If you work from home, you may find it challenging to stay focused on your creative work verses on household chores that need to be accomplished. Let's face editing your latest masterpieces from the last photo shoot can be more fun than say - doing laundry or mopping the kitchen floor. Fun in the sense that, working toward furthering your freelance photography job can be more mentally stimulating. However, the chores needs to get done... nobody wants to invite a client over for a consultation if the house is a mess. One thing you want to avoid is letting the household chores get in the way of your productivity in terms of freelance work and school tasks, for that matter. In other words, avoid procrastination.
That being said, procrastination is a part of human nature. If you are consciously or subconsciously avoiding a particular task, it is probably because the task is unpleasant or will cause stress. "The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important" -John Perry (Freelances Union, web). A great way to avoid procrastination is the "45/15 Rule": conduct 45 minutes of productive work and then indulge in 15 minutes of mind-numbing tasks or simply, in relaxation. Below are a few tips for how to follow this rule as seen on Freelancer's Union's website:
- Begin each day with a list of tasks: Identify your to-dos for the day or week. Try to be as detailed as possible, even with things that seem obvious like doing the dishes, or invoicing a client.
- Break your tasks into creative tasks and other to-dos: Once you have identified the things that need doing, sort and prioritize those tasks into the 45 minute and 15 minute segments of each hour. If you don’t get to one of the tasks (and it’s not a must do for the day) you can always shift it to tomorrow’s list.
- Set an alarm: While it may seem daunting to work within controlled chunks of time, it is actually kind of refreshing. It takes the guess work out of how long you will be working on a specific task. Productivity and time tracking apps like Focus Booster can be useful, allowing you to set the amount of time for working on specific tasks and visualize your daily productivity.
- Repeat as necessary: The great thing about planning your day like this and squeezing in all those mindless work and household to-dos in each hour is that by the end of your day, you will likely have gotten accomplished way more than you had planned. You may even find that after 5-6 hours, you have accomplished all of your tasks for the day and can spend the rest of it relaxing, or getting a jump start on the next day’s tasks.
01. Christian, Ashlee. "Use the 45/15 Rule for Productive Procrastination." Freelancers Union. N.p., 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.
02. Christian, Ashlee. "How to Procrastinate Productively." Freelancers Union. N.p., 12 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.