Working from home has so many upsides: a 30-second commute, a dress code that includes slippers, and free cat pets all day long.

Working from home also has a major downside: Interruptions.

UPS ringing the bell with another delivery. My partner telling me he’s going out. Even good interruptions like a delicious hug from my teen before he goes to school and that purring cat finding a home on my lap – still interruptions.

When our brains have to switch gears, even momentarily, it takes us a ton of time to get back on track – like 25 minutes to refocus and get back in the groove. For every distraction.

This article from the American Psychological Association says we lose 40% of our productivity when we task switch.

There’s a switch cost.

While I’m tempted to put a KEEP OUT sign on my office door, I have to admit that it’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

Like, just now, in real time as I’m writing this to you, I stopped writing after “It’s me” and sang a little Taylor Swift in my head, checked my email, picked up my phone, read a story about how China says it successfully cloned 3 highly productive super cows, and then stared at the keyboard for a while. Why? I even knew what I wanted to write next.

I think I’m not alone.

We’re all highly distractable.

Our brains are delicate little things. If they start to get overwhelmed, they check out. Our sweet lil brains are actually trying to protect us by being so weak. We can’t totally eliminate this issue. But on the other hand, I don’t really have 25 spare minutes to give up for every distraction in my day.

Our weak brains are why multitasking doesn’t really work. If I’m cleaning my desk while “watching” a webinar, I’m not going to pick up most of what the speaker is saying. Even if I believe I’m listening, as in, I could repeat back their last few words, those words don’t have a chance to land in my heart and resonate. Because I’m divided.

Single-tasking, or monotasking, is always more effective. It’s that seemingly contradictory notion that you have to slow down to make progress. One thing at a time, done well, is more productive and effective than two things you half-ass.

Even though Taylor Swift is still running around in the back of my brain somewhere.

The way to make single-tasking really work for you:

Batch.

Batching means you collect all the very closely related tasks and do them in the same span of time. A single-tasking streak.

Let’s take every entrepreneur’s favorite job: Chasing down clients who owe you money.

Step One: Psych yourself up to address this. That’ll take an hour and a latte run.

Step Two: Open your computer, get into your invoicing program, and locate the unpaid invoices and the date you sent them.

Step Three: Dig through your emails to find the last time you communicated with that client.

Step Four: Write an email that perfectly balances humor and professionalism while thinking to yourself “eff you, pay me.”

Step Five: Reread it five times. Remove some exclamation points.

Step Six: Hit send.

Ok so if you chase one invoice per day, girl that’s your whole morning.

But if you batch your invoice-chasing all in one sitting, you at least don’t have to repeat the costly steps one and two over and over. The time it takes to write the second email will be a fraction of the first because you already did all the hard work (and who am I kidding, I know you’re gonna copy/paste).

I block my batches in my calendar.

Today, for example, is blog writing day. I’m in the zone and I stay here, just writing love letters to you. I don’t have to re-get in the zone for each new post.

Big Boss Time is when I have to make hard policy decisions, write difficult emails, and fire clients.

Follow Up Hour is when I reply to all the folks who contacted me looking for workshops.

Video Day happens because I want to get into full hair and makeup as infrequently as possible.

My brain feels less stressed and more streamlined when I batch my work. Batching reduces the switch cost.

What could you be batching? Give your batch time a fun name and then email it to me.