You Can Work Your Side Hustle and Your Full-Time Job

How to make time to work your side hustle and your full-time job.  There are so many great ways to earn extra money by working a side hustle. By performing a simple online search, you can find tons of side hustle ideas and side hustle tips to help you get started.  However, there’s one major obstacle people are forgetting to mention. You need to carve out time to dedicate to your side hustle to be successful. Whatever your goal is for working your side hustle, you’ll want it to be sustainable and not draining.

Have you found a side hustle job you’re interested in but just need to find the time to get started? These tips will help you.

Get Organized

The first thing you want to do when you start side hustling is to get organized. This way you can prioritize your time and energy. It’s important to know exactly what you need to do and when you can do it.  Determine when you’re most productive and set aside a dedicated time for side hustle work. You can also use a planner and make a daily to-do list to stay on track.

Don’t forget to plan out work that is unpaid and determine how you’ll do it effectively. This could be things like taking the time to promote your services, answering emails, transporting yourself to your side hustle location, or even sending out invoices if you freelance.

Free Up More of Your Time

We all waste time one way or another. When you are starting your side hustle, your goal is to identify, free, “gray” or wasted time.  These are all things that you can use (free time), spend less time doing (gray time), or stop doing (wasted time) to create time for your side hustle.  Your goal, of course, is to free up as much time as possible.

Usually, watching excessive amounts of television (wasting time) is the first thing to go. If you’re watching television for two hours every night, that’s 10 hours you can free up during weekdays. Even if you cut that time in half, you’ll still gain 5 hours.  You may also want to cut out time spent on social media basically doing nothing or time spent playing games.  Use your lunch break (eat first of course) to work on your side hustle instead, another 4+ hours gained.  You can also start meal prepping your food for the week to cut down on time deciding on and preparing dinner.

Basically, figure out some of the activities that take up a lot of time in your life. Then see which ones you can streamline or get rid of. This way you can have more time to dedicate to your side hustle.

Get Up Early or Stay Up Late

I always recommend either one or the other to side hustlers, because generally, you can’t pick both. You’re probably either a morning or night person.  I’m definitely a morning person. I can’t think to do anything super productive at night when I’d rather just relax and spend time with my family and perhaps an adult beverage!

If you are a night person then sleep in and just stay up later than normal to side hustle in the evening. Whichever you choose, it must line up with your productivity levels, so you complete the most amount of effective work.   Just find what works best for you.

Dedicate Time Every Day to your Side Hustle

You freed up time within your daily schedule and will work in the mornings or at night to optimize your productivity.  Now, you MUST truly dedicate that time to your side hustle and work it every day.  Dedicating time to your side hustle is in short, making a promise to yourself.  If you don’t work your side hustle every day, you are breaking a promise to yourself.  Not working your side hustle’s dedicated hours means that any money and resources you spend on your side hustle are just going to be wasted. For more tips for new Entrepreneurs read our post 6 Tips for Success for New Entrepreneurs.

Kim and I both work day jobs and our side hustle The Biz Wizards.  However, we both agreed from day one that we had to dedicate time every day to our side hustle.  We work our day jobs from 9 am-3 pm, and our side hustle from 3 pm – 5 pm (at least).  Working the same hours all week helps develop a routine and a habit.  Getting into a routine is critical, once the routine is a habit then you are on the road to success! 

How to Handle “Curveballs” that break your routine

Now that you’ve got your routine down, and making great progress, life is going to “happen”.  Life or your day job is going to throw you a curveball that is going to make you change your routine.  Being mad at the “curveball” just wastes your energy!  So, roll with it, accept it, and move on.  Adjust your routine within your morning or evening hours as needed and start a new routine/habit.  It will take getting used to it again, but so did your original routine and you successfully settled into that one!  

Final Thoughts

The big takeaway is that yes, working your side hustle requires planning to fit in with the rest of your life.  But if you’re committed to your goal—side hustling while working full-time is totally possible. Furthermore, not only is this balance achievable but your efforts will be rewarded.  At times when the balance between your full-time job and a side hustle seems daunting, keep in mind why you’re doing it, and think about the fact that the payoff will be more than worth any incidental balancing bumps along the way.
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