You can’t batch every action in your life

“‘Bad’ food won’t kill you immediately. ‘Good’ food won’t heal you immediately. But eventually they catch up with each other.” 
–Joe Holder, in this video

Ambitious people like us have a bad habit of applying business rules to life. Productivity research says it’s best to batch our actions—to do the same kind of thing all at once, then move on to the next thing. This helps us avoid distractions, capturing excess energy and reallocating it to the singular task we’re focused on. 

But everyone knows you can’t eat super healthy for one day and hope to regain all the nutrients you weren’t eating the month prior. It just doesn’t work that way. Our bodies can’t retain excess nutrients and put them to use later. We need to make a habit of healthy eating for it to work. 

We have a misconception that eventually we’ll get really healthy, or eventually we’ll start investing a ton of money at once, or eventually we’ll slow down and have a ton of time for family…but it just doesn’t work that way. These things take consistent action over a long period of time to be effective. We can’t batch every action in our lives. 

This goes back to the article I wrote a few days ago, about how we are organisms. We don’t need the very best, most productive approach at all times. We need an approach that is balanced and healthy over the the long term.