Today's Monday Message is about working from home and the challenges we face. We need to make changes and avoid distractions. Change leads to growth and success.
Being your own boss may be a great feeling but if what you are doing isn’t working you need to take the steps to make it work! You need to change – for the better.
A great quote by Chris Voss is “When you blame others you give up your power to change. Take responsibility for your future!”
The way I look at it is: If you aren’t happy with where you are at… Change.
If your business is so much work the pleasure of being a photographer is slowly drifting away… Change.
If the list of things to do feels so overwhelming you’ll never catch up… Change. There are ways around all of these feelings and misconceptions about our businesses and ourselves.
So many people I know or meet out there tell me they are unhappy these days. Forget photography for a second. I hear it from a ton of people from all walks of life. The same excuses:
“I don’t have a proper education.”
“No one will want me, so why even try.”
I have two ways of looking at change and if you understand the meaning behind what I’m about to tell you. Then you will have an easier time moving forward, not just in your business, but your life as well.
For your personal life: “Change, when done properly, is based on looking back and the wanting to improve as you move forward.”
For your business: “Small amounts of change will add up to dollars. The sooner you make change the sooner you make dollars. The more you make change the more you make dollars.”
Well, I find it is helpful and necessary to put many systems in place.
Well if you remember in episode 024 with Jim Harmer he suggested getting a 30 minute sand timer. So when you have a task you need to do; you start the timer allowing yourself only 30 minutes to complete as much of that task as possible. Once the time is up, you stop whatever task you were working on, flip over the timer, and work hard for the next task. - I want to clear a couple of things up though first. Just because you only schedule 30 minutes to get a task done doesn’t mean you do what you can and then it’s all over if you don’t make it. Nor does this method suggest rushing though a task in that block of time is a good idea… What this does is the creation of the light at the end of the tunnel for yourself and your work. An end game to help your mind wrap around the fact that in 30 minutes you are going to be done working on that particular task for today. If it’s a bigger project come back to it 2 or 3 times, but give yourself the breaks from one thing and move to the next.
A system I have in place is waking up early. Now, I am not a morning person… in fact, it is the worst part of my day. However, when I get up at 5:30am, have my coffee, get ready for my day, and then get to work by 6am; that is the best feeling. It feels like I have a good 3 hours’ worth of dedicated “in the zone” work time. Before most others get to work and before my phone starts ringing.
You know… I have an email address for Rob Krueger Photography and I have one for Take&TalkPics.com and I have one for my teaching at The College of DuPage; with so many different kinds of email coming in I need to keep things organized for my own sake. So what I do is check on one set of emails just once during the day. I have specific times when I allow myself to take a look and get back to everyone I can.
The truth is if you don’t have a strict policy in place then there is no reason to follow through. Holding ourselves accountable is the most difficult thing we must do as business owners. For anyone who has or has had a full time day job you can relate to this:
It always seems like your boss has nothing better to do than to be checking up on you and seeing if you are keeping up with the unrealistic schedule, but that is the majority of their job. As small independent business owners, we have no one to answer to; therefore, we only fear ourselves and the potential guilt we may have for not putting forth our best efforts some days.
“If I can go to bed at night knowing I did the best I could with my time and my day, then I did okay; tomorrow will be a new test, a fresh start, and a new day to see how I feel before I go to bed that night.”
I’m going to leave you Photo World with a quote by Henry Ford: Whether you think you can, or you think you cannot – you are right.”
We have to change our lives or accept defeat by not trying. Even if we try and fail, we still learn and grow.