How to Get Work Done Faster, with Vanessa Joy

If you feel overwhelmed with tasks and have little to no time to focus on what you love and want to become better at (perhaps photography?), this episode is for you. From Adorama TV with Vanessa Joy (and her awesome show “Breathe Your Passion”) episode you will find out that there are two ways to unload your busy schedule and make the best of your time:

• streamline
• outsource

STREAMLINING YOUR TASKS

To streamline your workflow, you’d need to equip yourself with a few of useful online tools. One of them, Vanessa’s favorite, is called “17 hats”. This software is basically your office space.  You can take care of your leads, emails, bookkeeping and other repetitive boring chores in a fast, systematic and easy way. 

If you actively promote your photography on social media, (as you should), download “Buffer” or “Huitsuite” apps that let you schedule your posts days and weeks in advance. We all know how important it is to keep up with updates on Instagram, so you won’t use your followers. At the same time, Social media demands tremendous amount of time and attention – a luxury, which we want to have for making photos, rather them watching them. 

The third tip of streamlining your workflow is called Time Blocks. Every task you have should have a dedicated time frame, within which you will complete it. Time frames for different tasks cannot overlap and should be stocked on top of each other. That way your mind will dedicated its whole focus on one particular subject at the time. Multitasking in this case is actually slowing you down!

OUTSOURCING YOUR TASKS

There are many Lightroom and photoshop freelancers, available on websites such as freelancer.com and Upwork.com  who can edit your photos for a very reasonable price! And you think that there is no-one who can as perfect as you are at Ps and Lr, maybe its time for a reality check.  According to  Vanessa, here is a great website to outsource your post production to. 

So why outsource in the first place? Vanessa Joy sets apart 5 different reasons why a photographer or any other professional should outsource some of her tasks:

     1.It slows you down!

Some work might be enjoyable but very time-consuming. Have you ever measured how much time you would spend erasing pimples and little imperfections  off the model’s face? What if you have 20 more photos  you need to erase those dreaded pimples from? Get ready to block out the entire day for that. 

Or you can find someone who can do it for you, while could focus on developing new ideas for your clients!

     2. You hate doing it!

Don’t torture yourself repeatedly with chores you hate. Firstly, you will never give the task your 100% best effort. Secondly, your emotional stamina will be drained for the rest of the day, after that task is completed. More time wasted, less time enjoyed.

     3. You are not good at.

If you suck at something, let someone else do it. Don’t waste your days to make something decent, when someone else can spend few hours to make something perfect. Pay for it, enjoy the result, no headache attached.

     4. Your Face is not involved.

In this episode Vanessa shares with us that any connection with your clients that doesn’t involve your physical self in it, i.e. personal meetings, etc. can be outsourced to other people. There is plenty of time spent on emails, messages, tweet responses, and thank you comments that you can free up if you hire someone to do it.

     5. Minimal Wage Tasks.

There is a reason why Steve Jobs did not spend time changing toilet paper in every bathroom of Apple’s headquarters. Why? Because it is not a goo use of his time. If you know that your particular gig earns you $100/hr, why would you spend time doing things that will give you $10? Outsource anything that is minimum wage work.

Watch the full episode with Vanessa Joy and Adorama TV: