Today's guest blog post is by Jocelyn Mathewes, a wedding and lifestyle photographer who works in both Boston and Baltimore. Given that it is a Monday and the start to your work-week, I figured her topic was highly appropriate. Follow her on Twitter and read her blog.

It's happened so often now, I've finally taken the time to listen: when folks look over my shoulder and see me taking notes, or have a chance to glance at my work notebook, they all say the same two things: “My, you're organized!” and “I love your handwriting!”

Yes, it's important to be organized (and there are several wonderful resources you should make use of below), but I'm here to tell you one thing that will be utterly amazing if you don't do it already…

Keep Track of Your Time

Much like the way financial advisers tell you to track every penny so you know where you're spending your money, track every minute of your work so you know where you're spending your time.

When I worked as a graphic designer in-house at a non-profit, I had to keep detailed records of all my activities and projects we worked on. The design department didn't really have a budget on its own; all of our work was funded by other peoples' budgets. When the end of the week came, we had to enter every increment bit of time we spent on a project to keep the engine going. My timesheet was a patchwork quilt of craziness!

This sounds daunting, scary, and annoying as hell, doesn't it? I'm going to tell you why it's SO IMPORTANT that you do this in your own business.

As it turns out, knowing where your time goes is an incredibly valuable thing, because it gives you feedback on how your business functions, and what (and how much) activity it involves.

I'm a mom with small children, and this is my part-time full-passion business. I know many others are in this very situation, or similarly restrictive ones. The moment they step away from the computer or return home from a shoot, they're flooded with the patter of feet, the dishes in the sink, or some party or practice to get to.

Having that restriction is a huge motivator to know where my time is going. Every minute I get to spend on my business is absolutely precious, because there's no guarantee I can make up work later in a day without sacrificing some part of my personal life or leisure. (I mean this literally! Have you seen the cost of childcare lately?)

Tracking your time reveals:

– inefficient processes that need to be refined.
– large chunks of work that could possibly be outsourced.
– repeated tasks that could be batched together for more efficiently.

Tracking your time also:

– shows what percentage of your effort going in to each area of your business.
– lets you estimate future task lengths based on past experience.

How I Do It

I have a notebook that I keep by my desk. Each spread is a week in my work life. Early in the week I enter in my tasks and prioritize them. As I go day by day, I write down the times I worked on certain projects, and tally the hours. I have set categories of activities that I keep track of in a separate tally.

Every so often (and this isn't entirely regular), I take all these numbers and enter them into a simple Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet tracks number of hours worked on each of the days of the week, and the number of hours spent in particular categories I've determined are of interest to me. It then tallies the averages and spits out percentages: the heartbeat of my work.

The categories I'm interested in tracking are:

– shooting (time spent behind the camera or on my way to/from a shoot)
– editing (time spent in Lightroom or Photoshop, working on a shoot)
– correspondence (e-mail, phone calls, snail mail, and the like)
– marketing (social media time, designing marketing materials, distributing materials, and blogging)
– meetings (viewing sessions, prospective client meetings, conference calls)
– design (album designs as well as general in-house design work for my branding)
– administrative (filing, Quickbooks and accounting, analyzing my SEO, anything introspective)

Looking at all these tasks and percentages and numbers can make a person cross-eyed! But I'll tell you: it sure helps me to understand and the weeks where I worked hard and felt extra pressure, and where that pressure went (was I designing a lot, or was it a heavy shooting week?).

Also, knowing that particular kinds of activities take up a certain amount of time helps me designate days that I devote to that activity. Things that require minimal interruption (like editing and admin tasks) will happen on different days from more interruptive activities (like correspondence or social media tasks).

If you like, feel free to download my little hackneyed spreadsheet and re-purpose it to your liking.

Of course, there are plenty of other electronic-based time tracking resources out there, but I prefer the paper version, because it forces me to take time and examine my priorities in a deliberate way. I also prefer to keep my work tasks and personal tasks in separate physical places, so that when I'm off work, I'm off work (a tough thing to do when running a business out of your home!).

Make it Yours

My system won't work for everyone, of course. The important thing I want you to take away is this: find a way to track your time. Build a system that works for you, and that gives you the insight into your activities that you need! Your life will thank you.

Productivity Resources

Making Ideas Happen
Scott Belsky of Behance.net, writes in an inspiring and clear way about what makes creative people (or teams) productive and effective.

Getting Things Done
David Allen's classic is a must-read for anyone who wants to get a little more task-oriented. Read more about it here.

43 Folders
Merlin Mann has an amazing set of articles available. Be sure to read his treatise on how to set up a “tickler file”.

Moleskine
Beautiful planners and notebooks that are just hecka fun to use.

Freckle
Time-tracking software for the iPhone and internet, also with invoicing capability (seems super useful for graphic designers).

So, tell us … do you track your time like Jocelyn? Do you have another system? What has worked for you and why?

This is a guest post by Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick, NYC based architect, interior designer, photographer AND mom! Alethea has her own business, nestingNYC (formerly alethea cheng fitzpatrick photography). Her first guest post here was “Please Don't Just Give Your Clients A CD or DVD!”

You know how many families want beautiful family portraits in their home but have a hard time getting through the entire process?

