This is Life

What's your (distraction) drug of choice?

“And so I began to peer into the darkness, that plunging sense of deep inadequacy. It’s always been there. Frankly, I didn’t know other people didn’t have it. I thought that at the center of all of us was black liquid self-loathing, and that’s why we did everything we did - that’s why some people become workaholics and some people eat and some people drink and some people have sex with strangers To avoid that dark sludge of self-loathing at the center of all of us.” - Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect

What’s your drug of choice?

I spent two evenings in fellowship with drug addicts, alcoholics, and criminals at a halfway house in Ingram, Texas. Every introduction ended the same way:

“What’s your drug of choice?”

I felt like the most sane, smart, responsible person in the room until my new friends started talking about how they experienced their addictions.

“The craving became so strong I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t function, until I satisfied that craving.”

“I’d suddenly realize, like I just woke up from a dream, that I’d been on a three-day binge. I didn’t even remember the first hit.”

“I do good for a while, but then old memories, old relations, old feelings come up and my first thought is to make the feelings go away as quickly as possible, and the only way I know how.”

...food.

Food is my addiction. I’m a hundred pounds overweight and have been since my early 20s when I injured my lower back. As my new friends talked about their addictions, I realized how I use food as self-medication: Bored? Eat. Upset? Eat. Happy? Eat.

Maybe you can relate.

When I read the above quote from Shauna Niequist, it struck me how many photographers I’ve visited with over the last 8 years who start with superficial questions like, “What should I name my business?” or “What camera and lens should I buy?”, and by the end of the conversation are asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

What’s wrong with me…

What a damning question, right? Convicted without trial. We’re our own worst judge, jury, and executioner.

Some (many?) of us working artists are addicted to the superficial. To busyness, to excuses, to feeling ignorant and unable.

Two important questions I’ll be working to answer this holiday season, and I invite you to try them on for size:

• What questions are you asking, what are you staying busy with, so you can avoid dealing with your more serious, central pain?
• Why are you scared and resistant to opening up your heart and healing that pain?

You aren’t holding back from launching your photography business, or taking that next step with your art or your life, because you don’t think your art is good enough, or your camera, or your web site.

You’re holding back because you don’t think YOU are good enough.

You don’t feel worthy of clients. You don’t feel worthy of their money. You don’t feel worthy of the success you dream of.

A hard truth: your art, your business, your work is never going to be good enough until you learn and accept that YOU are good enough. Because a failure to take action toward your dream is almost always an emotional problem, not an intellectual one. You don’t lack knowledge, or ideas, or dreams. You lack confidence. You lack a feeling, a faith, of your worthiness.

If you think this message doesn’t apply to you, take 30 minutes of undistracted time to journal on the idea and play “What if?” What if what’s really holding you back is a lack of self worth? Why would that be? What feelings and thoughts do you have because of this? How is that lack of confidence stopping you from taking brave, tangible steps forward with your art and business?

A good therapist could take apart your heart and find the broken pieces, then give you the tools and blueprints you need to rebuild stronger than before. And you don’t have to have a mental illness to get a good therapist on your team. All of the successful people I know count coaches, therapists, pastors, counselors and other professionals as a vital part of their lives. But the odds of you seeking out a therapist because of this e-mail are one in a hundred.

So here are a few ways to start breaking and rebuilding yourself from the comfort of your own home:

• Journal nightly. Explore your feelings. List your accomplishments and failures in the day. Choose three words to live by, each with special meaning to you and your goals. Answer nightly, “How did I honor or fail in these goals today?” Take conscious account and control of your life.
• Start a morning routine that sets your mindset for the day. Meditate, read affirmations, visualize your goals and your habits to achieve them, exercise, read inspirational books, and journal your thoughts and feelings and intentions for the coming day. Even just a few minutes spent with each programs your heart and brain for the entire day.
• Listen to the voices in your head. Most people spend most of their day suffering negative internal dialog. The gremlins never shut up for some people, or in hard seasons of our life when we’re hurting or weak. Stop letting these voices run as constant background chatter and bring them to the front of your thoughts. Write them down. Share them with a friend. Recognize how violent and abusive these thoughts are, and how little connection they have to reality. Disempower the gremlins by shining a spotlight on them, to be seen as the mean, ugly, powerless little horsesh*ts that they are.
• If you’re an introvert like me, you spend a lot of your time “in your own head.” Start sharing your fears, your pain, your worries, the things you don’t yet understand about yourself and how you hold yourself back, with close friends, or a good group of people like Live Your Legend members. Be a little more honest, open, and vulnerable. Let your friends help - it’s a blessing to them to be there for you.
• Practice self care. The little things: slow down, say no, build margin into your life, let yourself sleep, let yourself rest and recover, take breaks, take walks, feed your body and brain healthier food, phone a friend, read, figure out what makes you happy and purposefully get more of that into your life.

