Do the hard stuff first

9-9-11: Do the hard stuff first.

There are lots of things that need to be done every day. Immediate fires, short term jobs, long-term aspirations. The hardest thing to do for me is to ignore the immediate and short term jobs which are usually much more fun, exciting, and give immediate gratification. There are lots of things that need to be done that aren't so fun, aren't so glamorous, and no one will even know that you've done or not done them. That doesn't mean that they're not important. It only means that it's much harder to force myself to do them.

I use a weekly to-do list/planner to keep myself organized. I list all the sessions, photos to be processed, prints to be sent out, appointments, etc. on it and it keeps me on track. One thing I started doing this week is to take some of the long-term tasks, which have the potential to pay off handsomely in the end, but not immediately, and place them at the top of the list. These are the boring jobs, the drudgery. Do them first. Do them in the morning before the phone starts ringing, the emails start coming in, etc.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I'm finding that I'm actually getting to them. These are things that I should've been doing all along, but I excused myself from them because the short-term jobs were "more important".

It's all important. Do the hard stuff first, so you don't wake up one day and do the "could of, would of, should of" routine.

You can see more of what I do at http://www.muskopf.org