Building a side hustle with a full time job and other responsibilities can feel impossible.
If you’re like most people, by the time you’re done with work and any other daily
things you have to take care of, you’re either out of time, out of energy, or both.
If you’ve been wanting to build a business or product on the side, but feel frustrated
by your lack of time or lack of focus, we’re going to try to give you seven practical tips
to help you reclaim some of your time and make meaningful progress on your side hustle.
Let’s get into it.
Hello, creators.
I’m Ben Toalson from Podia where we empower creators like you to make a living doing what
you love.
Do you ever wish you could just wave a magic wand and suddenly have an extra hour or two
in your day?
We haven’t figured out how to turn back time… yet, but we do have seven magical,
practical tips you can start using today to get more time and focus for your side hustle.
Tip number one: track your time.
Most of us think we’ve got a good handle on how we spend our time.
If I asked you right now what you did after work, you might say things like “I drove
home, ate dinner, washed the dishes, walked the dog,” but you may not get into the more
specific details like “while I was eating dinner, I watched a 45 minute episode on Netflix.
The episode after that was the season finale so I had to watch that one too.
And then I spent 20 minutes reading reviews and social commentary about the show.
Then I did the dishes.
Time tracking allows you to zoom out and see how and where you’re spending your time.
This makes it a lot easier to identify how you might be able to rearrange your schedule
to make your time more efficient.
Also, when you track your time you're more likely to spend your time how you intended
without allowing other distractions to sneak in because there’s a written record and
nobody wants to write down “spent 20 minutes playing candy crush.”
Here are a few tips for tracking your time:
Be detailed - Make sure you track everything.
Did you take 5 minutes to get yourself a cup of coffee?
Did you spend 10 minutes checking your email?
Take some of those 5, 10, and 15 minute pieces and build them into a significant chunk of
extra time.
Be specific - You don’t have to write a full sentence about every individual thing
you did, but be specific enough that you can properly categorize each activity.
Rather than saying “wasted 15 minutes on my phone” say “spent 15 minutes browsing
social media” or even better, “spent 15 minutes catching up on my Twitter timeline.”
Go easy on yourself - Try not to cast judgement or beat yourself up if you find you’re not
spending your time the way you think you should.
You may feel tempted to make major changes, but try to resist, especially in the beginning.
This time is for building the habit of tracking your time.
Once the habit is established, it’s a lot easier to make changes that will stick.
Get help - Mac OS and iOS now have built in screen time apps that can give you an overview
of how you’re spending your time on your phone, tablet, and computer.
There are also more than 100 different time tracking apps available through the app store
alone.
Or if you’re a pen and paper kind of person, find a journal that’s designed specifically
for time tracking.
Tools like these can go a long way in helping solidify a time-tracking habit.
Tip number two: structure your time
Have you ever said “I’ll work on my side hustle this afternoon, or this evening, or
this weekend,” only to have something come up or get to Sunday night and feel frustrated
you missed yet another opportunity to get closer to your goals?
When we don’t purposefully structure our time, we leave room for unexpected things
fill the empty space.
Rather than saying “I’ll work on it this weekend,” get specific and say “I’ll
work on it from noon-4pm on Saturday.”
And then put it in your calendar.
This doesn’t just work for building your side hustle.
In fact, it’s a great idea to schedule your down time as well.
Let’s say in your time tracking you found that you spend 5-10 minutes of every hour
hopping on to check your social media accounts, totalling one hour every day.
What if you actually scheduled a 30 minute block of social media time where you were
allowed to browse and interact on social media guilt free.
Then when you are tempted to grab your phone, you can say to yourself “I don’t need
to check on this right now, I’ve got time scheduled later.”
If you could stick with it, you’ve already opened up 30 minutes for yourself.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have any unstructured time.
Unstructured time is also important, but for anything you want to purposefully spend time
doing, set aside a specific time for it and put it in your calendar.
Tip number 3: Find out when you’re most productive
If you’ve tracked your time long enough, you might be able to see some patterns emerge
for when you tend to be most focused and productive.
You might already have a sense of this just from paying attention to your energy levels
throughout the day.
Maybe your energy slumps through the afternoon, but then surges again as you get into the
evening.
Maybe you’re most energetic and focused first thing in the morning.
Try to align as much of your side hustle activity as possible with those times you’re most
focused and productive.
Tip number 4: Communicate
Whether it’s close friends, extended family, partners, or children, we all have a need
to maintain good social relationships and to take care of the people we’re responsible
for.
Because of this, we tend shy away from bringing up things that might take our time and attention
away from family and friends, like building a side hustle.
This can lead to you feeling frustrated that you aren’t getting enough time to work,
or it can lead to friends and family feeling hurt or resentful that your side hustle is
taking time away from them.