We’re all addicted. We’re all broken. We’re all hurting, and scared.

And we all have the agency and opportunity to seek help or begin helping ourselves to heal.

Start today. Start with any small thing that helps.

Are you here for a reason?

Do you have a responsibility to do the best you can with this life?

Do you want your life to have purpose? A legacy?

“I used to believe, in the deepest way, that there was something irreparably wrong with me. And love was a lie. Now I’m beginning to see that love is the truth and the darkness is a lie… I can’t hear the voice of love when I’m hustling. All I can hear are my own feet pounding the pavement, and the sound of other runners about to overtake me, beat me… Most of my regrets center around being overwhelmed or stuck in my own head, worried and catastrophizing, endless loops of proving and shame, pushing and exhaustion.” - Shauna Niequist

No more regrets. Make a change.

NEXT STEPS

• BRAINSTORM SESSION: Get out your pen and paper. Play "What if?". What if there's a deeper reason behind your failure to launch? What's holding you back? Now...what's really holding you back? Go deep. If you don't believe it, pretend. See if some truth doesn't pour out in your words. File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
• SUBSCRIBE TODAY: Book yourself solid shooting clients you love for pay you're worth. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
• DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com. I read everything, and I look forward to helping you make a breakthrough today.

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by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor

Productivity For Photographers: Imperfect Action

”To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard

Perfectionism is killing my dream.

It’s killing yours, too.

It’s a gut punch to think about how much I haven’t done with my life because I was waiting for the right time, or to be “ready.” How much art have I not made? How many potential clients have I not served? How many photographers have I not helped? Where would I be today?

Perfectionism is not discernment.

The Resistance tricks us into thinking we’re doing the right thing by doing nothing. Perfectionism disguises itself as an attention to quality, presentation, professionalism.

At its root, perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success.” - Michael Law

How can you identify perfectionism in action?

It speaks just one word:

“...yet.”

Tell me if you’ve ever said this to yourself:

• I don’t have the time yet.
• I don’t have the money yet.
• My art isn’t good enough yet.
• I don’t know what I’m doing yet.
• My camera gear isn’t good enough yet.
• I’m not ready yet.
• I don’t know what to say yet.
• I don’t know what to do if [what if scenario] happens, yet.
• I don’t know anything about [business, marketing, sales] yet.
• My web site isn’t ready yet.
• My pricing isn’t ready yet.
• I haven’t [read enough books, watched enough videos, done enough tutorials or courses] yet.
• I can’t compete yet.
• I don’t know how to use [social media platform] for my business yet.
• Photoguru Soandso said I can’t call myself a professional yet.
• I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good as Hero Photographer yet.
• I haven’t explored every possible thing that could happen yet.
• I don’t have a perfect plan yet.

Are you cringing, too?

Hey, my hand’s in the air, because these are all rationalizations I’ve made. I’ve fought half of them just writing this article. And don’t think because I’m writing this and you’re reading it that I don’t fight these battles all the time.

As a kid, I spent more time reading Nintendo Power than playing Mario or Metroid or Zelda because I wanted to play them perfectly.

As a teenager, I acted the clown and blew off doing my best at choir or sports or speech because I was scared to be imperfect at it.

As an adult, I've spent exponentially more time consuming education and information than practicing or teaching it, because I was scared to do so imperfectly.

As a mentor, I’ve brainstormed hundreds of ideas for how I can better serve startup photographers, but taken a pittance of action because I’m scared those actions will be imperfect.

I've tried every trick I could find to overcome perfectionism: productivity practices, motivational audiobooks, affirmations and visualizations.

Nothing worked on its own. I kept falling back into the same ruts, the same excuses to play small.

Until I learned of Imperfect Action.

How I Practice Imperfect Action

“Let it go. Let it go.” - Elsa

You wouldn’t recognize a PTP post on the first draft. Hell, you wouldn’t read it. My first drafts are braindumps obese with superfluous words like superfluous. Occam’s Razor has yet to trim the vanity and horsesh*t from my prose.

That’s because Imperfect Action is exactly what it sounds like.

If I stared at this laptop until the perfect words came, you’d have nothing to read, and I’d be a sun-bleached skeleton hunched over a keyboard.

