One of my favorite things about off-season is the opportunity to take your business in for an oil-change.  I think that we can all agree that while the craziness of wedding season is taking place- sometimes we just don’t have the time to check in on our efficiency! There’s images to cull, edit, deliver, and blog posts to write, timelines to keep track of.. you name it! But in the off-season, one of my favorite things to do is look at some little changes I can make to my workflow or work life in general that is going to make my life that much easier! My friend Katelyn calls them, micro changes for macro results!

I also told y’all a few weeks ago that this month, my goal for the month was really to work on honing in focus! Well, I’ll be the first to admit, that when I’m not shooting as much as I normally am, the balance of business and creativity gets a little thrown off inside my head.   I mean let’s be honest, prepping and filing taxes sounds about as much fun as getting a root canal.. unless you’re an accountant, and even then I might question your sanity a bit if you call your job “fun”!  My husband, Morgan will also be the first one to tell you that I am most certainly an artist, and I think like one too! I have a million different ideas popping around my head all the time, and when the creativity part of my brain isn’t being utilized as much, my business brain tends to be a little random.  It’s like I need to be creating things as a balance for all the mundane.

So what does this have to do with you? Maybe you find yourself like me! You have a million tasks in your head that you know you have to accomplish, but certain ones keep getting pushed off, and then you’ve looked at the calendar and realized that it’s taken you entirely too long to finish them, purely because other tasks came in front of that one. Am I the only one that feels like that?  Well friends, I think I’ve finally come up with a system that works for me, and I’m hoping that it will work for you too!

Before we move on, one thing I think that you should know about me is that I am a pen & paper kind of gal.  I know that there are a ton of online options that are great for organizing different things, especially my favorite : Trello, but when it comes to daily management, there’s something so fulfilling to me about checking something off of my list instead of archiving it online.

Enter, Emily Ley’s Dapper Desk products and a modernized version of a good ole’ fashion legal pad.  Oh and the colored pens, they’re a very important part of the process.

So the first thing that I do when I sit down in the morning is make a list of all the tasks that have been bouncing around in my head. I also make sure to transfer anything that didn’t get accomplished the day before onto the list, too.  Though I will admit that since I’ve started this system a few weeks ago, there usually isn’t much that carries over onto a new list.

Today’s list includes: fix footer text on new website design, emails, package up and send J + A’s client gift, figure out website account information, text Emily, create timeline file and send them to my seconds, etc.  There’s more things that just that, but it’ll give you an idea.  Then I go through and clarify via colored pens on the list, which things need to be done first, second, & last.  As I’m making this list, I try and get rid of the tasks that feel a bit more daunting to me first, and reward myself with something fun at the end of it.  For example, if some of my tasks included tax prep (again, boring, but necessary!), then I might finish off that priority list with designing today’s Instagram post, or something of that nature.  Once a task is finished, I check it off of my list and boy does that feel good.

I know that this may sound elementary- this concept, but if you are finding yourself struggling to accomplish tasks when your creative juices aren’t constantly flowing, then maybe this is a way for you to focus in on the mundane parts of running your business!  I so hope that this was helpful to you guys, and make sure you stay tuned for next week’s post explaining a few more tips and tricks you can do to create efficiency while you still have the time to do it!  Happy Wednesday, friends!