*This post takes 10-15 minutes to read (but saves you hours!)*
A lot of members wrote in their feedback form about the membership that they wish they had more time to dedicate to the membership and really get stuck in. One member even asked for a time management secret weapon. Well… I have one! In fact, I have many! One thing we have done though is make our content even snappier and include text-based tips that you can just skim as well, so you can learn actionable things really quickly.
So let’s look at finding you more time.
First, we need to find out what you’re spending time on and how you can get yourself more time, before looking at managing the time you have left.
Start with a time audit
Work out how much time you spend on everything, then work out how you can cut down that time and use it more productively.
It’s easy to do this with your phone – just download an app that counts up how long you spend on your phone and breaks it down into how long you spend on each app. I added a screentime widget to my homescreen so I’m always reminded! Now you know how long you spend every day on your phone and which apps are sucking your time.
Then look at how long you spend cooking from scratch, watching TV, checking emails, refreshing Facebook etc. Do this over the next week, and write down how much time you spent doing each thing. Now you have the (sometimes unexpected and worrying) knowledge of how you spend your valuable time, let’s work on being more efficient:
Ways to get more time out of your day:
Break up with your phone
Once you know how much time you spend on your phone, ask yourself how valuable that time spent on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Words with Friends etc really was. Did it advance your career? Did it make you feel good?
If it did neither of these things, limit your time on time-hog apps (there are apps for that!) and consider removing them from your phone. Ask yourself if you’re doing something productive or just mindlessly scrolling. Just being more mindful and conscious about this can make a huge difference.
There are lots of ways you can force yourself not to be on your phone all the time. Start small, by replacing scrolling Facebook with getting a small work task done – like watching an educational video, which will progress your career and also make you feel good. Assign times of the day where you don’t touch your phone. Keep it on the other side of the room while you’re working. Disable notifications.
When you reach for your phone, ask yourself if it’s important – this creates behavioural awareness. Think about how being on your phone makes you feel vs being more attentive to the world around you.
Make piddly jobs more productive
It might sound ridiculous, but how long do you spend ‘getting ready’ every day? How long does it take to decide what to wear? How much time are you spending putting away the shopping or making lunch? How much time are you spending on non-fun non-productive things? How can you make them more productive? You could listen to an audio book (see the Blinkist tip further down) or podcast while you get ready, or you could be mindful about the time. I use getting ready, shower time and loo time as a time to be quiet and alone with my thoughts and not use a device. Having this ‘nothing’ time almost always leads to me remembering something important, having a great idea, or simply getting all my thoughts in order. Being on a device and being busy doesn’t allow time for natural thoughts to happen, so double up on downtime by doing this.
Save time cooking
Are you cooking separate meals for all the family? Are you making long involved dinners? Are you cooking three times a day? At one point, I was cooking all my meals and then spending ages cleaning up after. Think of meals you can make that are quick and don’t have much tidying up time. Batch cooking can help as you do it all in one go, so there’s not so much cleaning up to do for future meals. Ordering your shopping online and repeating orders also saves time, and we’ve found using Hello Fresh to be a major time saver, because we don’t have to plan meals or order the ingredients or even rummage through the fridge.
Be mindful with TV
If you have the TV on while you work, are you giving your work 100% of your attention, or are you drifting over to Brooklyn Nine Nine every five minutes and suddenly losing several hours to it? Allow yourself a 21-minute break (how long the average sitcom episode lasts) to eat lunch and watch a favourite show – then turn it off and get back to work. I let myself watch telly in the evenings and it’s something I really look forward to during the day, so it spurs me on to get work done, and when I watch TV I genuinely relax and can enjoy it guilt free.
Get up earlier
I work best from 6am-8am, and from there it’s a downwards spiral productivity-wise. I peak again late at night, but I’m not as clear-headed as I am in the morning, and I’m easily distracted, so I make sure I get up and get stuff done before I even have a cup of tea. My top tip for getting up early is to leave the curtains open all night and wake up with the sun. If you don’t work better in the morning, use the time to get non-work things done, like exercise. Or get your TV binge out the way!
Focus on one thing at a time
My nickname is ’57 tabs’. So I’m not the best person to be giving this advice. But I know when I focus on one thing and don’t get sidetracked, I do my best work. I often think of new things I need to do while I’m working, so instead of doing them right then (so easy to end up doing!), I simply write it down to do later.
Make a to do list – choose one big thing, a couple of smaller things, and a bunch of less important things per day.
Organise and colour code tasks by order of importance, so use a highlighter in a notebook, or colour tag in Google Calendar, or use Trello with coloured labels.
