Today's guest blogger is Luke Clum, a Seattle based graphic designer, developer and photographer. He's an outdoorsman, loves alpine climbing and is crazy about earl grey tea. Follow him on Twitter @lukeclum.

Maintaining a productive photography business requires juggling tasks and activities involved in both business and creativity. It can often be difficult to switch back and forth between these modes without wasting valuable time. The best solution for becoming more productive is time management. Here are some guidelines to help you optimize your time.

Assignment Dashboard

An assignment dashboard helps organize your tasks into time blocks so that you can avoid wasting time deciding what to do next. Plug all of your tasks – both business and creative – into a daily list. Enter your assignments vertically and your progress horizontally so that you can check off the parts you've finished, as well as see what comes next.

Limit Availability

Another way to use your time efficiently is to create communication guidelines with your clients. Delegate certain times solely for responding to calls and emails. It can be tempting to immediately respond when an email pops up or your phone rings, but constantly pausing your work progress is counterproductive.

Creative types know that there are only so many times throughout the day that inspiration really flows. Photography also has prime shooting times based on weather, lighting, etc., so it's important to prioritize these hours. Control your own time by staying focused during prime creative windows.

One thing you can do to put your mind at ease during those times of unavailability is create an email/voicemail auto response, letting your clients know when you will be available.

Tools

If you're still having trouble ignoring calls during creative time segments, various apps can help enforce your schedule.

1) RescueTime: This app monitors the programs you access in any period of time, so you can get a picture of how much time you're wasting. If this isn't enough to keep you on task, set RescueTime to Focus Mode. This allows you to preset a period of time that you want to get work done, and dictate which programs the app will block during that time.

2) Coffee Break: If you're a photographer who gets immersed in your work for hours at a time without realizing it, this app reminds you at scheduled times to take a short break. By alerting you and dimming your computer screen, it helps you develop a balanced routine of productivity and rest.

Inspiration

If you find yourself lacking ideas, there are inspirational resources you use to help get your creative juices flowing again. A great way to elicit creativity is to search images on a visual based photo site, which provides tons of eye candy to inspire you.

On the other hand, if you've ever had an idea come to you and then vanish from your memory, you can create a photo inspiration lightbox to group and save your ideas.

After taking all this into consideration, remember that the key to being truly productive is to produce something.

All photos via Shutterstock

Angela Pointon loves photographers and artists. She studied photography, but had a love affair with business and marketing. She decided to combine all three together when she started Steel Toe Images. She coaches and inspires photographers and other artists to kick major butt through her one-on-one sessions, blog, emails, workshops and her first book (coming soon), called “ A Swift Kick In The Pants: Business Smarts For Us Creative Types”. Follow Angela on Twitter, Facebook or her blog.

I’m here to prove one thing and one thing only: that every photographer and artist can be a good businessperson, too.

You probably haven’t led dozens of successful businesses.

You probably don’t have an MBA.

Heck, you barely consider yourself a businessperson at all. An artist? Yes. A business person, sales person and marketer? Humph.

But guess what? I’ve got good news.

There is an undeniable truth that you might not know. There is a secret the world has been hiding from you until now. There is something so unbelievably amazing; you’re going to smile when I tell you. Many really awesome artists who earn loads of money aren’t trained or academically educated in the fundamentals of business, either.

So how do they do it?

There are four things that an artist must have in order to be a good—no make that great—businessperson. And the very first thing is the most critical element you must have: Gut Instinct.

I’ve got more good news for you. We all have gut instinct.

We all have something innate in us that tells us what decisions are good, and what decisions are bad. You can choose to listen, or you can choose to ignore it to the point where you don’t recognize or even hear it anymore.

So what makes some photographers successful and others not so much?

Understanding how to listen to your gut instinct, how to decipher between instinct and fear and how to make wiser decisions in your business using gut instinct is the most critical measure of whether your business will succeed or not.

Join me on Wednesday, September 19th from 8:30 – 9:30PM east coast time for a FREE live webinar to learn all about how to listen to, understand, and utilize your gut instinct. Can’t make it on that date? Register anyway and we’ll send you a recording of the event whether you attend or not. Space is limited. Reserve your space and register now.

Want to really kick some butt? Join me for the entire series of four webinars where you’ll learn about each of the four critical elements you must have in order to succeed. Learn more and find out how to register here.

Angela & Tiffinbox are combining forces on a four part webinar series starting in September 2012. Learn more here. All money raised goes to support Tiffinbox.