Time management is hard. Especially for creatives. With so many distractions and potential projects it is easy to get off track. Here are three things you can do right now to improve your time management and productivity. Hint, there is not one technical device or app that you need to start.

1. Write down your top three “to do’s” for the day.  Actually get a paper and write down the three things you absolutely have to get done today. Then, don’t open social media, don’t do a single other thing, until these tasks are done. Period.

2. Get a planner! You are a professional. You can’t wing it each day. Get a good quality planner and start planning. I do recommend having an actual physical planner or a good online system.

3. Set office hours or working hours and stick to them religiously. I didn’t used to do this. What ended up happening is that I was doing all the tasks on my plate at 40%. I was 40% mom, 40% photographer and business owner. This left me feeling unproductive, guilty, and exhausted. Now, I know exactly when I am going to tackle email, exactly what days I plan to edit, exactly what days I plan to write content, etc. When my kids come home, the laptop closes and I can rest easy knowing I got enough done to focus on who is most important, them.  This will take some fine tuning to figure out what times work best for you, but I urge you to figure this out ASAP.

You got this! You can be in control of your schedule.