This keeps you on track so you don’t lose time getting distracted by piddly jobs.
Make short work of emails
Set days and/or times to do your emails. I created a folder in my Gmail account called ‘reply to’ and I label each email I need to reply to with this so it goes into that folder and I reply to all of them either at the end of the day or the next morning. Use email templates when you’re answering the same questions or sending the same thing to multiple people.
Think of time as money and outsource low-value high-time jobs
As long as you think of money as something to be saved, you’ll always be time poor – and ironically never earn a great deal more money as it will be a constant cycle of earn-spend. Spend money on outsourcing or adverts, then spend that time making your business work smarter, such as adding a passive income stream or educating yourself. If it helps, I like to think of money as tokens – this takes the emotion out of it.
A lot of people also have a scarcity mindset – they think that they have X amount of money in the bank, and that will last them X months. Then after that, they’re broke. They forget that in those X months, they have to power to add to that amount. So spend that money on something that will give you more time and freedom, so you can make more money in the long run.
Think big, think long term and stop thinking of your bank balance as a finite thing. If you spend time trying to save money, you’ll always be poor, as you don’t have time to work on making more money. Rather than trying to save money, work on earning more, by revising your time spent.
Work out how much you actually earn, and work on increasing that. Count how many hours you work a week (including all admin, shoots, travel time etc). Then work out how much you earn per week. You can do this by dividing your annual income by 52. Now use that to work out how much you earn per hour. If you’re working 50 hours a week and earning £40,000, you’re earning £15 an hour. That’s not an amazing hourly salary! So work on saving time and working smarter. And put up your prices! Or outsource the small jobs if it’s cheaper to do that than do it yourself.
Turn down jobs that wouldn’t earn you money
A half-hour branding shoot for a picky company that would take so much time editing and revising that you’d be earning pennies per hour? Turn it down. A one-hour wedding that’s an hour’s drive away in a city that will take you half an hour to find somewhere to park? Turn it down. Think about the actual amount of time spent vs money earned and either turn it down or charge more. If you turn it down, spend that time adding value to your business so you can charge more.
Use a Pomodoro app
This is an app that’s super handy for jobs like culling and editing. It’s a timer that times you for 25 minutes, during which time you focus on a task, then it gives you a five-minute break to make tea or go to the loo, then later it gives you a 30-minute lunch break. It also has the option to block apps while you’re using it. It even has a groups feature, so you can have editing parties with other photographers and keep each other accountable.
Be more efficient with editing
If you import all photos into Lightroom, then cull from there, try using Photo Mechanic to cull, then only import and edit the keepers. Do two culls before you even import and it’ll save even more time. Batch your preset and edit across all photos on import to save having to add it to each one. Sync an edit across multiple images if the lighting and exposure is the same. So much time will be saved if you’re not already doing this!
Use a social media scheduler
You could use later.com or similar social media planning apps if you’re really short for time. It allows you to write and schedule a month or more of posts in one go. The best thing about these is that you can write your content on the laptop, which I find much quicker. The downside is that the posts don’t feel organic because they’re not posted in the moment, when you were feeling something strongly or when you were inspired by something, and people can tell. Instagram can also probably tell, and the algorithm may not be friendly to you as a result, but it’s an option for the time poor who want to make sure they’re posting and wouldn’t post otherwise.
No time to read? Try Blinkist
This was a gamechanger for me. It’s an app that condenses non-fiction books into 15-minute reads, or 15-minute audios. Basically, someone reads the book, takes all the major learning points and takeaways, and writes them in a condensed format, with simple takeaways for us the readers. There are all sorts of business and marketing books available. I’ve subscribed for the year and so far read 44 books in 3 months!
Use Just Park for shoot days
If you ever have a shoot or wedding and know you’ll spend ages looking for a parking space, and walking from that space to the venue, use Just Park to book a driveway near the venue. So much time saved – and stress!
How to use that extra time you’ve found?
Once you’ve audited your time and streamlined the way you spend your time, use that new-found time to learn, and grow (this part is important – all learning must be actioned or it’s pointless!). So that could be watching a video in the Kick Ass Collective membership and then implementing it, or reading a book, then putting together an action plan based on what you learned and setting it in motion. It could be all the less-urgent (but very important) things on your to-do list that will make an impact on your business. It could be putting together systems to make more money (such as a print sales automation) or writing a brief to send to a VA so they can do your bitty tasks for you.
Don’t forget to also take time off! You’re not going to be productive if you’re spending every second working!
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