As an architect/interior designer and baby photographer, Alethea takes care of the whole thing from start to finish, meeting families in their homes and designing, creating, delivering and installing the perfect custom portrait wall gallery to complement their home and lifestyle.

My eighteen month old son is going through a very affectionate stage (well, apart from when he's screaming his head off in the stroller and looking up at me with teary eyes filled with betrayal because I won't carry him).

He comes up to me, pulls my arms around him and says “‘ug!”

Sometimes he says “mommy ‘ug!”

Yes, it is as heart melting as it sounds.

But it's also particularly meaningful because of an amazing piece of advice I recently received from Kristen Kalp, business and marketing genius at Brand Camp Blog and an incredible photographer in her own right at Essential Imagery.

“Coffee coffee coffee,” she said. “Take people out for lots and lots of coffee. And measure your success in hugs.”

This little piece of advice has changed everything for me – how I think not only about my business but also about my life.

I don't interpret this advice literally. It might not be coffee, it might be a two and a half hour lunch… with cocktails… on a weekday. And hey, I live in New York City, some people kiss and hug everyone … and some people don't really like to hug at all.

But what it means, to me, is that you should surround yourself by people you love, and who love you. It means business dates, not business meetings. It means connecting with people, asking them what their biggest challenges and dreams are, and finding out how you can help them.

It means believing that you have something amazing to offer – and offering it.

It means that all of a sudden something has clicked for me and I finally understand how to grow my business in a way that feels good.

It means that I have fallen in love with marketing.

I've never hated marketing, and as an architect, I probably was “into it” more than most. I started my own business after having my son as a) I went crazy taking photos of him and gained a new appreciation for the power, meaning and value of portrait photography and b) I wanted the flexibility so I could continue to be mostly at home with him. It's also true in retrospect that I've always wanted to have my own business, ever since I started one as part of an extra-curricular activity in high school, but I had become waylaid from that goal over the years.

Even with over ten years of experience as a creative professional with lots involvement on the business side, and even though small business owners are always talking about how surprised they are at how much time they have to spend marketing … well, there's no other way to say this. I was still surprised! I feel a little silly about it now but yes, I suppose I did somehow think that I could put up a website, tell all my friends, and run a few facebook and craigslist ads and I would be up and running in no time!

Well, needless to say it has taken a little more work than that. It's one thing to hear that running your own business involves a lot of marketing, but actually experiencing it is a whole different thing. I have been truly humbled by how much there is to learn, but it has also been thrilling to learn so much so quickly… and think of how much money I've saved by not going back to school to do it!

The good news is that the “hug” approach to marketing means that marketing and, ugh, the even more dreaded (to me) “networking” don't feel like marketing or networking – it feels like living your life. In other words, it feels very natural.

I do think that it means you have to be in the right place to begin with. You have to not only love what you do, but you have to love where you are and the people that you get to meet and work with. Where that is will change over the course of your life. It certainly did for me when I became a mother in a way that was completely unexpected to me – I wanted to be a mother all the time!

Now I know that to some, that may sound like a complete nightmare, and they enjoy their professional life where they get to exist outside of parenthood. I can totally understand that. But for me, that was the last thing I wanted to do, and it still is.

“Being a mother all the time” does not, for me, mean spending all my time with my son, at least not since he was a tiny baby. That would not be good for either of us. But it means building a professional life for myself that integrates well with being a mother not just practically in terms of hours and flexibility, but conceptually. It means building a professional life for myself based on who I am as a person. It means integrating the professional and the personal much more than I ever dared to do before.

Being a mother is part of what enables me to be the photographer, designer and business owner that I now am – it's one of my assets and I draw on it constantly. And it explains why returning to my old and formerly much loved professional life suddenly seemed and continues to seem so unfathomable. I don't want my professional and personal life to compete, I want them to complement one another and feed off one another.

I hear a lot of talk in the photography industry these days about shooting from the heart, following your passion, and doing what you love, and not just from crunchy granola types either. Again, these are easy words to say, but I'm starting to experience how true it is, not just from a creative perspective but from the business side too.

Measure Your Success In Hugs

So simple, yet so powerful, it impacts everything – who you talk to at the next event and how, what your website looks like and says, what your offerings are, the relationships you establish with other businesses and vendors, and how you work with and follow up with clients.

I'll have to come back in a year to tell you the longer term impact, but so far, all signs indicate that it's going to be really great.

I love connecting with new people, telling them about my business and following up with them. Everyone has been so excited and supportive.

I really look forward to filling my monthly newsletter not with sales and marketing copy but with information that I hope will be valuable and interesting to new and expectant parents and families with young children. I feel good about forwarding it to people, rather than self-conscious that I am “marketing” to them.

I've had some fantastic business dates with people I have quickly come to love and I can't wait to see what those relationships bring. I know it will benefit them, their clients and my clients as well as my business – it's win/win/win/win! And honestly, I'm more excited about what I can do to help them than what they can do for me.

In the same way, I'm no longer afraid to ask for business, because I'm not asking for something, I'm offering something.

Finally, I get to create beauty out of joy and happiness every day… and people hug me for it. It doesn't get much better than that.

Who are you going to hug today? And who will hug you?

If you're looking for amazing insight into where you should be going with your photography business, check out Brand Camp Blog and talk to Kristen!