Simple photography business part 5: Time management

Business owners often spread themselves way-too-thin. How you can use minimalism to help with time management:

1. Only work on a specific type of tasks each day

For example, Monday and Wednesday might be culling and post-processing days. Tuesday might be blogging and social media scheduling day – and so on. Staying with one type of task for a longer period of time declutters your brain and frees it up to focus better.

2. Don’t start up multiple projects during the same season

If you have multiple projects going on, you make little progress on each of them. If you walk a mile in one direction, you get towards your goal faster than if you take a few steps in multiple directions.

If you absolutely need to work on multiple projects in the same season, I would suggest having assigned time for each of them (maybe one project per day of the week?), so that you are making steady progress on all of them – instead of getting too overwhelmed while deciding which one to work on.

3. Minimize distractions

Turn off the sounds on your phone.

Work in an environment where you can focus well.

Work during a time of day when you feel most focused and energized.

Decide on a day when you tackle things like laundry and errands – those pesky tasks that suddenly seem crucial when you’re supposed to work on other things.

Keep a distractions list – have a notepad next to you while you work so that whenever a “must do” task pops up, you simply write it down to remember it, and then keep working on your original task. Tackle your distractions list at the end of your work sprint.

Final thoughts on this 5 part series; the joy of missing out

The amazing thing about having less things to manage is that we aren’t really missing out on anything at all!

Clearing out the stuff that isn’t essential or beneficial to us means that we have more time and money to spend on the things that truly matter to us – the things that bring us joy.