3 Tips on establishing a healthy work routine

Within those past months I have heard of so many people having had a burnout, being in the middle of one or on the verge of having one that I started wondering whether the feeling of being overwhelmed by one´s job and/or life is due to pressure that either our society or the individuals put on themselves or whether it is due to a lack of ideas how to healthily balance out your (work-)life.
When my husband then felt like HE was on the verge of a burnout (and those people knowing him know that he can take A LOT) and took a few days off of work for us to go on a holiday, I had the idea to write a blogpost about burnout.

Especially as freelancers you can easily get overworked because you don´t have a boss telling you to work appropriate hours and take a holiday every now and then.
It´s so easy to get carried away and wanting to edit "just a few pictures" for me often ended in editing a whole session for hours.
So I´ve come up with a few things you may install in your workflow and weekly schedule to make sure that your health stays stable.



1. If you haven´t yet, install a weekly schedule. This may seem ridiculous but it´s very good for one thing: Getting appropriate times of breaks in between which you need to work more effectively!
It is so easy once your "in the flow" to keep editing pictures until your eyes hurt (I know the feeling...) but why not install special hours for editing pictures and - if you need something to keep you on track set an alarm clock - then take a ten minute coffee break and browse through your favorite magazine.
Making time for breaks also gives me a huge boost of motivation. When I don´t feel like starting something cause I know it will take endless hours, I limit the time to work on it to two hours. That way the time frame is limited and to me that makes it easier to find the motivation to start and work through those two hours to get the "reward" (coffee, tea, a short walk, a piece of chocolate, ...) after.

2. Do something completely unrelated to photography. Go running. Go horse-back riding. Go swimming. Find a TV show you enjoy. Learn a new language. Really the possibilities are endless!
And purposely leave your camera at home (especially when you go swimming and don´t have any of those fancy under-water-cameras...). Take some time to get your head free and open for new inspiration in order to come back to your workspace and work more efficiently!

3. Set a certain time that you close your computer. For the rest of the day. Now I know that there will be days when that´s not possible, when you´ve numerous weddings and/or portrait shoots in the cue waiting to be edited.
But make it a rule to not work until late at night. You can always bend it when necessary, but make giving yourself time to relax the rule.



So, maybe this wasn´t something new to you but maybe you needed to hear that once more. I know I also have to keep reminding myself of thes things.

10 things you probably didn´t know about me

1. I can´t sleep without a blanket. Not.ever.
Not even when it´s 30°C outside. I still need a sheet or something that I can roll myself up in like a burrito.

2. I love music. I played the trumpet for 10 years, then started singing in my church´s band. Music was my main subject in school and when it comes to classical music I absolutely adore Bach, he´s my favorite classical composer, hands down.

3. I wanna seem like I have it all together but I really sometimes don´t. Especially with my photography I have to constantly remind myself that it´s a learning curve and that I am getting there!

4. I don´t think I have ever said no to a piece of chocolate, a chocolate muffin or a chocolate cake. If so, I must have been sick. I love, love, LOVE chocolate in all it´s forms. And Nutella... Hmmm....

5. I hate beer. There, I said it. That probably makes me a very bad German. But to me it tastes like - I wanna say vomit but that may be too harsh. It´s true though.

6. My kids make me laugh. They say the funniest things. Like when Josiah told us that his friend had pushed him until he fell on his bum. My husband replied that that wasn´t nice and Josiah says: "Yes, maybe he was stressed!?"
Or when I said to Noa" Mama is a woman, Daddy is a man, Josiah is a boy and Noa is ..." and she goes "A PRINCESS!" My heart want´s to melt!

7. I have a very weird humor that only certain people understand (sometimes not even my husband).

8. They took my appendix out when I was 4 years old.

9. Until I was 13 I had straight hair. Then it kind of exploded and I looked like a white african with a big afro (no joke!). After two pregancies the afro is gone again and I´m left with some fuzzy-frizzy-not-curls-not-straight-hair-hairstyle. I should actually show you pictures. When I find them I will.

10. This post was originally called "20 things you probably didn´t know about me". I don´t know why I wrote such a high number. There might be a "Part two" some time. :p

My definition of friendship

A couple of months ago my husband asked me who my best friend is. (Apart from him, obviously.)
I thought about it for a while but I couldn´t say. I thought about it for days, then weeks and realized that I couldn´t even tell what my definition of friendship looked like.
I mean of course we all have friends that we like, that we feel comfortable with and that we wanna be with because they enrich our lives and sometimes because they are a bit like the person we wanna become. I have many of those friends and I treasure them dearly and don´t wanna miss any of them in my life.
But what distinguishes your good friends from your BEST friend? Is your best friend the one that knows the most about you? Or is it the one friend that you´re spending most time with? Or is your best friend the friend you share a hobby with?
None of these characteristics of friendship lead me to any conclusion about my BEST friend.
Until I knew.
For me, my best friend must ALWAYS have an open ear. I need to have the feeling that my thoughts, feelings and problems count. That my friend wants to listen and that I could call WHENEVER and he/she would be there. And vice versa. That there is a connection of hearts.
Now from a spiritual perspective that to me is Jesus, no question.
But here, in this world, my best friend is my Mom. As much as we´ve argued and as many tears as she probably shed when I was a teenager going through all of THIS she has always been there for me. Even in the darkest of times I knew I could ALWYAYS call her and always count on her.
I talk to her when I have exciting news, and also when I doubt myself or feel down.
I appreciate everything she has done in my life and I am deeply thankful for who she is.
I think it´s safe to say that without her I wouldn´t be where I am today, because she invested in me from when I was a little girl and she always believed in me! <3

Danke, Mama!

Happy NEW YEAR!

It is 2014, people. I can hardly believe that. It seems like the older I get, the faster the months and years just run by and I feel like I am supposed to keep running to keep up with time.

It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that it was march 2013 and I was looking forward to what summer and the rest of the year would have in store for me and then it came and went and now we already started a new year.
2014.
I have not made any new years resolutions as I really don´t like them. When I was younger I would have these big things I wanted to change in that year to come only to be disappointed by myself only a couple of weeks later.
It sort of felt like after messing up my New Years resolution the new year could only go downhill from there.
Believing that your New Years resolutions will change everything makes for incredible discouragement, because you have these big expectations and then you may find yourself failing.
At least that´s how it used to be for me.

Today I firmly believe that you get a fresh start not only on the 1st of January.
I believe that you get a fresh start every morning and can make resolutions for the day EVERY MORNING.
This means that you can choose to be better and do things differently every morning and you will be able to see things change that very same day. Not in the near or not so near future. You make the resolution for the day. And then maybe a different one for the next day or maybe the same. Doesn´t matter. But you can choose to live differently every day.
For me that works much better, to live life in little steps and not pay too much attention to that BIG step at the beginning of the year. Because truly, the 1st of January is just another day of the week, the only thing that´s different is that you write 2014 now instead of 2013.

Have you made and New Years resolutions for this year? How does it work for you and what are they?