- Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel.
Got a new guest with me today.
This is Matt.
He's my workmate.
- Hi everyone, my name is Matt,
and I have a YouTube channel myself,
and it's about creating and cultivating a side hustle
that you can build and sustain you
whether you want to leave your job
or maybe you just want to stay there.
- In fact, we're making a video over on Matt's channel
to talk about exactly that,
about your side hustle staying a side hustle.
On my channel though we're gonna talk about time management
and how we fit side hustles in around our full time jobs.
I'm the marketing designer at ConvertKit.
What is your job title even, Matt?
- So I do,
yes, I do several things at ConvertKit.
Right now I focus on user onboarding,
so like if you were to sign up for ConvertKit
then you'd get a bunch of emails from me.
You'd probably get a video from me.
And from that, I try and make the
first 30 days experience really great
so that you see the value of ConvertKit
and how it can help you
and you want to stay along and keep growing.
- You know I'm passionate about my job.
You can probably hear that Matt is passionate about his job.
- I'm very excited about it.
- So, we both put a lot of time into work,
so then how do we fit our side hustles in
on the side of that?
What are some of your side hustles, first off,
just so we have some context?
- So besides my YouTube channel,
which I started a little bit earlier this year,
I also do illustrations and designs
with handwritten sketch notes.
So trying to take like the core essence
of a complicated idea
and break that down into a simple illustration
that is really easy to understand and grasp.
- So how do you fit your side hustle stuff
in amongst your job?
Also, we should say that Matt is also a father.
So I'm glad that we can do this video together
and you can bring that perspective.
I don't have kids.
I'm not planning on having kids anytime soon if at all,
so yeah,
how do you fit in a side hustle
alongside a job and a family?
- Yeah, it's definitely something that
it's one of the things that when you have a child
and you wonder like,
"What did I do with all of my time before I had kids?"
But also one of the great things is that it
by default forces you to be even more disciplined about
the things that you're doing,
what you spend your time on,
and you really get to ratchet down
on the things that really matter to you,
and that's something that I would encourage anyone to do.
You don't have to wait to have kids
to do an audit on the things that really matter to you
and the things that you know are going to
pay dividends for you long term.
You have a certain amount of freedom in your day,
and sometimes the more freedom that you have
the more you can spend that doing things.
You're just kind of like,
"Oh yeah, sure, I'll go do that, because I have time."
When you have a kid you don't have as much time, and so ...
- You're more purposeful with how you spend your time.
- Yeah, more purposeful and intentional.
And so what I do is
I carve out time normally in the morning.
If you're married, also like I'm married,
and so I communicate and be intentional
about the time with my wife.
And we got to a point where we realized
me working later at night was not super ideal for us.
- Right, that's when you guys want to hang out together.
- Yeah, that's when we want to hang out.
But, she doesn't mind if I wake up super early.
And that's really when I try and get up and
get my work done
and have time that ...
For me when I know like, "Okay Matt," 5 to 6,
6 to 6:30, 7 o'clock,
like those are my hours to do my things.
I think it's the discipline of understanding
what matters to you.
It's communicating with other spouses and loved ones
about times that work best for them
so that you can feel really free about it.
It's not like you're putting something else off.
And then trying to be as consistent with it as you can.
And there's other things with like planning
and being consistent with getting ideas down
so that when you sit down
it's not like 30 minutes of spinning your wheels.
- Oh yeah, totally.
- But you're like, "This is my thing."
- So I'm also a morning working person.
I wondered if this would change actually
when I started working at ConvertKit.
And we work remote,
so I can really have super flexible hours
and work anytime of the day I want.
I used to wake up early at like 5 a.m.
to do side hustle work before I commuted into the office.
But, I've still kept getting up early,
maybe not 5 a.m. these days,
maybe it's more like 5:30, 6.
- I don't always get up at 5.
I'm not saying that.
- You know, but yeah,
the morning time is like my time to be super productive.
And I used to be a night owl.
I've talked about this in videos in the past,
but I decided to give mornings a go
because I just heard that it was productive in the mornings.
I was like, "Eh, why not try it?
- Other people say-- - "What have I got to lose?"
And it was for me.
So I don't know,
it's not for everyone.
It's okay if mornings aren't for you,
but I would encourage you to try it anyway just in case.
- Yeah, just to test that out,
because like all the way through
all the way through college
I was not like mister get up at 6 a.m.,
but what I love, especially with a side hustle
and anything that you want to do for yourself,
and especially as you add more people to your life,
usually you're not going to beat people to waking up.
If you want to wake up early you can have that time.
You can't always have the time at the end of the night.
- I found too that end of the night
time is more likely to be spent not wasted,
but like on things that you don't really need to be doing.
So for example, if I wake up in the morning
I'm going to work.
Like why would I get up early and just watch TV?
- Right, exactly. (laughs)
- Whereas in the evening--
- Does anyone do that?
Like they just get up
and they're like, "Oh--" - Wake up early and watch TV?
- "I'm so excited to watch--" - 6 a.m. watch TV.
- "6 a.m. Game of Thrones?"
- Some people might I'm sure.
People often say to me,
"How do you fit all this in?"
And my answer is simply like at a basic level
is I wake up early,
and I give myself this like 2 1/2 hours extra time
that a lot of people don't have.
It's not that I get 2 1/2 hours
less sleep than other people.
I just go to bed earlier than most people.
