.

Sponsor: Let’s take a quick break from the episode to chat about RankIQ, my favorite keyword research tool that is made just for bloggers. Maybe you are looking for a more efficient way to do keyword research and you’re needing a way to open up space in your business so you can work on other projects. I will share a strategy with you that I have implemented in my business that required four intensive months of work, and that has produced a nice, fruitful crop of traffic and revenue, and that allowed me to take most of this past summer off work. From January through April, 2022, I published 57 blog posts, all of which were run through the RankIQ keyword research tool and optimizer. Most of this content was non-recipe material, so it did not require recipe development, cooking, videography, or photography. I wrote the wave of those efforts and I’ve watched my traffic steadily increase year over year. My blog traffic is now up 64% year over year thanks to this strategy. This is the first time in the history of my 12 year old food blog that I have seen an increase in traffic this substantial. Go to RankIQ.Com to check it out for yourself. Now, back to the episode.

Megan Porta: Also lighting, I found there are certain harsh lights. I don’t work well or I don’t work productively. But more natural lighting works for me. Or like plants too. Plants always make me feel good and productive. I don’t know if that’s weird, but.

Bree Pair: No, not at all. I love my plants.

Megan Porta: Yeah, they just, I don’t know, they stimulate me somehow. But figuring out what those things are and tapping into them. So this is also a talk about self-awareness and just looking around and seeing what makes you work the best. Let’s see, what else should we cover about batching? Is there anything we’ve missed, any tips you have or anything else you wanna impart about that? 

Bree Pair: I would really say look at everything that you’re doing for your business and look at, when is it fun for you to do certain things? When do you have the most fun creating? And, why is that? And I love that you said, it’s a lot of self-reflection for this because I think, when we’re taking care of ourselves and when we are doing things that are fun and that obviously not every part of work is going to be fun, but if we can try to figure out how we work best, then our work is going to be better and it’s going to reflect to our audience. We’re wanting to grow our audience, we’re wanting to connect with them more with our audience. But if you think about it. If you’re constantly creating from a place of stress and overwhelm, that is going to translate into what you’re doing, right? If you take it in the aspect of looking at kids and how they can feed off your energy without you even saying anything. But if you’re stressed about something, they can pick up on it. Or even animals, right? Your dog can pick up when you are stressed or tense about something, right? Maybe that’s why he was crying a bit more, because he could sense your energy. So that does translate too, when we are creating for our audience. So if we can do these little things to help us have fun and to stay in that creative flow. Just remind ourselves of why we’re doing this in the first place and why we were so passionate about it at the beginning. Try to figure out what are the little things that I can do to get back into that feeling. Again, it’s not gonna be every single time, but it’s just little things. So that’s what batching really allows you to do, is feel less pressure, I’ve gotta just crank out this blog post as fast as I can, I’m gonna work on the task for three and really enjoy each process as much as I can. Even if it’s something I really hate. Like maybe you really hate looking up keywords, but you’re like, okay, I’m gonna time myself for an hour and I’m just gonna get it done. I’m gonna get it done with my latte and my candle, and we’re just gonna make it happen. 

Megan Porta: Where do you recommend people start with this? Because there are so many pieces of food blogging. There are so many things that I feel like could be batched. So if someone’s yeah, I want this flow, I want this magic. Where do they start?

Bree Pair: I would really just start with a pen and paper and start writing down all of the pieces. Break down just one blog post, and what are all of the pieces that go into it. Then figure out, okay, what works best for me? How do I like to create? How do I like to write? Maybe you like to get in the kitchen first. Maybe you like to go spend time at the grocery store and be inspired. Maybe you like to travel, whatever it is, and figure out, okay, what can I do from this list? Break them down into sections. Be like, I can break this down so I can do this part for multiple at one time. That makes sense to my brain and that seems like it would be easy and maybe even a little bit fun. That’s what I would do is just you have to just start with your blog post and break down every little piece. But don’t just stop there. So do it with your blog post and then do it for every other piece of marketing that supplements that blog post. So if it’s an email, if it’s a Google Web story. If it is Instagram or TikTok, whatever else it is, and start to look at, how can I save time? How can I do multiple for all of those tasks as well? Then you look at your calendar and be like, how do I want my week to actually flow? What do I like to do? How do I like my days to be structured? Because we all have different routines. Some of us are more morning people and some of us like to work in the evenings. Again, going back to what we talked about before, it doesn’t have to look the same as how I do it, as how Megan does it. That’s how anybody you follow on social media does it. You don’t have to have this amazing morning routine where you wake up and you are up at 4:00 AM and you’re drinking your lemon water and all of this. No, you don’t have to do that. If that’s you, awesome. But again, this all comes back to. What works for you and what do you like to do and what brings you joy? Sometimes it just takes playing around with things and trying it one way and then trying it a different way later. 

