There’s a life hack known as habit stacking.
If you’ve never heard of habit stacking it’s a technique you can use when you’re trying to create a new habit in your life.
What you do is you ‘stack’ the new habit on top of an existing habit you’ve got.
So… say you want to get in the habit of doing some exercise every morning… you could try and remember to do your exercise OR you could do your exercise immediately after an existing habit like brushing your teeth. So you’d brush your teeth and then instantly do your exercise.
The new habit becomes easier to remember and do because it’s attached to something that’s already a habit.
Make sense? Ok good.
We’re in a job where the workflow kind of takes care of itself.
Shoot – download – backup – cull – edit – deliver.
But in reality that’s only the workflow as far as the client is concerned.
Lots of us put that wedding to the back of our minds once it’s delivered and quickly move onto the next one.
Then the season ends and there’s a daunting amount of workflow left to do on each wedding.
Picking for portfolio, selecting blog posts, adding portfolio shots to the website and instagram, writing blog posts etc.
What if…
Hear me out.
What if… those things became part of the workflow for each wedding so the workflow didn’t end at client delivery and we carried on and truly finished the workflow for each wedding?
For me it would extend the workflow to:
Shoot – download – backup – cull – edit – slideshow – delivery – select blog post images – select portfolio images – update portfolio – write blog post – add blog post images to my portfolio lightroom catalog.
Yes it’s a much longer workflow but it means that as well as fulfilling the client experience I’m also constantly feeding my business.
I’ve always said there’s a difference between doing the work and running the business.
Of course indirectly by going to weddings, doing a great job and delivering good photos that will benefit our businesses. But really that’s just the work, it’s just the job.
The business needs the other stuff. I hate the word, but it needs continual ‘content’ otherwise it kind of draws to a halt. It needs us to be posting new and fresh stuff on instagram, it needs us to be feeding our websites with blog posts.
And I know for most of us all this stuff falls by the wayside once the season kicks in and we get busy.
Then the season ends and there’s this daunting mountain to climb to do all the business and marketing stuff that we’ve not found the time to do all year.
But I’ve been trying workflow stacking this year and it’s really working nicely for me so far. And it’s actually a really nice way to finish working on each wedding instead of coming back to it months later, or never.
Give it a whirl. See what you think.
Thanks for reading!
Adam