You don’t know it or believe it yet, but Your People are out there waiting for you to launch. They’re waiting for the unique blessing of your art, experience, personality, and affordability. For those people, you are already the perfect fit.

I hesitate to call the practice of Imperfect Action a paradigm shift, because when I read the words ‘paradigm shift,’ I want to slap the author. But the phrase has its rare place: a fundamental change in approach or assumptions.

Is your current approach working?

Are your current assumptions serving you?

If you’re losing the battle against perfectionism, it’s time to change the game.

Here is my four-step process for the practice of Imperfect Action:

Just Practicing

“Control is for beginners.” - Ane Stormer

As soon as I feel resistance set in, I take a deep breath and say aloud, “I’m just practicing.”

This serves to violently interrupt the pattern of desire > fear > rationalization.

My heart desires to ask the barista if she'll let me photograph her for my portfolio.

Fear says she’ll judge you, she’ll reject you, she’ll laugh at you, she’ll think you’re weird, she’ll talk about you behind your back, or worse, she’ll say yes and you’ll bomb the shoot, saying stupid things, acting stupid ways, and completely embarrassing yourself.

So I rationalize that I’m not ready yet, and I shouldn’t ask her yet.

Spy that perfectionism language?

When you’re Just Practicing, your actions are completely divorced from the future, from consequence or result.

“It doesn’t matter if she says yes or no, or how stupid I sound when I ask, because I’m just practicing.”

This works for approaching potential clients, setting up your Facebook page, choosing a web site provider, going to the gym, eating a healthy meal, e-mailing your hero photographer...anything where perfectionism forces you into a fit of the “not yets.”

You’re just practicing. No blood, no foul. The consequences, which by nature our lizard brain will only present us the worst case scenarios of, are irrelevant.

There are no expectations.

It is what it is.

The goal isn’t to win or lose, get a yes or no, say the perfect thing or not.

The goal is to do. To practice. To earn 0.01% of experience.

It’s just practice.

You – everyone in fact – have all it takes to be a brilliant designer, creator, or author. All that’s holding you back is the lizard. It’s that little voice in the back of your head, the ‘but’ or the ‘what if’ that speaks up at the crucial moment and defeats the joy and insight you brought to the project in the first place.” - Seth Godin

The Sh*tty First Draft

If you’ve ever benefited from my writing, you can thank Anne Lamott.

Anne taught me the power of the Sh*tty First Draft.

The Sh*tty First Draft takes "Just Practicing" to the next level. It eliminates expectations. It celebrates every ounce of imperfect that comes with your first time doing anything.

Those first photos you took with your new dSLR…

The first time you tried yoga…

Your first bike ride without training wheels...

Your first visit to a fitness center...

My first time public speaking…

I stood there in front of the Bandera County Lion’s Club stuttering, sweating, suffocating as I read line after line of technical, aimless, bulleted information. I was invited to speak on the topic of photography; to help the elderly members make better photos with their new digital cameras.

My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t get air in my lungs. Every time I looked up, I saw a mix of blank, bored, confused, and pitying faces.

My chest gets tight just writing about it.

There’s a hidden beauty in this, though:

We’re never as bad as our first time.

And that’s the power of the Sh*tty First Draft to help you overcome perfectionism.

Give yourself permission to screw it all up. Approach your task with a humored detachment. Whether that’s the first photos of your next shoot or hitting Publish on your portfolio site. Make mistakes. Be imperfect. This is the Sh*tty First Draft. This is how you get to the next level.

“Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.” - Brene Brown

Again, a dichotomy:

You have to let go of the weight of expectations and results while simultaneously investing 100% effort into the work at hand. You have to be both willing and unwilling to fail.

The better you get at this yin-yang flow, the more creativity, enthusiasm, focus, and confidence you’ll unleash. Do this well, and you won’t recognize yourself compared to the scared, ‘safe,’ small, ever-hedging artist you were before.

Give yourself permission to create a Sh*tty First Draft of whatever task or art or action or project you’re resisting. Celebrate the opportunity to make mistakes, and to make progress, no matter how fractional.

Because once you have a Sh*tty First Draft, you’re well on your way to a…

Minimum Viable Product

“In our push for perfection, we over-engineer. We add so many bells and whistles that it takes a Ph.D. to use the product. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Just because we can practice to perfection doesn’t mean that’s best.” - Deborah Mills-Scofield

MVP: Minimum Viable Product.

Another perfectionism-killer, the MVP is the simplest first iteration of any given effort.

