Navigating your Full-time Job and Side Hustle
Do you have a “side hustle”? Or do you want to start one?
If you do, you probably know what it is like to try to maintain your full-time job while growing a business on the side. Add in trying to have some semblance of a personal life, and it is not easy.
It can be tough to balance it all without feeling overwhelmed, and if you don’t already have a side hustle, it may feel almost impossible to start one because your full-time job is taking up all your time. At the best of times, you may not feel like you are not able to get everything done in the time that you have.
Here are tips to maximise your time, energy, and attention when you have a full-time job and a side hustle
1. Learn to schedule and manage your time
Scheduling and time management is difficult enough when you are trying to balance your job and personal life.
Add in a side-business, and things can fall off the rails very quickly.
There are three things you need to do to give your side hustle a fighting chance:
- Set aside time that’s strictly dedicated to your side hustle
- Use your calendar strategically and proactively
- Repurpose dead or unproductive time
Look at your calendar for the next few weeks:
- What times are taken up by your job? (That one should be easy)
- What times are taken up by family commitments? (Make sure you put family time on the calendar, even if you don’t have any “official” scheduled activities)
- Where are the gaps that you can work on your side hustle?
Look at what you do when you’re not at work. What can you eliminate? TV, activities, mindless web surfing, social media, etc.
Try to find areas where you can clear space, eliminate distractions, and repurpose dead or unproductive time. You may be surprised by how many there are.
2. Create a routine that works for you
This tip might sound like it is similar to Tip #1, but there are subtle differences.
If you want to ensure that your productivity levels are at their peak, then you need to implement a few key routines (or as we like to call them, rituals) into your day.
Once you know when you can work on your side hustle, you will want to set up the systems and routines that will make that happen.
By doing this, working on your side hustle becomes an automatic part of your day and week. Don’t leave it up to chance to work on your business — make it routine!
3. Automate or delegate what you can
As we said in Tip #1, one of the keys to managing your side hustle is to free up as much time as you can and to look for things you can eliminate.
One way to accomplish this is to automate or delegate as much as you possibly can.
The more time you free up by having a tool or person do things, the more you have opened up to work on your business.
4. Overcommunicate (and when in doubt, communicate some more)
It is important that your family or circle of friends are informed about your side hustle goals.
When you are at your busiest, it can be tempting to skip the discussions and check-ins that help your partners, family, and friends know that they remain a priority to you.
If you follow the rest of the tips in this article, you are going to have some early mornings, late nights, or weekends where you aren’t as available as you used to be.
You might not be able to join your buddies at the pub to watch Premier League for a while.
Make sure the people in your life know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Remember that something that is “obviously” important to you will not be so apparent to anyone else. They can’t read your mind, so you need to communicate!
If appropriate, you may want to communicate with your co-workers and employer as well.
Be careful if your side hustle is related to your job. Make sure to communicate what you are doing and avoid using employer resources such as equipment and time.
5. Focus On Motivation, Not Willpower
With your full-time job, chances are you have a boss setting your goals, metrics to hit, and you generally know what you “should” be doing every day.
With your side hustle, there’s no one telling you what to do. This is great! This is exactly what you wanted — freedom!
The people who have successful side hustles do not have more willpower than the rest of us — they just have figured out how to master motivation, and then they create the systems and habits to support that motivation.
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Culled from: Asianefficiency.
