Fotografia de casamento e de família – Belo Horizonte

Paradigm 1 – “I have no time”

I here inaugurate the series of articles which aimes to show how photographers and other liberal professionals often fail to advance in their careers for being rooted in strong beliefs, which slowly become powerful PARADIGMS.

The first of them is perhaps something quite common in our daily life

“I do not have time”
Only we can manage time itself. This is not anyone else’s responsability. To live well and be happy we need time, don’t we? Time for family, friends, vacation, travel, time to study, self-development, work and for ourselves.
In my opinion, the greatest cause of waste of time is called Internet. Too many e-mails, spam, social media, facebook, twitter, etc. .. lead us into CHAOS. Subjects without importance arise in our inboxes and as we receive, we reply to them not worring about prioritizing. Lost, we no longer know what is more important and what can wait.


To learn how to deal with time and its pitfalls use some tools and I believe they will be very useful:

1. Make use of a management system

I use a time management system called GTD. Very effective, it was developed by David Allen. Based on dividing the tasks into virtual and/or material boxes: inbox, next actions, some day/maybe, references, waiting, etc.. Difficult to teach
it with some lines. What I can say is that it works and I learned everything by reading his book, translated by Portuguese: The Art of Making Things Happen. A fantastic book, easy to understand and read and with very practical tips. In just over six months, I started doing twice in less than half the time. A question of learning to organize and prioritizing daily tasks.

2. Prioritize what is really important in your life

I never say I have no time. When I think I have no time for something I ask myself the question:

What is priority in my life?

If it is lacking time to do something that is a priority, is a sign that I should make changes in the logistics of my life. Often I delegate some other task or function and I do what is priority. A good example is the lack of time with the family over the past two years. I started to prioritize it by reducing the number of weddings and workshops. It should be easier to say that I had no time, shouldn’t it? Would that solve my problem? I don’t think so.

3. Learn to delegate

I see that many of us liberal professionals, artists, photographers and designers want to have 100% control of the production processes. I gave up on it. I delegate functions. To delegate is different from dropping. When I delegate I follow the process to see if things are turning out just how I wish. Moreover, you need to empower, orient and train before delegating. Maybe that’s why so many people have difficulty. I have never regretted to delegated. That leaves more time, more quality of life and more will to live. To delegate is addictive.

4. Delete your life the “time killer”

Time killer is everything that consumes our time preventing us to accomplish priority tasks. I always try to pinpoint what kills my time and so I delete them from my life. Sometimes it is difficult identify them because we tend to think they are
important in our lives. Some of the recent killers of my time were MSN, TWITTER and the CIGARETTE. Some easier and others less easy to be eliminated from our lives. Usually they are linked to addiction and to our compensation mechanism.

I do not want to convey the idea that we have to go around the time of our lives producing. What is important to realize is that we need time to ourselves. Saying no to others can be difficult, but it is something needed. When we learn to say no to
whatever destroys our precious time we become the masters of our own lives.

Time does not return. Time goes by and therefore it is very precious. It is so precious that Jews consider a delay as a simple theft, theft of time. I for often stole from myself my time. I want it happen less and less and so I share with you these practices I have.

Never again say, “I do not have time”.


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