• What’s the one photo you can make consistently that clients will pay for?
• What’s the smallest, simplest version of your web site that will help clients view your work and book with you?
• What’s the barest business model you can launch with?
• What’s the easiest way you can ask someone to shoot with you?

Your MVP doesn’t have to be a product: it can be an idea, a line, a question, a logo, a name, a pricing model, a business card, a photograph.

Focusing on your MVP instead of your perfectionism, you stop asking “What’s the biggest, best, most perfect, most impressive thing I could ever do?,” and you start asking, “What’s the simplest, easiest, fastest thing I could do right now?”

MVP takes your six-page, sixty-subpage, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink web site outline and turns it into a single, sleek landing page.

MVP takes your Master of Fine Arts degree and eight years of apprenticeship and turns it into picking up the phone and booking your next practice shoot for this weekend.

MVP takes your “not yets” and turns them into “Yes. Now.”

Iteration

“Truth is lived, not taught.” - Hermann Hesse

Once you’ve accepted that you’re Just Practicing, you’ve embraced the Sh*tty First Draft, and settled on your Minimum Viable Product, it’s time to ship.

It’s time to experiment, and earn feedback.

It’s time to put your work out into the world, and start earning the insight that only comes with hands-on experience. This is what leads you to version 2.0, or even 1.1, of your work.

You can spend years researching and planning (I bet you already have, no?), and you'll never get close to the acceleration that comes with shipping. To ship is to say “enough,” to let go, and to take imperfect action.

Version 1.0 is your MVP, that Sh*tty First Draft we all have to go through to earn progress.

And I use the word ‘earn’ purposefully here. There’s no magic, no yellow brick road, and neither a wicked nor good witch to hinder or help you. It takes incredible bravery to get this far; to finally get out of your own head and into the real world. It takes real effort, real work, real progress to even see version 1.0 of your art and business.

But version 1.0 is the worst it’ll ever be, and it leads to version 1.1...1.2...1.3...2.0...3.0... and so on until you quit or are buried. Iterate, ship; iterate, ship.

The best part?

Success becomes inevitable when you keep moving forward. Step by step, you climb that mountain, and there is nowhere to go but the top. Every photograph, every approach, every ask, every Publish, every time you refuse to accept “not yet,” you’re taking another crucial step toward the art and business you’ve dreamed of for so long.

You can do this.

If I didn’t know it, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you would have given up reading it two thousand words ago.

You are ready.

Yes. Now.

You have everything you need.

Now, Do The Work.

“Trick the lizard if you must, but declare war on it regardless. Understand that the only thing between you and the success you seek in a chaotic world is a lizard that figures out that safe is risky and risky is safe. The paradox of our time is that the instincts that kept us safe in the day of the saber tooth tiger and General Motors are precisely the instincts that will turn us into road kill in a faster than fast internet-fueled era. The resistance is waiting. Fight it. Ship.” - Seth Godin

This is Part 9 of my series: 9 practices to increase your productivity as a professional photographer

Read more here:

1. Essentialism
2. Evening Routine
3. Morning Routine
4. Mindfulness
5. Five Minutes
6. Kaizen
7. Time Blocking
8. What Gets Scheduled Gets Done
9. Imperfect Action

Like this series? Subscribe at the top-right of any page of this site to get all of my best stories and ideas in your Inbox.

Next Steps

• BREATHE: You've absorbed a huge number of tools of the heart, mind, and spirit in this nine-part productivity series. Lean back, take a deep breath, and pause a tick to recognize how empowered you are right now. You now possess an arsenal of weapons with which to fight and win against The Resistance. The weapons of Essentalism, an Evening Routine, a Morning Routine, Mindfulness, Five Minutes, Kaizen, Time Blocking, Scheduling, and Imperfect Action. Not one of these is theory - I practice every single one, every single day. And if I can do it, anyone can do it, including you.
• STAND YOUR GROUND: The Resistance is already fighting back against this newly-empowered you. You’re probably motivated in this moment, excited to test out these new tools, but your distractions and deep ruts and comfort zone are going to pull you back like gravity. You won’t see it happening. You’ll just wake up three months or three years from now, and realize you never changed anything. Stand your ground. Stay conscious. Choose your life. And cheat like hell: schedule time to schedule, put reminder post-it notes everywhere, and make it impossible to ignore or forget or get distracted from the practices you’ve learned. Be brave and take action right now to make sure you stay in the fight to make progress and make your dream art, business, and life possible.
• BRAINSTORM SESSION: Get out your pen and paper. What’s the number one challenge that’s been holding you back? Armed with these new tools, what are all the ways you can take Imperfect Action, starting today, to fight your way through that challenge?
• SUBSCRIBE TODAY: It's my calling to relentlessly seek and serve the story-changing needs of startup photographers. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
• DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back? E-mail me. I read everything, and I look forward to helping you make a breakthrough today.