Most of the time, unless there are significant issues, having an honest conversation can
go a long way in helping you secure extra time.
You might be surprised by how understanding and accommodating the people in your life
will be if you take the time to explain what you’re trying to do, how much time you need,
and when you plan to get the work done.
Here are a few things to consider when doing this:
Make a well thought out plan.
Get specific about how often, for how long, when, and how you’ll need to work.
It’s okay to come to the conversation with your best scenario but also be open to compromise.
Make it clear that you’re keeping them in mind.
It’s important that the other person or people know that you recognize the value of
their time.
This might mean having ideas for how you might trade off time or responsibilities.
Be ready to listen.
If you’ve been trying to build something, but this is the first time you’re having
a conversation, the other person may have some things they need to get off their chest
before they feel ready to see your perspective.
When people feel heard and understood, they’re more likely to want to work with you to help
you achieve your goals.
Tip number 5: Get into a state of flow
A state of flow is a mental state in which you are completely focused on the task at
hand and all other distractions tend to fade away.
Many describe losing their sense of time, outside noises falling quiet, and feeling
like they are just riding a wave of productivity.
When we’re able to get into a state of flow, we tend to be more productive and feel more
satisfied with our work.
But how do you get into flow when your time is limited?
It takes some practice, but over time you can increase the speed at which you can get
into flow using the three following tactics:
Remove the possibility of distraction.
If you go into another room hoping that no one will come in and bother you, there’s
a part of your brain that will always stay on alert for potential distractions.
As much as possible, try to set an expectation that when you are working, you are 100 percent
unavailable.
And not just in your physical environment but also your digital environment.
Turn off notifications, turn on do not disturb mode, and close extra tabs or windows.
Set a timer.
You probably already have a specific amount of time set aside for your side hustle, so
instead of checking on the clock every few minutes to see how much time you have, set
a timer.
Now it’s your timer’s job to let you know when the time is up, so your brain can focus
on what your doing instead of the time.
In the beginning, you may feel like you can only maintain focus for 30 minutes.
That’s okay.
Set a timer for 30 minutes and then let yourself go.
If you find yourself startled by the timer, that’s good.
It probably means you can try for a longer session next time.
Work on one thing at a time.
Humans are not great multitaskers, and even if you think you can focus on more than one
thing at a time, you’re almost always going to get more done by focusing on just one thing
at a time.
Rather than trying to accomplish 2 goals in an hour, try to accomplish one goal in 30
minutes and then move on to the next goal.
Focusing on a single task allows your brain the freedom to deep dive into focus.
This actually ties in well with tip number 6: Set goals for each session
This is similar to the idea of unstructured time.
If you don’t have a specific goal for how you’re going to use your work time, you’re
less likely to make meaningful progress.
Break down your business goals into smaller tasks.
Break them down as much as you need to in order for them to fit into the time you have.
Are you trying to build an online course but you’ve only got two hours?
Maybe your goal could be writing an outline for your course.
Are you trying to start a membership site but you’ve only got 30 minutes?
Your goal could be coming up with a list of 50 topic ideas for your membership posts.
We tend to stay more focused and work harder when there’s a clear end-goal.
Tip number 7: Delegate
We all need help from time to time, and building a side hustle is no different.
Even if you think of yourself as a solopreneur, there are many ways that people and tools
can help us work more efficiently.
Look for opportunities to delegate or outsource in these 4 categories:
Family responsibilities: even if it’s just for a time, it can be a huge help to have
family or friends help us out with things like taking our child to school, picking them
up from sports practice, or even watching them for a couple of hours a week.
This goes back to communication.
You never know what help might be available if you don’t ask.
Work related tasks: Do you spend hours working on budget and taxes or answering emails or
managing payments?
If you can afford it, a lot of these things can be taken care of by professionals, assistants
or other services.
Digital tools: Technology is evolving at break-neck speeds and while you don’t want to spend
all of your time trying to stay on top of it, it’s a good idea to check your digital
tools every so often to see if there are new apps or features that could save you time.
For example, there’s a relatively new web based tool for podcast recording called Descript
that will automatically create a formatted transcription of your audio, then allow you
to edit the audio by editing the text.
It even does the same for video!
For someone who has spent years editing audio and video, this is a huge leap forward in
terms of time saved.
Automation: This is similar to digital tools, but is focused more on those tools that will
automatically do things for us.
This could be a payment system that automatically delivers a digital product to someone when
they buy from you or an email drip sequence that will automatically send a sequence of
emails and sell your products to new subscribers.
By the way, these are both things you can do with Podia and if you’re interested in
checking these features out, you can go to podia.com/signup for a free 14 day trial.
I hope these tips get you closer to making the time to build your side hustle and I’d
love to hear from you about what you’re working on.
What are you building right now?
Let me know below in the comments.
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Thank you for watching and I’ll see you next time.