Century Color Labs

During our Summer Workshops we discussed common strengths and weaknesses most professional photographers share. While most agreed that personality and expertise were definitely strengths of a successful professional photographer, it was also fairly unanimous that time management was a weakness.

Most professional photographers work either independently or with very few staff members. Most photographers will admit that they started their business because they love taking pictures, and that’s great! However, there are many facets to running a successful business. There’s customer service, accounting, professional development and marketing to name just a few, but it can all seem very overwhelming when you are trying to do it all alone. Many photographers commented on how we kept referring to our marketing team and how they would love to have a team to help them. Part of our goal as a company is to help our photographers with different aspects of their business and helping them market their services is certainly one. But it still boils down to the fact that YOU have to allocate time to address the different needs of your business. So making sure you use your time wisely will directly result in the success of your business…therefore good time management skills are extremely important.

You can find plenty of Time Management tips on the Internet, via Google searches or You Tube. Here are some good tips to help you get started: 

1. Eliminate time wasters, like instant messenger, personal phone calls and checking email throughout the day. Designate a specific time of the day to deal with these things and stick to it.
2. Create an action list EVERY day, limit the list to five specific actions for that day. Also, identify your goals for those action items.
3. Prioritize. What are the most important and necessary actions to address? What would you do today if you knew you would be out of work for the next week?
4. Do the things you dread doing first, get them out of the way and make the rest of the day more productive and enjoyable.
5. Use a daily planner to designate what you are working on at what time and for how long every day, don’t forget to incorporate breaks to rejuvenate.

If you realize that you are not capable of or able to efficiently manage a major task, say bookkeeping or web development, then outsource and spend your time being more productive with what you can do well.