- I think that's something that often people
don't talk about enough when it comes to waking up early
is going to bed earlier.
- Yes, that's important.
- Because we're not saying like,
"Oh, you can just skip five hours of sleep.
"No big deal."
Not the case, but you can go to bed at 10
and wake up at 5 and that's seven hours.
And you can really get into a rhythm with that.
The other thing that I like about the morning
versus the evening,
I love your point about no one wakes up early to
watch TV,
but end of night.
There are two other parts of that.
One I do like going to bed earlier
because it helps me wake up more refreshed,
and also if I am doing stuff
I'm trying to close the screen at some point.
- I'm not very good at that.
- Not always the case, not always the case,
I'm not saying I'm like this kind of like,
"It is time to the close the screen and stop,"
but it is nice to like turn that
screen brain off for a little bit.
And the other part of that
is when you wake up early those are like ...
Once you're like really awake
and you get into a point where
15, 20 minutes you're awake,
those are your freshest brightest hours mentally,
and you're giving those first to your hustle
to something that you care about.
Not that you don't care about your job.
We certainly care about our jobs.
- But you're allowed to also care about your side hustle.
- Yeah, exactly.
You know, no matter what time I wake up in the morning
I'm tired at the end of the night--
- At the end of the day.
- And I don't want to give tired Matt to
Matt's side hustle.
- What about planning?
Let's touch on the planning side,
because I'm a big planner.
I've done a video about my bullet journal.
I'll link it on a card.
That is my current method of arranging things.
So I put all my projects in there
with to do lists of what needs to be done for each one,
and then each day I have a separate list.
I like to try and plan the night before.
I've not been great with this recently,
but it's really good if you can
because that way when you wake up in the morning
you don't even think about what you need to do.
Like past you already wrote it down.
- Exactly, right.
Yeah, and I think that's a critical part,
because if you say give yourself maybe have an hour
and you spend the first 30 minutes
just kind of spinning trying to get up and ready,
that's tough.
And that is a really good thing to do,
again, at the end of the night.
Like sit down and like
what do I want to be doing in the morning
helps shift your mind.
There's some study,
I know I always say like,
"Oh, there's some study," and I can never find it,
but I swear there's a study.
- Promises he's right.
- I promise, where
writing something down at the night
and just literally sleeping on it
helps lock it in a little bit more.
- For me too I find that then I can sleep easier
because I'm not worried about the next day.
It's like I already wrote it down.
My bullet journal can worry about it while I sleep.
- Another thing that really helps me with planning,
and I do this in my bullet journal, as well, is
whenever something ...
Because we all have those flashes of inspiration,
I just did a video about this,
but we all have these flashes of inspiration.
We're like, "Ah, this is exactly
"something that I would want to talk about,"
but like if we're not able to get it down
or we're not feel like
we're able to like capture it in the moment
and like really
kind of flesh it out then it gets lost.
So, what I do is
I'll write down like the core topic of the idea
and then like three little bullet points.
And that way that will give me enough
to come back to at the end of the night
and say like, "Okay, this is what I want to do more on."
- Capturing ideas is really important,
and I found this especially when I worked
at a full time job at a company at an office.
I wanted to be able to make use
of every spare second of time I had.
I always wanted to know that there was something I could do.
So I would spend my commutes writing scripts for videos,
writing blog posts.
I even have a little laptop and I would edit on the tube
and just really awkward in public, whatever.
I got over it because I wanted to get this stuff done.
But yeah, you always need to know what's next
and what do you need to be doing next
so that you don't waste time trying to figure that out
and waste the precious amount of time that you did have
to get something productive done.
- And when you think about it,
if anyone is watching this you're like,
"Gosh, does it ever stop?"
And in a way
no, in a way, but--
- But they're our passion projects, right?
- And you get, I think you get yourself into a rhythm
of recording and
making and editing and publishing,
and it just becomes part of your habit,
just like maybe your habit now
is just flipping through Instagram.
And I mean I do that, too, but
like less of that.
Like if you can just catch yourself and like,
"Oh, I have an idea.
"Let's take care of that idea first."
- Yeah, and make that the most important thing.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Any last parting words of advice
for managing time with side hustles?
- I think the two biggest things that we talked about
for me is find a way to plan out your content a little bit
so that when you're ready to take action on it,
when you have that time in the day
you already have a starting point.
And the other thing is that,
especially my perspective, having a family, being married,
having, he's two years old, having a son.
He's a cute kid.
When that is your reality as well
it doesn't mean that you can't do anything,
but it does mean, it does mean to me two things.
I have to communicate really well with my family
and the second thing is I might have to be
a little bit more patient.
But that's totally okay,
because I think regardless
we tend to be rather impatient about these things.
- We want things to move fast.
- And I do, too.
But yeah, being able to plan
so that you have something to start on when you're ready,
and then also just clear communication.
It's really almost impossible I found
to over communicate things.
- Yeah. I think you have a video on this, as well,
don't you? - I do.
- Yeah, there we go.
We're gonna link some of Matt's content down below.
You really should check out his channel.
I personally like watching vlogs these days
of other entrepreneurial types of people
who are doing cool things.
So if you like seeing that in my vlogs,
you're gonna like Matt's.
Head on over and check out the video if you want
on his channel about this concept
of making a side hustle stay a side hustle
rather than building it up to be full time.
Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it,
and I will see you next time.
- Bye. - Bye.