Photography can be a fulfilling hobby or a profitable career. However, time management is imperative. That’s because processing photos alone can be time-consuming.
If you want to be a productive and successful photographer, here are nine productivity tips you need to know:
Use workflow software
Sometimes, you’re not as productive as you could be because you don’t have an organized and systematic workflow. If you’re going with the flow too much, it can lead to poor organization and inconsistency in your work.
If this is an issue that you find is consistent with you, then workflow software might be something that you need in your business.
A workflow software helps create a framework for your work process to be more organized, making you more professional. Simultaneously, the workflow software also reduces work errors that are a part of running a business. Thus, not only are you more productive, but you also improve your output.
Keep a tidy office
If you have a studio or an office, make sure that you keep it as tidy as possible and as often as possible. At Cleaning Exec House Cleaning NYC, they emphasize the importance of clean workspace ? including photography studios.
When you’re on-the-go or are dealing with clients, it can make you more careless with your placement of items, making your office cluttered.
As a photographer, you don’t want to be messy because you’re dealing with costly equipment to do your job. By being an organized person, you ensure that no accidents happen while you’re working.
Outsource beyond photo editing
Some tasks are an innate part of running your photography business that you can’t get rid of no matter what. However, if you’re a one-man-band or only have a few team members working with you, your workforce may be limited.
During these times, it may be worthwhile to outsource some of your work tasks.
The tasks you outsource don’t even have to be about photo editing.
Instead of juggling everything at once and burning yourself out, you have to learn when it’s time to outsource the work tasks you don’t like doing. Be it post-processing images or cleaning your studio regularly.
Create templates for frequent emails
Automating tasks that you frequently do to run your business is one of the fastest ways to work more efficiently. If you want to streamline your process, look at which tasks you often do and are relatively simple that you can automate.
One example of such a job would be writing emails. Once you start your business, you’ll notice that you often write up an email that contains the same thing, but you send it to different people.
Instead of occupying a chunk of your time having to draft these emails again and again, create a template.
Remember to make it personal, too, so that it doesn’t feel like a template. Otherwise, a template will help make your email writing process go by a lot faster.
Protect your calendar
Time management is a huge issue when people start looking into how to increase their productivity.
For photographers, time management is especially crucial. That’s because you can see it as indirectly losing money if you take too long. Your time is precious as a photographer.
With that said, ensure that you have a work calendar to help you keep track of all the big-picture work tasks that you need to do. They remind you of deadlines that you have to be on top of and help you be more in charge of managing your time.
Ensure that you have both a physical and digital calendar to ensure that you have all the reminders you need.
Use social media scheduling apps
As a photographer, marketing is vital to ensure that you get more clients flowing into your business.
Social media can be an excellent way to promote your photography services. This is where you can reach hundreds of people within your target market.
However, if you’re busy dealing with your current clients, it can be tough to remember to post on social media. Thus, consider getting or using social media scheduling apps. That way, you can devote time when you stockpile on content, and then you let the scheduling app post the content when you see fit.
It’s streamlined and easy to set up, so even if you forget to post on that day, you’re sure to always have posts up anyway.
Keep a notebook to jot down ideas
There are going to be memorable moments when inspiration suddenly strikes you quickly. These moments are rare and hard to come by, which is why you want to make sure that you don’t forget them.
To help you keep track of these inspirational moments, you should consider keeping a small notebook within your person at all times. A small notebook and a pen should be in your pockets at all times for this.
However, inspiration doesn’t have to be the only thing that you put in them. These are excellent for when you need to jot down information to reference at a later time quickly.
Once you develop a habit of bringing this with you, you’ll find that it’s a habit you won’t let go of anytime soon.
Set specific short-term goals
Aside from your calendar, which will remind you of long-term or big-picture tasks, it would help if you also created short-term goals.
You can jot down your tasks for tomorrow to have an idea of what you need to have accomplished at the end of each day. If you get too caught up in the long-term goals, you might end up being too unfocused in your everyday work tasks. You can have a long-term goal to create custom home calendars for your photos, but if you do not start shooting and planning, you will have a time management crisis.
Setting short term goals is an excellent way to know if you are on the right track.
Learn to say no
It is imperative to set boundaries, and that means learning how to say no. You don’t need to accept every client, especially those you know will be a massive hassle for you.
Once you’re off the clock, make sure that you avoid doing anything work-related. The time you take outside of your work is helping you be more productive in your career.
Therefore, you should respect yourself and your time by ensuring that you set boundaries for your work.
Do Not Overlook Your Daily-Life’s Tasks.
It is very crucial for a photographer to stay productive and creative throughout the working hours. The gateway to success and remarkable shots is the creativity of the photographic mind.
But, with a tight work schedule, it becomes hard to keep track of everything, especially your daily life. However, there are a few apps to help you with it. You can easily specify the time duration for personal care, working hours, lunch break and sleeping hours.
To sustain the creativity and productivity of your mind, pay attention to your sleeping habits. As, a perfect sleep routine can lead you to a successful life. Do some fun activities, spend time with your family, play games like Words, puzzles etc to keep yourself motivated and productive.
Conclusion
No matter what industry you’re in or what type of work you do, being productive is something that you want to strive for every day.
The tips listed above are surefire ways to help you become more productive in your day-to-day work life as a photographer. When you learn to apply these tips in your everyday life, you find that productivity will soon become second nature to you.
