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Minimalism, Productivity & Waking up at 6am! Tips for Time Management


Minimalism, Productivity & Waking up at 6am! Tips for Time Management - Erin Michele Thomson, Dubbo Photographer and Melbourne Photographer | Get Schooled Fridays

Okay, I'm going to start off by being REALLY real.

I don't take my own advice, at least, not EVERY day. But let me tell you what my life was like before I started implementing my little system -- I was waking up stressed. I was spending my morning stressed. I was raising my voice (aka 'yelling at my kids') a WHOLE LOT more. I wasn't eating well. I was forgetting to take my medication. Before I knew it, the day was over and I'd cried a few times, wondered if I really wanted to be an entrepreneur, and then thought 'I got pretty much nothing done today'. Finally, I'd go to bed exhausted and wake up to do it all again.

Honestly, this was my life, to a tee, only, I didn't mention wearing my pjs all day and not showering for.. umm.. too long.

What changed? I got sick. Plain and simple.

At 28-years-old, I'm fighting to keep my body on track for long enough to live out my dream of spending the rest of my working life as a wedding photographer. -- I mean, it's not likely to kill me.. but, eventually, I won't be able to walk well and I'll have to trade my walking stick for a wheelchair. It is what it is.

One night, I was laying in a hospital bed after experiencing some really horrible side effects to my medication and, out of nowhere, I felt like I couldn't breathe. My heart felt heavy and the alarms around my bed started to sound. In the blink of an eye, my bed was surrounded by doctors. I remember being so scared that I wanted to cry but my body wouldn't let me.. it was too busy losing it's shit to care about my emotional state.

When one of the doctors suggested adrenaline and moving me to 'resus', I looked at John and saw absolute fear; I had seen that look on his face way too many times. It was that night that I decided my life needed to be lived.. and I wasn't doing a great job of it. I vowed to look after myself better and bust my butt at physiotherapy so I could live this life that I'd pictured for myself.. but I needed a plan.

I spent the next week recovering before I decided to map out this great plan. "I'm going to wake up at six.. every morning." I exclaimed to John one night, like I'd just come up with the cure for everything wrong with me.

"Okay!" he laughed, "You better set a few alarms!" -- John knows me.. he knows me well. Alarms do nothing for me. He's spent the past eight years waking up to my alarms and rolling over to my side of the bed to turn them off before trying to wake me up himself. It's useless.

"I have an app! It's an alarm but, to turn it off, I have to answer mathematic equations or play a few rounds of 'memory'. This HAS to work!"

..if it actually woke me up in the first place. But I was hopeful!

So, next morning, 6am.. alarm goes off.. I answer my maths equations through squinted eyes. Make a note to dim my phone's backlight before I go to sleep that night, and then throw my legs off the side of the bed -- which is incredibly hard to do, especially here in Dubbo.. in the middle of Winter.

At this point, I didn't really have a plan. I just had an idea. But it was a starting point.

I knew I wanted to spend more time with the kids, more time with John and more time for myself. I decided that, to live a truly happy life, I had to make those things a priority. We'd already had so many opportunities to see how quickly life can be taken; this was our life changing 'wake up call'.

I wanted to do these things that made me happy but I also wanted to grow my business. I wanted to book more weddings and create more educational content, but I needed to balance it so I wasn't getting lost in work anymore. I had to keep my priorities clear and specific.

Trello.

We use it for EVERYTHING. It keeps us on top of all the things we have to take care of.

I needed to figure out a way to turn it into a system which would work for what my family needs it for, but also use it to help me manage my time more efficiently.

I decided, like a true minimalist, to get rid of anything that wasn't important to me or to us as a family.

If I did it because 'well, I've always done it' or if it was because I felt like it was expected of me, I got rid of it! From now on it was all about necessity and priority.

I set out what HAD to be done so I could leave room for what I WANTED to get done -- I wanted more time to truly live and enjoy my life.

Being specific about which tasks were necessary and important to me, it gave me a sense of clarity and pushed me to remove other things in my life which weren't adding value -- it's a 'minimalist' thing!

I had a more specific idea.. but it still wasn't really a plan.

So, like the truely obsessive compulsive personality that I am, I made a list!.. lots of lists! I filled Trello with different 'categories' and put my tasks into the lists which fit.

I planned out all the tasks I needed to have done around the house, I planned out all our homeschooling lessons and excursions, I planned out all mine and Carter's current appointments.. I planned it all and put it in Trello.

At this point, I was getting closer, but I needed something to MANAGE my time better and make me more productive.

I thought of this thing I do with the kids. Twice a day, I'd set a 10 minute alarm and they would race around the house to tidy up as much as they possibly could. They'd pick up their toys, put their clean clothes away, put any dirty clothes in the laundry basket, collect anything which needs to be put away, and then race back to the living room before the alarm went off. Eventually, they got so fast that they were done before we reached the 5 minute mark! I decided to implement this with all my activities. It was going to be a way to keep me on track and stop me from procrastinating. But it also served my kids well! Rather than saying 'I'll be done in 10 minutes and then we'll watch the movie', because no 4 and 6 year old knows how long 10 minutes actually is!, I would say, "In 10 minutes my alarm will go off and then we can watch that movie". It gave them something tangible. I wasn't saying 'just one more minute'.. it was something they could accept.

As time went on and I was implementing this system more and more, I found ways to improve it and I got rid of more and more tasks which just weren't necessary. It was becoming so much more apparent, the more time I got to spend doing the things I love, that I'd spent so many years doing things that just didn't matter! I was wasting my time on organising all our 'stuff'.

I was doing so much laundry because of ALL THE CLOTHES!!

I was cleaning so many dishes because our meals had a tonne of ingredients and required every piece of cookware we owned -- and because we don't have a dishwasher.. ouch. I know. But we haven't had one for about 4 years now!

So, I did what I know best.. I paired down! We cleared out a load of clothes and shoes.. we got rid of a tonne of toys.. and we became more mindful of the meals we were cooking. All of a sudden, life was simpler.. better.

This mindset helped me in business too. Which products did we not truly LOVE selling? Which systems were we only sticking with because we'd already paid for the year, but they weren't actually helping us?

We were forced to look at our entire business and decide which pieces were holding us back from what we wanted for ourselves.

I get it, minimalism isn't everyones thing. Waking up at 6am isn't everyones thing.. damn, it's not even MY thing.. but I do it because it gives me all the other things I love in life.

People always ask how I manage to 'do it all'. I don't do it all! At least, I don't do all the things YOU do. I choose the things I love to do and then make everything else work around it.

Let's be real though. The housework still needs to be done, emails need to be written, meals need to be cooked.. but there's always a way to make things easier. Make it work for you so that you're not struggling to hold onto the things you love about your life.

 

I'm super excited to share our Time Management Mini Guide with our incredible Get Schooled community!

It was something I poured my heart into and I just kept on adding more and more content (it's not as 'mini' as we'd planned)! If you're already signed up for our emails, you'll find this guide in your inbox already! If you're not signed up yet and you want to receive regular educational content for photographers, each week, straight to your inbox, you can do so via the 'FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS' tab on our website or by clicking here!

*If you sign up to our 'Get Schooled' mailing list after Thursday 5 July 2018, please be aware that, whilst you will receive the 'Time Management Mini Guide', our emails are sent in a specific order, so you won't receive access to this guide until the second week.

 

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