During the holidays, photographers are prone to increased stress levels. First, taking risks can bring stress, affecting one’s mental health—and holiday sales are filled with risks. A large portion of your annual sales may be riding on your holiday marketing efforts. You may question, “Will I make enough sales?” or “What if this marketing effort fails?” 

Second, keeping up with skyrocketing holiday demand can leave you working long hours with little chance to rest unless you set clear boundaries to protect your time. As photographers, our workloads tend to fluctuate dramatically between busier cycles and slower times, so it’s crucial to prepare accordingly. 

Let’s first examine how to recognize burnout as it creeps in. Then, we’ll explore how to avoid it by boosting your resilience during the holiday rush and throughout the year.

Tips on Identifying Burnout

Burnout may show up as emotional, physical, or behavioral symptoms. If you’re experiencing burnout, small tasks may start feeling difficult, for instance. Here are a few other common signs of burnout:

• Feeling constantly drained or overwhelmed
• Losing your work/life balance
• Experiencing physical changes like reduced sleep or health problems
• Feeling cynical or irritable
• Procrastinating on tasks
• Losing your sense of motivation and enjoyment of your work

Burnout can be a vicious cycle: As simple tasks take longer to do, you work longer hours and grow even more exhausted. In turn, you may grow even more anxious or depressed about the situation.

If you’re approaching burnout, you may also display an obsessive passion for your work. You might bring work home, with no separation between your work life and down time. Keeping up this frantic pace is not sustainable—it will set you up to burn out just as the new year begins.

Depression and burnout can look very similar. While symptoms may overlap, burnout stems from unrealistically high work demands and stress. Correcting those issues should help you recover from burnout, in time.

Ways to Combat Burnout by Building Resilience

Preventing or addressing burnout begins with healthy habits. As the busy season approaches, build resilience and find peace through daily practices like these.

1. Building in Breaks
Schedule breaks throughout your day, so you’re not constantly pushing yourself. Take time to recharge during lunch, for instance. Build in time to check in with yourself, too. You could set an alert at regular intervals, like once every three hours, to ask yourself, “How am I doing now emotionally? Physically? What do I need in this moment?” 

2. Engaging in Embodied Activities
Exercise, or other movement-based practices, can help you recenter. Create a routine of taking a walk, cycling, or swimming, which can help you relax and release stress. Or, try a grounding practice like yoga or tai chi, which can help calm your mind and allow you to find focus.

3. Meditating
Meditation can help reduce emotional exhaustion and burnout, research has shown. By calming distracting thoughts, it lets you stay more present in the moment. With regular meditation, worries about what could happen may subside, leaving you more capable of handling challenges. The platform Headspace offers short meditations that you can do during the workday, for instance.

Relaxing music can also help you stay centered. Apps like Insight Timer offer calming music as well as a variety of guided meditations. A wide array of free meditations are available on YouTube as well.

4. Establishing Boundaries
Protect your time for what matters most to you, even when things are busy. For instance, set aside Saturday evenings as family time, or save two hours on Sunday evenings for self-care. Intentionally setting these boundaries will help you relax and recharge.

5. Instead of Multi-Tasking, Try Task Batching
Task batching means blocking out time for different related tasks. Instead of juggling different unrelated tasks at once, you’re focusing on one type of task at a time. For example:

• Taking a deep dive into your email inbox, answering everything important in one go.
• Tackling three back-to-back client sessions instead of a different one three days in a row.
• Blocking out a full day to edit your images.
• Scheduling an admin day to catch up on those less glamorous tasks.

With task batching, your brain can focus more deeply on one thing, improving efficiency.

6. Planning a Vacation or Retreat
You may not be able to take a vacation during your busy season, but you can schedule one directly after the holidays. By anticipating the increased demands of the season, you can plan for how to recover from them. You could also make time for a mini-retreat focused on building your knowledge as you prepare for the new year. Instead of handling daily tasks during that time, you could catch up on reading, have a conversation with your mentor, and set personal growth goals for the year.

7. Seeking Support
Consider outsourcing certain functions or tasks to lift some of the weight from your shoulders. Hire an assistant to help you get through those back-to-back sessions smoothly, for instance. Or, hire someone to handle communications, letting you focus on your craft.

Seek the support of your family or a trusted mentor as well. Talk with them about the challenges you’re experiencing, letting them know how they can help you through this busy time. Tell close family members what to expect, too—how long the busy season will last, and what your days will look like during this time. This will help them to be more patient with you when demands are high.

Reevaluate Your Business Strategy

Rethink your business strategy as your busy season and the new year approach, making adjustments as needed. Are you focused on the most high-impact tactics that advance your business goals? Or are you trying three different tactics that aren’t paying off equally? Maybe it’s time to let one of them go. You could run a holiday discount, offer gift cards, or feature holiday gifts, but you don’t necessarily need to do all of those things.

Don’t get so caught up in holiday promotions that you neglect your relationships with loyal clients, too. Reach out to them as you begin booking holiday sessions, giving them the chance to sign up before you start advertising far and wide. By catering to their needs, you’ll continue building a dedicated clientele.

A new year lies just ahead. Don’t wait until January 1st to start envisioning how you’ll make the most of it. Begin establishing goals or resolutions that will help you prioritize over the next 12 months. Since you’re a visual person, try vision boarding to set these intentions, considering the types of projects you want to pursue, the skills you want to develop, and the values you want your work to embody.

Also consider exploring services that can help you manage your workflow and run your photography studio more efficiently. At Imaging USA, you’ll find numerous vendors who specialize in exactly that. And visit PPA’s Business Resources page for more support to help you manage your growing business, like a tool for setting financial benchmarks. By adopting the right supports, you’ll position yourself to scale in the coming year.