Procrastination: Why Wait Until The New Year
[by Barry Schwartz]
I start planning my New Year’s Resolutions early, say, around July. I do this because one of my primary goals is to get a jump on reducing my tendencies to procrastinate in the new year. As a procrastinator, I find it’s helpful to have some quantity of ADD, something I once heard was a congenital disease of many photographers – you know who you are.
As it turns out, this method gives me so much time to prepare that I inevitably take too long, and by the time December 31 rolls around I have nothing prepared. Some people might suggest that this is the very definition of procrastination. However. I have used that time to give much thought as to what I really need to be doing in the new year, and I no longer need those resolutions staring me in the face.
Besides, with a few variations, those resolutions would be the same each year:
Watch less television so I can cook more, lose weight, market myself more often, and get better at software.
Market to my clients and potential clients with so much imagination and professionalism that they are compelled, even ignoring their better judgement, to hire me.
Get better at Photoshop and Lightroom so I can offer better work that takes less time to achieve so that I can eat better and spend more time marketing myself.
Bring a camera with me everywhere to force myself to pay attention to the world around me, shoot personal work, and keep me from becoming bored with myself, which, in theory, should make me a better photographer by bringing freshness to my commercial work, therefore making me more likely to be hired so I can eat even better food, spend even more time marketing myself, and buy some new software.
Continue to study basic business practices, especially those used by people who are not photographers so I can keep an open mind about my own, so I don’t fall any further behind whatever curve I’m on and waste a lot of time when I could be eating better and marketing myself smarter and studying my new software.
Spend more time studying other photographer’s work, along with looking at the work of designers, advertisers, magazines, and websites who use photography so I can figure out what the hell it is people want from a photographer, which will help focus my marketing and software obsessions in order to be so efficient at everything I do that, should I desire, I can go back to watching too much television – along with eating better and losing weight. And worrying about procrastinating.
Barry Schwartz is a photographer, writer, and designer in Los Angeles who never waits to do anything unless he thinks of some other thing he’s got to do right away. www.barryschwartzphotography.com.
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