Megan Porta: One of the signals for me when I know I need to start experimenting with batching something is when I say to myself, oh my gosh, like I’m doing this last minute again. Then that’s a sign where I’m like, oh, okay, so I need to sit down and batch this task. So for me it was like creating audiograms for social media, like things like that where I was always scurrying last minute just to get them done. When you can recognize those things that you put off, then you can experiment there too. I found that’s a really helpful signal for myself. 

Bree Pair: That still happens to me. I’m sure it still happens to you. Just because we love batching doesn’t mean that it is always done. 

Megan Porta: Oh no. It never ends. 

Bree Pair: There are still moments where I’m like, Ugh, I didn’t get the newsletter done. Yeah. And I’m like, okay, I need to set aside a day this week or next week to write several newsletters and get ahead. So I just sit down on my planner and I pick a day and I make it happen. That’s the other thing too, is, it seems like for, at least for me anyways, it’s so much easier for us to shift things around for other people or if something else needs to be done or something a little bit more fun even on our calendar, but setting aside a chunk of time and being like, I’m sorry, I can’t meet for coffee during this time because I already have a meeting on my calendar. That meeting on the calendar can be with yourself. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Oh, boundaries. Setting those boundaries is so good. 

Bree Pair: Yeah, and so setting those times for yourself to do certain things and writing it on the calendar. Having the plan. Prepping so it’s a successful meeting with yourself is also important. 

Megan Porta: Oh I love that point. I think that’s really important to mention that you don’t always have to put your own work aside. You don’t have to set your own priorities aside that you, your work and what you do is a priority and to protect that time on your calendar. Put it on your calendar and then protect it. Okay. So what else have we missed? I wanna talk about your time management. Because I feel like that’s a little bit different to see if you have any specific tips on that. But first I wanna just see if you have anything else you wanna mention about batching itself.

Bree Pair: Nothing else comes to mind at the top of my head, but just reminding you, figure it out and try it for yourself and be okay with the learning process too. Oftentimes, we want to be perfect at something right when we start and that’s not always the case. So just allow yourself to experiment with it.

Megan Porta: And like what you said earlier, Bree, it’s a journey. It’s never going to be done. So you’re never gonna get to a point, just like blogging where you’re like, okay, I’ve got it all this is, got it in the bag. It’s good. It’s a constant evolution where I’m tweaking it all the time, and over time you’re like, oh, I’ve got this process. It’s really refined. I’m a streamlined person. I have a streamlined business, but there’s always room for improvement. So keep that in mind.

Bree Pair: Always. Yes. 

Megan Porta: Okay, so time management is a little bit different and it plays into batching, but I would love to hear your thoughts on time management. How you do this in your life. Do you have any specific tips for us? 

Bree Pair: I feel like it’s really a culmination of what we’ve talked about, figuring out what type of batching method works for you and setting boundaries. So that can be setting boundaries for yourself. Okay, I’m going to work from this time to this time, or I’m going to honor the meetings that I set for myself. It can also look like setting boundaries when you’re at your computer and making sure that, okay, when I sit down to work on something, I am going to have the boundaries of closing all the other tabs that are distracting . One of my favorite plugins for, I use Google Chrome I’m sure it’s probably for other ones too, but is News Feed eradicator. What that does is it turns off the newsfeed for a bunch of different social media sites. So I use it primarily for Facebook because I’m on Facebook constantly for my groups, and that’s why I use Facebook. I have a personal account. I’d never use it. So this just helps any distractions that I would get from scrolling in my newsfeed. So it’s setting those boundaries for yourself, in different ways. It’s honoring the commitments that you’ve made to yourself. It’s closing down tabs when you say you’re going to work on something. Then one of the other things that I love to do is just having that set time of okay, I’m going to sit down for 50 minutes and I’m gonna work on this specific thing. I recently found an app that a friend recommended to me called Grove, G R O V E. It’s a free app, it’s on your phone. What it is, it’s like a little coworking app. It takes almost like a Pomodoro method and combines it with other people that are also working. I love it so much. I get so much done when I’m focused and responsible or I tell somebody else what I’m gonna do. And so that’s what this app does. So you get on, you log in and you can start a groove and it’ll start it with up to three other people. You all hop into this little groove session. It’s on video, but nobody cares. You can show up without makeup. You can show up just as you are and be like, Hey, this is what I’m gonna work on for the next 50 minutes. Everybody just goes around really quick and says what they’re going to work on. Then everybody’s usually okay, good luck. See you at 50. Then you go and do that work. You go and do the work that you said that you told everybody you were gonna do for 50 minutes. Then at the end you regroup real quick and you let everybody know how you did and you will be amazed. I get so much done because I’m like, Nope, I can’t pick up my app. I can’t pick up my phone and look at Instagram. I can’t open another tab and get distracted because I said I was gonna do this for 50 minutes. I can focus for 50 minutes. I do not need to be distracted during this time. So that’s an app that I recommend to everyone. I love it and it’s helped me so much. It’s always amazing when you tell somebody you’re gonna do something and be like, no, I need to get this done, because there’s just that little extra accountability,

Megan Porta: It’s so true. Accountability goes so far and I’ve never heard of that app before, but that sounds amazing. 

