It might sound like a bold and blunt statement, but hear me out here.
I have always been a big fan of time management but I have seen so many photographers struggle with it over the years and I want to help you understand why, so you can make better choices.
Basically, the old time management principles don’t work for photographers because in photography businesses there are just too many moving parts to be always in control of all your tasks. I mean you just have your to-do list written and in the meantime 3 new emails have arrived and a client called and wants to switch the colors of his album cover. You know what I’m saying?
If you do time management the old way, you are basically always working on updating your to-do lists and tracking the new items on it from emails/ calls and things you discussed during client meetings and shoots.
And we want to keep everything tracked because otherwise, we are always wondering if we are not forgetting anything and that just feels very restless.
I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. I mean we are not meant to update our to-do lists every hour now, are we?
That to me is not how it should work.
Let me ask you this, do you know photographers who are tracking their todo’s with to do lists? I personally know a lot of them and they pretty much all gone batshit crazy and felt overwhelmed by the chaos that it all brings.
I quote: “I don’t even know where to start anymore because there is so much going on”. Notice what the person said. She didn’t say: “There is so much work to be done.” No, she said: “There is so much going on!”. Meaning, there are so many moving parts and so many little details to keep track of.
And that’s exactly what it is.
So time management as we know it is just not working for photographers. And I know a lot of photographers who are being successful without that kind of time management.
How do they do it?
They rely on a workflow with a series of tasks for each shoot which is basically the bulk of their work (and the bigger part of the money making tasks). And the things that come up next to that are easy to keep track of. And you can absolutely use time management for that for sure. Here, see, I am not discrediting task lists completely!
When you have a workflow with all the recurring tasks that repeat itself for every shoot that you do, it’s easy to keep track of where you are and since all the tasks are in sequence, you will never miss a step. And you will also never feel the stress if you’re not forgetting something. Ahhhh how lovely that is!
So I want to invite you to look at this new way of organizing your tasks in your photography business.
After all, who wants to stay stuck in never-ending cycles of writing to do lists, rewriting to do lists, forgetting the small things or misplacing the things you promised to do, losing time with organizing your tasks in the right order and in general feeling like you are behind all the time?
I mean, think about one year from now when you still are doing it this same way? Maybe you have grown a bit more efficient since today but look at all the time you lost and the opportunities and peace of mind you have lost by doing things the same inefficient way over and over again.
When instead, when you have a workflow in place, you know exactly what is next to be done and you can execute on your tasks super efficient and productively? So you have time to spare for your new marketing experiment or to do some creative photography work or to just spend it guilt free with your friends.
If you are ready to start working with a workflow, check out my free workflow chart template. You can download it and customize it to your needs!
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