Finding the time to be productive

I’ve had the opportunity a few times where I’ve taken time off between jobs.  I am a HUGE fan of this and I can’t speak highly enough about it.  One of the things that amazed me, though, was people who would ask:

“What do you do with your time?”

These people would admit that were it them, they’d go stir crazy.

This is not something that I’ve suffered.  I find that there are so many things calling for my attention.  In fact, while gainfully employed I often find it hard to make the time to pursue the many activities that I enjoy.

I’ve been making an effort recently to spend more time working on some photo projects, including my weekly photo postings.  The main purpose of this effort is to make sure I’m spending more time examining the photos I’m taking (I’ve taken) in order to improve future images.  I figured, I should be able to spend at least a little time each week on this.  It’s just 1 photo per week, after all.

And yet, I’m amazed at how difficult it’s been.  And so it’s with some amazement that I look at others and dustin-was-herewhat they’re able to get done.  Recently, I’ve been checking in on a photo blog where the author, Dustin Diaz, produces 1 photograph to post PER DAY.  And these are highly-stylized, photos with lighting setups and accompanying tech notes and everything.  I am just amazed that he is able to find the time each and every day to put towards this effort (this in addition to holding down a job, relationship and even pet ownership, from what I can gather).

I’ll admit that some of the photos end up being quite similar and you might fault him for that but remember: each of those photos is going to take a couple of hours (including planning, set up, shooting, tear down, post processing, posting, describing, and then dealing with the comments, etc.,) so one can’t fault him too much for falling back to a similar setup.  Besides, it’s not like there’s a lot of time left in the day for pre-planning these thing and coming up with more differentiated setups.

Over the coming months, where I spend my time is going to be something I’m more consciously thinking about.  I feel like I’m already pretty decent at minimizing time spent on less-important stuff, it’s just that I’ve got to re-draw the line, lopping more stuff into the less-important column.

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