Time Saving Tips For Photographers
Time management is something that is talked about widely and everyone wants to know how to save time, work less, and still produce amazing work. If you've said yes at least once in your head while reading this, I've got a treat for you. This blog is jam-packed with time management strategies broken down to help you understand, put them into practice and help you work smarter, not harder.
If you're new here, Hey! I'm Krystal, a wedding photographer based in Calgary, Ab helping photographers and creatives worldwide spend more time on their craft and less time in their business. If you are looking for a business bestie to help you fast-track and avoid common business mistakes, I got you! I'd love to invite you to check out all the ways we could work together here. Okay now back to the tips to save time!
Effective Time Management
Here is a list of a few different strategies to help you with time management skills to be more effective, please keep in mind though that you need to figure out what works for you - what works for someone else doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. If you haven't already checked out our Time Management Myths for Photographers blog, I highly recommend reading it!
Tips to Save Time
Time Blocking - This is one of my favs and pretty much describes itself, it's a time management method that gets you to break your day into blocks of time. By doing so you are more focused on the tasks at hand without being so squirrelly about random things. Each block that you make is dedicated to a specific task or group of tasks that you want to accomplish within that timeframe. Make sure you are being realistic here and blocking enough time - at first it will take some playing around with to see how quickly you can accomplish different tasks.
Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand method - This one I go much more into depth within my teaching, however, to keep it short a sweet when you are mapping out your week things of them like this: Rocks are non-negotiables that stay in every week, like a dance lesson or family dinners, etc. Pebbles are things that are always changing from week to week, like client meetings or calls and Sand are the filler things that are placed around the other two. For example, answering emails or working on content.
3. Habit Stacking - This is one of my favorites and I use it not only in business but in my personal life too. This exercise literally takes things from being random tasks to every habit. Take simple morning things, for example, I am a huge believer in starting my day off with little wins so for me this includes making my bed, itching breakfast and taking my vitamins. Sure these seem like such small irrelevant things but in the grand scheme of things they actually play a huge role. So by doing one thing at a time till it becomes muscle memory you are training your brain to a new good habit. Start with making your bed every day for a few weeks until you naturally just wake up and do it, without having to remind yourself or think about it. Then add on taking your vitamins, etc. It’s the same with business, get disciplined in one area then add on another thing and keep stacking different good habits till you no longer have to think about doing them - they just become muscle memory.
If you would like something to help you keep track and stay accountable I have created a FREE Habit Tracker for you that you can grab here.
4. Batch Working vs Bulk Working - This one I’m going to try to keep really simple, Batch working is when you do something in a group that will help for a long period of time, for example, sitting down at the end of the month and scheduling a whole month worth of social media content. It is getting something done so you don’t have to worry about it for a while - like meal prepping. If you prep all your meals for the week on Sunday then you don’t have to cook for a week, saving you a bunch of time. Bulk working on the other hand is when tasks have multiple steps that are maybe more draining than other tasks, take reels for example. Personally, I’m not s huge fan of making reels because there are so many steps: find music, record videos, write captions, etc. With Bulk working, we can break these down into smaller more manageable steps to not burn you out. One day you will simply just look for the audio, hunt on Instagram for trending audio and save them, if an idea comes to mind on what you want to create with it, then make a google doc and write notes. Then on a different day, get all done up and ready to record videos. I recommend pulling out a few different outfits so you can change them up while you are recording all these different reels. Then again on a different day, you will write the captions for all the videos you created. By doing this, you break up a big task into a bunch of little ones and now you can have a month's worth of reels ready to do but you didn’t waste just 1 day doing 1 reel, you broke it up into 3 or 4 days and now have a whole month!
Well, I hope this was super helpful and puts you on the right track for making some amazing changes to better your business. If you still find yourself stuck and are not sure about the next steps you need to take to better your business, I have created a free quiz to figure out your business soil type and what steps you can take to improve it.
Thanks for being here gal, I appreciate you and am wishing you all the best in life and business. As always, if I can help with anything - I'm just an email away.
xo Krystal