Time means money in business. The more productive you and your employees (if you have any) are the higher the profit you'll earn. This is the reason productivity becomes an important factor for a business to grow and succeed.
Unfortunately, for some photographers, increasing productiveness isn't an easy task. There are some, who got stuck with all the distractions they encountered in their environment; and there are some who thinks that increasing productivity consists of hard work and sacrificing lots of their day-offs.
But the truth is it can be easily accomplished by following these 5 simple ways.
5 simple ways to be more productive as a photographer
1. Create a weekly schedule & group tasks by proximity
Creating a schedule is always an effective solution to keep your mind sharply-focused on the important tasks. But before you can create one, you first have to identify the tasks you needed to do for your business to grow.
These tasks include, but not limited to: maintaining your blog and social media, networking, enhancing your skill and appointments.
Once you identified all the tasks and listed it down, you have to organize it by grouping the tasks in accordance with their proximity. If you do this successfully not only you'll achieve your goal to accomplish more and be more productive every single day; but also will help you save you time, effort and money.
2. Subtract unneeded distractions
After you created a weekly schedule, the next thing you need to do is allot time per tasks. In doing this, you have to keep in mind that the more time you spend on one task the more chance you'll encounter distractions.
Distraction is photographer's worst enemy. Fortunately, it can be eliminated simply by calculating the right amount of time you spend on one task. So, if you spend 5 hours in maintaining your social media before, you can change it to around 30 minutes. Just extend it depends on the number of inquiries you received per day.
3. Delegate what you can
One of the main goals of increasing productivity is to accomplish more tasks. But there are instances that no matter how productive you are, you can't still finish every task you have on-hand.
This usually happens when your business starts to pick up popularity "“ you're gaining more clients and tasks are piling up. The best thing to do is hire someone to help you.
The best way to determine who to hire is by looking at your schedule and choose the tasks that you can delegate. If most of your tasks consist of booking flights, answering clients' inquiries or managing studio "“ it's best to hire an assistant.
But if the task that consumes most of your time is editing, you can hire an affordable graphic designer.
4. Outsource beyond photo editing
Since I already mentioned the possibility of hiring an affordable graphic designer, it's best to discuss more of it.
Everyone has a different opinion whether to outsource the photo editing task or not. For photographers who aren't a fan of editing, they find this option as a great help. But for some, they find it as a disadvantage since they're losing control of the image's end result; or the possibility to enhance their editing skill.
But in our opinion, the decision whether to outsource this task or not will always depend on your needs. For example, you have photo shoot sessions every day. This means that you don't have a lot of time to edit your images at home. So, instead of stressing yourself with the backlogs, you can simply hire someone to lighten up your load.
5. Get organized
Keeping everything organized is another effective way to increase your productivity. It will save you time from distractions and help you focus on your work.
Since most photographers start their day at their workstation, it's just right to start on it. You can organize your workstation by identifying which of the files are important and not. Once you identified the not-so-important files, it's best to throw it out.
Except if the files contain confidential information. It's best to shred it first before throwing it in the trash. While for the important files, put a label on each and sort it according to its project name or date.
This is also applicable in organizing your computer files. The only difference it has is you have to back-up all your files on your computer to ensure its safety.
Increasing productivity will always be on top of everyone's priority. But make sure to divide your time properly between your regular routine and work. Failure to do this, focusing on work purely, will result in feeling burn-out and eventually, lose interest in your business.
Don't let this happen! Make sure to put everything in balance.