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by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor

Productivity For Photographers: What Gets Scheduled Gets Done

"Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week." - Charles Richards

My photo client called me 10 minutes after our shoot was supposed to start.

And I was 20 minutes away.

In bed.

Asleep, until the phone rang.

Aaaarrrgggg; that sick feeling of “oh crap!”

The couple and their two kids waited with saintly patience while I sprang out of bed and raced out the door. The next 15 miles between my country home and the city park where my clients waited were a blur.

You can imagine my embarrassment, and the four-letter words I spewed along the way.

Why Scheduling?

"The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it." - Shoppenhauer

It’s one thing to blow an appointment with a client. As unprofessional as that is, it’s not going to change the course of your career as a professional photographer.

The real danger is blowing your appointment with life; with your art, your business, and your dreams.

Have you ever:

• Gone weeks or months without touching your camera?
• Gone to sleep fantasizing about your professional photography business, only to lay down the next night and realize you made zero progress toward that dream?
• Gone to a conference or workshop, read a great blog or book, or heard an inspiring presentation, then done nothing with what you learned?

Listen, if you’re kicking arse at your art and business, tenaciously making progress, this post isn’t for you: you’re rocking it, you’re consistent, you’re on track, and you know it.

But if just reading the above words felt like a sickening gut punch, you know you need to break this pattern of dreaming and not doing.

Everything I’m writing about in this productivity series is crafted to help you end that cycle of suffering. I know how discouraging and defeating it feels to get nothing done toward your dreams - don’t let me fool you, I fight that battle too, and often. But I also know how it feels to fire on all cylinders, like doing 150 MPH in a ‘65 Coupe Deville on a long country road (thrilling, and terrifying).

One choice leads to another day (week? year?) of disappointment and wasted opportunity.

The other choice leads to the top of the mountain of success. It leads to the magical (but absolutely possible) place in life you dream of being.

Scheduling Won’t Kill Your Muse

“Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.” ― Helen Hanson

I hear your internal Resistance yelling from here…

“Don’t listen to this guy! You’re an artist, not a line worker - you can’t schedule creativity! You’ll kill the Muse! Murder! His sinister ideas will enslave you to a schedule. You may as well just keep your day job! You don’t need a schedule, you need to just keep doing what you’ve been doing. It’ll work this time… I promise…”

Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

I fought all these productivity practices for so many years, and I made little progress because of it. The human brain doesn’t thrive on unlimited freedom - it thrives on focus. The more you refuse to direct the river of your creative energy, the more thinly-spread and impotent that river becomes.

I just knew that scheduling, breaking projects down to baby steps, and hard deadlines would kill my muse. My creativity, and the joy I take in my art and business, would go down the toilet.

Quite the opposite.

I learned that fear of structure was just another face of The Resistance - another limiting belief that only held me back, instead of slingshotting me toward my dreams.

What I started to schedule, I started to get done.

And the more I got done - the more good, rich, tangible work I produced and shipped - the more energized and empowered I felt. Instead of locking down my creativity, introducing structure unleashed it. I began to experiment, and earn feedback. That feedback, that engagement with the world, became wonderfully addictive.

I finally found my mojo.

How I Practice Scheduling

“All the flowers of all of the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” – Chinese Proverb