Bree Pair: I love it. And really, the concept started with me. I would do this with some friends that also worked from home, and we would just check in with each other, either over text or on Marco Polo and be like, Hey. I’m just checking in. I’m telling you what I’m gonna do for the next hour. That way somebody else knows, right? Basically like holding me accountable in some way, even if you don’t text me back. This is what I’m gonna do. Usually they will and be like, okay, cool, sounds good. Then they’ll check in with me later. So it started with that type of concept. And then somebody introduced me to this app and it’s been great. There’s something about, even just checking in with a friend and being like, Hey, can you ping me in an hour and make sure I got this done? 

Megan Porta: Yeah. I just thought, it might be helpful just to start your own Zoom call with a few friends that you trust. It sounds a lot like what Groove is and just doing exactly that, like getting on, maybe playing some music, playing your own music, and just here’s what I’m doing. 

Bree Pair: Like a silent coworking hour. 

Megan Porta: Yes. There’s so much fun. 

Bree Pair: I’ve done that before and they’re so great. 

Megan Porta: Gosh, I think I might try that. Thank you. 

Bree Pair: Absolutely. Hopefully I’ll take you there. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Such a great tip. Okay. Any other time management tips for us? 

Bree Pair: Those are the ones that come to mind. Again, it’s being easy on yourself. I don’t know why I keep coming back to that, but hopefully somebody listening needs to hear that. Just give yourself grace. You started this business for freedom and flexibility in your life, and so allowing yourself to be human to push some timelines back if you’re the one that set the timeline and realize you’re a little overeager with certain things. I do that often and I’m like, why am I running myself into the ground? That’s all a part of this process of being a business owner and learning different techniques and learning different methods. So much of it is just how I want to live my life and what makes me happy and brings me joy. 

Megan Porta: Oh my goodness. That’s amazing. Yeah. I do think there’s so much power in all of this, but at the end of the day, you have to have grace with yourself and be gentle because a burnt out entrepreneur is not going to succeed. So tweak and refine and I think push yourself a little bit to experiment with batching and manage your time, but you also have to be really nice to you. 

Bree Pair: Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: Is there anything we missed? I feel like I could talk about it all day. I love this topic so much, but I just wanna make sure that we hit those main points.

Bree Pair: I feel like I covered all of it and you guys, if you have more questions for me, you ping me anytime on social media. I love talking about batching, so my friend keeps telling me I need to make some type of course or something that’s called batching with Bree. I’m like, I know. I know. I’ll add it to my ever growing list

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. I will sign up for your course when you create it, Bree. I can’t wait for that to happen. 

Bree Pair: Manifesting it. 

Megan Porta: Yes, for sure. Thank you for being here today and talking about one of my favorite topics. It’s been a pleasure to connect with you, Bree. 

Bree Pair: Absolutely. I loved this conversation.

Megan Porta: Same. Do you have a quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Bree Pair: One of the things that comes to my mind is, and this is funny, and to some it may be a little strange, but one of my best friends told me whenever I was getting overwhelmed with a big project is, how do you eat an elephant? I’m like, what? What are you saying? She’s like, how do you eat an elephant? I’m like, I don’t know. She says, one bite at a time. So whenever I feel overwhelmed with tasks that are big or even small that are just overwhelming, it is just one step at a time. You can only do one thing at a time. So just remind yourself of that, that a baby step is a good step. 

Megan Porta: I love that. Such a great way to end. We’ll put together show notes, page for you, Bree. So if anyone wants to peek at those, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/thrive. I want to hear about your podcast, tell us all about that, and where we can find you online and other places too. 

Bree Pair: Yeah, so you guys can find our podcast in whatever app you’re listening to. It’s the Thrive Blogger and Influencer podcast, and we’re over there with new episodes every Thursday. Would love to have you guys over there and hear what you think about our show. Then if you can find us, probably the one of the best ways to find us is if you’re on Facebook, we have a Facebook group called the Thrive Blogging Community, and it’s one of our favorite places to connect with others. Otherwise, on social media. It’s Thrive Together blog. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thank you so much, Bree and everyone, go check Bree’s podcast out and find her online and say hi. Just thank you for being here again, and thanks for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Bree Pair: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.


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