I know I’m not the only one who’s had a fantastic idea for my photography or creative life while I’ve been singing in the shower, and got super excited about it, only to jot it down in a notebook and never take action.

Being a photographer, creating great work, and following through with our ideas is so much more than just focal length or a certain setting on a camera. Having said that, I thought today I’d do something a little bit different and share five things I’ve incorporated into my life that have massively helped me stay consistent with photography, find new ideas, and follow through with projects.

4-Month Focus Block (12 Week Year But Tweaked)

The first one is something I only started doing at the start of this year, but so far it’s been extremely effective, and it’s kind of the backbone of whatever I’m working on when it comes to photography.

Instead of just writing a long list of everything I need to do or setting yearly goals, I give myself a block of four months. For that four-month period, I set three or four photography tasks or goals I want to get done. There’s a book called The 12 Week Year, which is exactly the same concept, apart from I added an extra month to my block of time, because life, I guess.

But the absolute key here is not to write down twenty things you will never achieve in that timeframe. You could still have that giant list somewhere else and perhaps pick stuff from it for your smaller block of time, but this focused, shorter timeframe is designed to create the urgency bias.

Basically, it's enough time to make significant progress and complete the goals without getting stressed, but not so long that you lose focus or never get around to doing them. Obviously, some photography goals or accomplishments don’t need an end date, but for those that you really want to get done and tick off, this is so powerful.

I think goals in any way, shape, or form have a tendency to make us feel bad about ourselves when we don’t achieve them, but most of the time we don’t achieve them because we never have any urgency to it, we just go about life and before you know it, it’s December again.

So, setting these blocks of time out for three or four things you want to accomplish in photography or your creative life helps so much with focus and stopping procrastination.

Break Those Goals into Small Manageable Steps

So, quickly off the back of that, the second thing I like to do to help my photography goals is to break anything I’m doing or working on down into small, manageable steps.

There’s research that shows those who regularly write down their goals are up to 42% more likely to achieve them. But the problem is some of these grand ideas can often feel so overwhelming that we never even start.

Starting something is always the hardest part in my eyes. Let’s say you want to start a photography project, you’re looking at a complete blank canvas (which I have mentioned a few time before on this blog) no ideas, no locations scouted, etc. But breaking one big goal down into little actionable steps will help the snowball effect take place.

So, for example, instead of just putting ‘start a photography project’ on the four-month goal sheet, write it, but then under it, break it down as much as possible. So, you could have something like:

Gather my favourite projects from other photographers.
Analyse how they approached their projects (were they location-based? subject-based, etc.?).
Decide if I would like to incorporate any of those same approaches.
Write down a few themes or concepts for my own project, and so on.

Each of these becomes a small win you can achieve. It doesn’t feel as daunting, and you don’t get stumped doing random little bits and pieces of the task all over the place.

Just "Do Something" Even If It Sucks

For a while, I’ve wanted a new mini side project that’s just a bit of fun. The other night, I had this random idea of photographing post boxes throughout the national park I live next to. Which brings me onto the next point. Just doing something, even if it sucks.

This ‘just start even if it sucks’ mindset is something I’ve been trying to incorporate into all areas of photography, whether it’s a new style I want to try, whether it’s a video idea, or re-editing a bunch of old photos.

If you're struggling to compose a shot, just take a photo even if it sucks and then tweak until you get closer and closer to something you like. If you have thousands of photos to edit and you’re worried about where to start or how to edit them, just start editing a few of them however you please, then edit a few more differently. If they suck, at least you know that’s not the direction you want to go, so you tweak and tinker, and eventually, you will end up on the right track.

To be clear, this isn't just about being slapdash and not putting any effort in; it’s just about starting something, any possible way to get your mind moving.

My current real photography project, not the post boxes, actually stemmed from some crappy images I took on a random day. But those crappy images led to questions, research, trying more images, going to more places, and before I knew it, I was about six months in and had some of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken.

Just do something, anything, get the ball rolling.

Using Inspiration (Not Just Looking at It)

Finally we’ve got using inspiration, and not just looking at it. We're surrounded by incredible photography online and in print. The problem is we can save posts, create mood boards, and tell ourselves we're 'getting inspired,' but more often, I think we really need to stop and ask ourselves why it spoke to us, and then see if we can use a small fragment of it in our own work. Or even better, take seeds from lots of different things that inspired us to create something brand new.

Recently, I’ve been really, really inspired by old 6x6 format photography and the way in which photographers used that aspect ratio to create really simple but beautiful images. And then elsewhere, I’ve also been really inspired by photographers who have taken a single common object, like a vending machine, and photographed that particular object all over the place.

Instead of just looking at those things that inspired me and saying, "that’s a cool way of doing things," I kind of gathered it up over a few weeks and then I thought of a way I could flip it to my location, my surroundings, and where I like to be when I’m out taking photos.

This also links back to the last point about just doing something even if it turns out really bad. I have no idea if this idea is going to be absolutely terrible, but just by getting out and doing it, and being curious, I can build upon it if I want to. Maybe I decide it’s not for me, or maybe there are parts from this exploration I will pull out, tweak, and use elsewhere in photography.

Try and actively use stuff that inspire you in your photography, see if you can flip stuff, re-invent stuff, and who knows, something really random but super cool may come from it.

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