• I went all-in with Google Calendar. My calendar is the center of my productivity universe. I capture and input every commitment into my calendar: photo shoots, follow-up phone calls, prep time, my morning routine, gym time, and the precious time blocks I invest into my art and business. David Allen in Getting Things Done taught me to get everything important out of my head and into a system I could rely on. Google Calendar (holding hands with Evernote) provides that system.
• I commit without wavering. The number one reason you’re not making the progress you want with your art or business is because you’re not committing 100-percent to that progress. You’re not blocking off the time in your mornings, evenings, and/or weekends to get important work done. There is nothing easier to blow off than your passion work: it feels self-indulgent, even selfish, and unlike showing up at work or going home to your family, there’s no social or cultural pressure to keep you accountable to it. You have to commit to keep your productive time sacred.
• I respect my dreams. If anyone in your life acknowledges and respects your passion work and the time you commit to it the way you do, you’re in the blessed minority. Most friends, spouses, bosses, and coworkers simply won’t understand why you can’t blow off your “hobby” to run errands, work this weekend, hang out, or take care of the honey-do list. Is your paycheck important? Is quality time with your kids important? Absolutely. And so is your dream of becoming a professional photographer, to the benefit of yourself, your family, your clients and your community.
• I input everything. Anytime I commit to something that has a deadline or needs follow-up, I input it into Google Calendar on the spot. If I simply need to remember something - names, phone numbers, a conversation with a client, an idea, a great joke - I input it into Evernote. This one-two punch keeps my mind clear and free of unresolved loops. I can let go of what’s not important and focus on what is: the work, experience, or person right in front of me.
• I schedule 90-minute time blocks. You can get a lot done in 90 minutes. Or 20 minutes. Or five minutes. My scheduling is a mixtape of Chase Jarvis’ 90-minute time blocks and to-do list, and Chris Brogan’s 20-minute plan Jumpstart. I always have a list of things I can get done in a five-minute break, and I break my projects down to 15- to 20-minute, progress-making baby steps. When I sit down to work, I know exactly what I can (and should) get started on. This kills procrastination. This kills time lost to easy timesucks like social media, Netflix, and “educational consumption.” And this kills regret, because every day I’m making measurable progress on important work. After battling a lifetime of fear, wasted time, missed opportunity, and regrets, it feels incredible.

Your potential is your path to a dream life - of artistic achievement, financial freedom, a joyous life. And every day you let that potential sit and rot is more time you’re putting between where you are today and where you dream of being.

You can have any life you want.

But you have to work for it.

What gets scheduled gets done.

Get off the hamster wheel, and schedule the time you need to make your dreams not just possible, but inevitable.

"Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." - H. Jackson Brown

This is Part 8 of my series: 9 practices to increase your productivity as a professional photographer

Read more here:

1. Essentialism
2. Evening Routine
3. Morning Routine
4. Mindfulness
5. Five Minutes
6. Kaizen
7. Time Blocking
8. What Gets Scheduled Gets Done
9. Imperfect Action

Like this series? Subscribe at the top-right of any page of this site to get all of my best stories and ideas in your Inbox.

Next Steps

• SCHEDULE PROGRESS: Step 1: Load Google Calendar. Step 2: Look at your calendar for the coming week, and schedule as many 90-minute time blocks as you can work in (you can’t learn work-passion-life balance until you get started). Step 3: Give your dream the respect it deserves, and commit fully to those appointments. Easily 80 percent of the people who read this post will say “This is great! I’m so doing this.” and then do not a damn thing. You dream of exceptional art, exceptional business, and an exceptional life - so by definition, you have to take steps most won’t. You’re here. You’re able. Schedule progress, and be exceptional.
• GET CREATIVE: Come up with 10 ideas on how to schedule 90-minute time blocks into your week. Get creative. Write down wholly unrealistic, crazy ideas - often you’ll find your breakthroughs on the far side. (Cheat if you must: 20 minutes here, 15 minutes there, 45 minutes...do whatever you can when you can.)
• SCHEDULE SCHEDULING: Lock down a few minutes each evening to look at your schedule for the coming day. Make sure you’re prepared to work: projects broken down to baby steps, and a hopper full of five-minute tasks. Schedule 10-30 minutes every Sunday before your evening routine to set your schedule for the week. Share that schedule with your family and friends. Manage expectations so your commitments get respect and get done.
• TEST IT: If you think scheduling “isn’t for you,” commit to a 30-day experiment. Test it and see for yourself. Don’t let assumptions or limiting beliefs turn you off to what could be a life-changing weapon in your arsenal against The Resistance. You’re reading this because you’re not getting the progress you want out of your art or business. Shake things up. You may surprise yourself and change the course of your story forever.
• PHONE A FRIEND: Who is the most productive person you know? How about the most successful person you know? The one on a massive upward trajectory in life. Call them. Better, get together over coffee. Present them with the most important (likely the scariest) project that stands between you and launching your photography business. Ask how they would get that project done, on what timeline, and how. You’ll be amazed at their perspective and the steps they’d schedule to guarantee success.
• BRAINSTORM SESSION: How long has it been since you first dreamed of becoming a professional photographer? At what level would your art and business be today if you were hustling from Day One? Would you have taken your family to Disney World by now? Paid cash for a new car? Gone full time and escaped your day job? Recognize: ‘yesterday’ will always be the best day to have started; the second best is today. You can’t get where you want to be in your future by beating yourself up over the choices made in your past. Start now. Start today. Commit and execute.
• SUBSCRIBE TODAY: It's my calling to end the suffering of startup photographers through encouragement, overcoming limiting beliefs, and real-world Next Steps that make success inevitable. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
• DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me today and let's make a breakthrough.

