Why your content batching feels chaotic
When I first tried to batch content using Sunsama, I expected it to magically solve the mess of scribbled to-dos in Notion, rogue drafts in Google Docs, and half-thought-out ideas hiding in Slack messages I’d sent to myself. It did help, eventually. But the way I imagined it working versus how it actually works, especially when you’re dealing with blog post batches instead of rigid tasks, was… different.
The first gotcha? Sunsama forces you to assign tasks to a **specific day**, which sounds helpful until it isn’t. You can have a Monday labeled “Write 3 posts,” but if one post goes longer (which it always will 🙂), your entire week shifts out of alignment. There’s no native way to nudge one task to “the next available slot in this week’s batch.” So unless you drag and drop manually, everything kind of stacks awkwardly in Today even if you meant it for like, three days from now.
And batching, in Sunsama terms, doesn’t mean what most content folks mean by batching — like prepping a whole week’s worth of blog titles, then writing them tomorrow, then editing the next day. It treats each action (write intro, write outline, edit post, schedule WordPress) as individual tasks. You *can* structure it to reflect your real-world mental flow, but that means customizing it a lot more than I originally expected.
Here’s a rough breakdown of how my batching flow got reshaped:
| My Old Way | Sunsama Batching Attempt |
|---|---|
| Just a Notion table with status tags | Separate task cards for each step of blog production |
| One idea per row | Idea = 4+ micro tasks across several days |
| Real start dates didn’t exist | Start dates must be picked or it’ll fall into “Today” by default |
I wish Sunsama had better native “week goals” instead of just daily execution. The line between strategy and doing tasks is thin in content planning. But the format forces you to choose: is this idea just a future plan, or am I doing it this week? You can sort of fake it with labels — I created a tag called “FUTURE BATCHES” and another called “DRAFT NEXT” — but it feels hacky.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How I blueprint weekly post batches in Sunsama
I’ll be honest: I didn’t figure this layout out until version like… 4 or 5. There were a lot of failed attempts, especially when I tried to mirror Notion’s database logic into Sunsama’s calendar. Don’t do that. They don’t think the same way.
Instead, here’s what ended up making sense:
1. **Use Goals as Content Topics**
I split each weekly goal into themes: like “Email Automation Tips” or “Batching Content for Agencies.” I create a Goal for that week, named after the topic.
2. **Each Post = A Few Small Tasks**
Each blog post has a mini workflow that looks like:
– Outline
– Write first draft
– Edit pass
– Schedule or upload
I make each of those a task and link them together in the Notes field if needed.
3. **Use Labels for Workflow Stage**
This is where most of my hacks live. I created labels like:
– 🔸 Idea
– ✏️ Drafting
– 🧽 Editing
– ✅ Scheduled
Yes, I’m using emoji icons in the labels themselves — Sunsama supports it in task names and labels. But I don’t use them in this actual write-up per the rules 🙂.
4. **Use the Weekly Planning view intentionally**
At the start of the week, I load up only 2 or 3 posts max. I *don’t* create tasks for things I know I won’t get to. That was a big trap early on. It looked ambitious, but really just made me feel like I failed.
My rule now: If it’s not scheduled with a time block, it doesn’t exist yet.
5. **Archive dead tasks ruthlessly**
If something lives more than one week without getting touched — especially if it just sits in “Drafting” with no progress — I archive it. Not delete, just archive. Mentally, it helps me reset expectations.
The weirdness with recurring post templates
One thing I really wanted: a template post flow that I could reuse every week. Sunsama doesn’t actually do reusable template tasks natively, which tripped me up. If you Google around, there are some workarounds using Google Calendar syncs or third-party scripts, but all of them felt a little brittle.
What I do now: I just open last week’s post batch, duplicate the whole thing manually, and adjust the dates.
Here’s how I do it step-by-step:
– Go to last Monday in the Sunsama calendar
– Find the first post’s Outline task
– One by one, duplicate the tasks and paste into the new day’s slots
The pain point? Duplication doesn’t carry over time blocks or dependencies. So if you want “Edit Post A” to naturally follow “Draft Post A,” there’s no logic enforcing it. Sometimes I end up doing editing before writing, which leads to weird time allocation in calendar mode.
Not something that breaks the flow totally, but it’s annoying enough that I’m tempted to build a Zapier workaround (again 🙃).
The accidental resets when dragging across days
Okay, here’s the bug that almost made me give up. If you time block a 2-hour writing session for “Post A” on Tuesday and then drag it to Wednesday — sometimes (not always!) the original time gets wiped. It snaps to the top of the day with no time.
Not only that, if you were syncing it to a connected Google calendar, the original event sometimes hangs *in both days*. Double booked me with my own ghost. Creepy.
So now I’ve developed this little ritual:
– Before I drag any task from one day to another, I open it and note the time
– Then I drag it
– Then I manually re-enter the original time
It’s so dumb. And of course, it doesn’t always glitch — just enough that you can’t trust it 😑
Why my Zapier automation kept assigning the wrong post date
I tried to automate creating weekly content batches using Zapier: every Friday, I wanted a new task created in Sunsama with the next week’s post assignments inside the Notes. Seemed simple.
The trigger was a Google Sheet row getting updated. I made a column for “Scheduled Date” and thought Zapier would pull it in cleanly.
Nope. The date format problem in Zapier + Sunsama can silently misinterpret “6/12” as “December 6” instead of “June 12” — all depending on your account settings.
What made it worse is that Sunsama doesn’t **reject** the wrong date. It accepts it and quietly puts the task into the wrong day’s stack. I had a post show up in *last month’s* calendar and didn’t even notice until I wondered why it wasn’t showing in today’s task list.
Here’s what finally fixed it:
– I manually formatted the date column in Google Sheets to “YYYY-MM-DD” (not just Date format — literal custom format)
– In Zapier, I added a Formatter step to double-convert the input field into that format before sending to Sunsama
After that, it started behaving. But honestly I keep checking it twice now because that silent misplacement is too easy to miss.
Creating post-stage dashboards without an actual dashboard
One thing Sunsama is missing that would make this entire workflow cleaner: a table or kanban view that lets me *see multiple posts* at once by stage.
Right now, you only get one daily column, and any view by label or workflow stage requires a lot of clicking. There’s no way to ask Sunsama: “Show me everything tagged 🧽 Editing from this week’s content batch.”
To get around this, I now:
– Keep a separate Notion ‘mirror’ board of all in-progress posts
– Use the same labels I use in Sunsama
– Every Friday, I update it manually so I can see what moved
It’s one of those human-maintained dashboards that feels weirdly necessary even though the app has most of that data in it somewhere. Like Sunsama knows what’s happening, it just won’t show it all in one place.
Final thought for when everything stops syncing again
There was one Monday when Sunsama tasks stopped showing up in my calendar altogether, and I panicked thinking I broke permissions again. Turned out the Google Calendar sync toggle had randomly unchecked itself in the settings.
No warning, no prompt — it just silently disconnected. So if something suddenly isn’t showing up where it should, check your calendar toggle in the Integrations tab first. That was three hours of rabbit-holing I won’t get back :/