While the extra income earned from side hustles can be life-changing, time is often a major sacrifice side hustlers have to make. No matter what your side hustle is, working extra on top of having a full-time job can be downright exhausting if you aren’t cautious.
Luckily, there are ways you can optimize your time to side hustle more efficiently and prevent burnout. If you are interested in starting a side hustle, but struggling to find the time, these tips will help.
Set Boundaries
Setting aside a specific time to work on your side hustle every week can be extremely helpful to help you balance all of your priorities. For instance, I work on my blog and freelancing projects on Sundays and Wednesdays. This prevents me from becoming overwhelmed with work, because I know I already have planned out a time to accomplish everything. I try not to work on my side hustles outside of that time, other than taking some time each day to answer emails, etc.
It also helps to split your side hustles into separate details. For example, if you babysit as a side hustle, what business practices do you need to do? You likely need to spend time marketing your services, communicating with clients, organizing your payments and scheduling, and doing the actual babysitting.
Get Organized
Organization is the key to achieving more and stressing less. With a full-time job, a side business, and other responsibilities, it can be completely overwhelming to try to keep track of everything. When you have a lot on your plate, it can be tempting to jump right in and work on tasks instead of taking time to organize and prioritize them. Even though it takes a few minutes, organizing yourself is the best way to ensure that you are excelling at every aspect of your life.
Take a few minutes each Sunday to organize your week. Prioritize the most important tasks – don’t forget about prioritizing in family time, exercise, and hobbies. Make a list of all other tasks you need to accomplish, and schedule a time to work on them. If your side hustle is something you can do from home, having a dedicated desk or office space can really help you to stay organized.
Turn Off the Distractions
We all know that television, cell phones, and other digital products are prohibitive to productivity, but most of us still struggle to turn them off or put them away.
Television used to be a huge time waster for me. Watching a few hours of television at night is what I used to convince myself I needed to do to unwind. Not only is this a bad habit, but it wasted about 20 hours a week! Once I cut back on this habit, I was amazed at how much more time I had for side hustles. My stress decreased dramatically, and I was able to accomplish more tasks related to my side hustles in significantly less time because I cut out a major distraction.
Prioritize Your Health
When you’re working 60+ hours a week, it can be easy to let your health go to the wayside. However, most experience side hustlers will tell you that ignoring your health is one of the worst mistakes you can make.
When you are working a full-time job and a side hustle, you need to be healthy in order to do both well. Making time to exercise and eat well are key to being able to focus on your side hustle. Likewise, getting adequate sleep is extremely important. Many people find that they can either stay up late to work on their side hustle or wake up early, but not both. You need to be extra cautious and aware of your health when you are working so much. If you don’t take care of your health, you are putting yourself at risk for severe burnout, which will not only be another health concern in itself, but it has the potential to lose out on the opportunity to make money.
Share Your Goals With Others
With any job, you will need support along the way. Reach out to friends, family, and others in the community of your choice of side hustle. Not only will they be able to encourage you when the balancing act gets challenging, but they will also be able to help you with certain tasks. No one is superman or superwoman. Balancing a full-time job and a side hustle isn’t easy, and we all need people on our team to help and support us.
Further, sharing your goals will also give you additional accountability. You know that you want to side hustle and earn extra money. But undoubtedly, there will be times where you want to give up or take a break. Sharing your goals will ensure that you have people pushing you along when times get tough.
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5 Side Hustles that Make at Least $500 a Month
How do you find time to side hustle? If you haven’t stated side hustling yet, what do you think you could do to make time?
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Turning off distractions is a BIG one. I know that as a freelancer and blogger, social media is important, but it can waste so much time if you’re not careful. Love this!
I’m still so guilty of this! For whatever reason, it can be so hard to disconnect, but I am always so much more productive when I do. Thanks, Chonce!
Your health is wealth. I have been working on taking better care of myself this year. I want to maximize my income. I can’t do that being sick.
LOVE this! Every side hustler is likely to face burnout, but taking care of your health and making time for hobbies is the key to being able to max a long-lasting income. Thanks, Jason!
I’m totally agree…noe I have only one side hustle as barista during weekends untilmiddle of June and I’m looking for new side hustle into remote way!!!
Thanks, Giulia!