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by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor

Productivity For Photographers: Time Blocking

"The simple act of putting some basic systems in place made me less 'busy' (as in just flailing) and made me way more effective at getting what I wanted out of life." - Chase Jarvis

Tell me if you've ever had a day like this:

"Alright, finally some downtime. I'm going to lay into this project I've been putting off for weeks..."

Five minutes later, the boss comes in. Ten minutes later, he leaves, and you've got another urgent (if, from your perspective, far less important) problem to deal with.

"Okay. I can do that this afternoon; it'll be fine. Back to work on the important stuff..."

Five minutes later, your coworker comes in.

"Hey, have you seen the new Star Wars yet? Yeah me neither. What did you do this weekend? Did you watch Doctor Who last night?! Oh my gosh, hurry up and watch it tonight so we can talk about it tomorrow. Do you want me to tell you what happened?"

Then a text message about the kids misbehaving. Then a two-bit client calls and wants to wiggle out of their bill. Then a text message with some lunchtime or after-work errands. Then a Facebook notification or two or ten. Then you're hungry...

How many days have you started with a passion and a plan, and by day's end, you're exhausted and frustrated with not a damn thing to show for it?

Besides a healthy "No," I've found time blocking to be best practice for protecting my productive time.

Why Time Blocking

“Those who make the worst of their time most complain about its shortness.” - La Bruyere

There's plentiful science out there supporting the value of time blocking.

But practically, you have experienced the effects of losing control of your day: distraction turns to frustration turns to impotence. You know exactly what it feels like to get nothing done.

Depending on your home or office environment, sometimes there's nothing sweeter than a few uninterrupted hours of quality, focused work. I used to take Wednesdays off and work Sundays because I'd get twice as much done when the office was empty.

It’s all about focus, and the delicious flow state that comes from it.

Time Blocking is how you make that state a regular practice instead of an occasional gift.

Like most of my mentors, I organize my productive life into 90-minute blocks of time. This scientifically and experientially for me is the perfect length of time to get important work done. I kick off these blocks targeting “just 15 minutes,” to overcome intertia. By the time that first timer goes off, I’m usually elbows deep and loving the focus.

Depending on the scope of the work I’m doing, I can stack 90-minute blocks with work on a single, big project, or I can batch a bunch of smaller, like tasks into a 90-minute block. I collect all my phone calls into one batch, all my e-mails into another batch, all my social media into another. The goal is to minimize the number of focus-shifts I have to make during day. Every distraction, every time I go from one medium or device to another, I lose some focus, lose some flow, and have to recover speed. That takes time, and mental energy - I’m leagues more efficient when I don't have to shift those mental gears.

With purposeful time blocking, I stay in the powerful Important But Not Urgent quadrant. This is where my best work gets done. By setting the intention to work on a certain sets of Next Steps from a specific project, I’m able to skip the decision fatigue and get right to work.

This isn’t easy. You have to say no. You have to turn off the notifications. You have to stay off social media. You have to protect this time, or others will lay claim to it to satisfy their own urgent needs.

Nature abhors a vacuum - so too your spouse, friends, coworkers, boss, Netflix account, and the thousands of marketers vying for your attention.

It’s not their fault - they’re looking out for their own priorities.

Are you looking out for yours?

What gets scheduled gets done, and time blocks are the perfect unit, almost physical in nature, to package the actions you need to take to make your dreams and goals happen. It’s hard to schedule your to-do list; but much easier to schedule a time block, then drag those Next Steps into that time block. Time blocks take the intangible concept of ‘productivity’ and makes it tangible - something you can work with.

How I Practice Time Blocking

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.” - Charles Richards

• I say no. I practice Essentialism. I give my schedule the respect and protection it deserves; this is the work that changes my life. I turn off notifications (for me, I just turn off wifi on my phone or laptop). I stay off social media. I get to work on actionable Next Steps that will put wins on the board.
• I manage expectations, both my own and of those around me. I try to be ambitious but realistic with what I expect to get done in 90 minutes. I stay focused and let that positive deadline pressure keep me on task, away from goose chases and rabbit holes. I don’t respond to texts (my friends know if I don’t respond quickly, it’s nothing personal; I’m in the midst). If I’m working from home, I let the wife and kids know I’m going “on air.”
• I can’t emphasize enough the power of unplugging during your productive time. I used to think I was above this advice. I thought it silly that I had to turn off notifications or turn off wifi to get work done. “I’m not a child, I can do better than that.” Nieveté. It’s just too easy. We are curious and social creatures by nature, and that buzz on the phone or ding on the laptop are immediate distractions, no matter how subtle the sound. Seeing the difference in my productivity (and stress), I now spend far more time ‘unplugged’ than plugged-in.
• I used to fight ‘scheduling’ with a fervent passion. I righteously protected my free spirit, my creativity, my spontaneity, my muse. “I’m a creative so that I don’t have to adhere to a schedule!” I look back now, amazed and disappointed at how little creating I did with all that precious freedom. I didn’t understand how the human brain thrives; not on unlimited freedom, but on focus. Decision fatigue exhausts our brains, and our willpower. Happening upon a free moment then waiting for the muse to inspire is a beautiful idea, an addiction I indulged for years. Slowly, baby step by baby step, I learned and tested and experienced a better way. Purposeful preparation (scheduling, kaizen, focus, and next steps / baby steps) has empowered me to get work done instead of stacking up excuses.
• Google Calendar is the killer app in my productivity toolbox. Beyond simple scheduling, it enables me to systematize my productivity. Weekly reviews Sunday nights; morning routines; evening routines; work days and play days. I schedule time blocks, and what Next Actions I’ll take in them. My calendar is my roadmap: it shows the path I’m taking to climb the mountain of success. How powerful it is to start each week, and each day, seeing exactly how awesome and productive I'm going to be.

Do This, Not That

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King

When I started practicing Time Blocking:

• I stopped leaving my progress to chance and whim, and I started claiming agency over my time and life (the major theme of this entire productivity series).
• I stopped dipping in and out of my most important, creative work at the mercy of my mood, and I started getting more done in less time.
• I stopped giving myself excuse after excuse for all the things I didn’t get done, and I started scheduling my work and holding myself acccountable to my goals and dreams.
• I stopped pretending that chaos enables creative freedom, and started recognizing and taking advantage of the patterns, rhythms, and candences of my mind and creativity.
• I stopped being overwhelmed by the enormity of the ‘ugly frogs’ on my to-do list, and started actually executing the projects I knew would move the needle with my art, business and life.
• I stopped beating myself up and feeling bad about everything I never got done, and started feeling good about doing hard work that showed tangible progress worth celebrating - over and over again.

Chase Jarvis has us all dead to rights:

“Busy” isn’t success. Busy is a lack of priority.

Time blocking makes productivity structural. Do you brush your teeth every morning and night? Do you make it to work five days a week with regularity? Structure, built from habit, makes these important choices easy. Time blocking provides the structure upon which you can build the habits of success, of getting important work done on your art, business, and dreams.

Think it’ll kill your creative muse?

Test it for 30 days.

Every Sunday night, go through your calendar for the coming week and schedule 90 minute blocks of productivity where you can. Pull over from your to-do list what you want to get done within those blocks.

Test time blocking for a month, and then reevaluate:

• Are you getting more important work done?
• Do you feel more or less creative?
• What wins have you put on the board because of this practice?

The muse will come. Give him or her the space they need to thrive.

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” ― Victor Hugo

This is Part 7 of my series: 9 practices to increase your productivity as a professional photographer

Read more here:

1. Essentialism
2. Evening Routine
3. Morning Routine
4. Mindfulness
5. Five Minutes
6. Kaizen
7. Time Blocking
8. What Gets Scheduled Gets Done
9. Imperfect Action

Like this series? Subscribe at the top-right of any page of this site to get all of my best stories and ideas in your Inbox.

Next Steps

• STEP ONE:Take the first step. Block 90 minutes on your calendar, and commit to it. If you don’t know what to do with that time, don’t worry about it - just block the time for now. Baby steps. Just blocking 90 minutes on your calendar of solid, unterrupted, uninterruptable (turn off those notifications, and manage expectations) time to focus on your art and business is going to be a revelation for you.
• BRAINSTORM SESSION: We all dream of having time. Time to do work we love, time to focus on our passions, time to breathe and enjoy margin in our lives. If a genie popped out of a bottle and gifted you with five blocks of 90 minutes a week for the rest of your life… What would you do with those 90 minutes? The only rules: 1) You have to take tangible actions toward your goals and dreams in those blocks of time, 2) You have to plan those actions in baby steps of no more than 15-20 minutes, and 3) You have to unplug and stay on-task. Make a list of what you’d get done with those first five 90-minute blocks this week, down to the baby steps you’d take during each. File this away in your Brainstorms folder (after scheduling those first five time blocks on your calendar!).
• SUBSCRIBE TODAY: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
• DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough.

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by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor