One common thing in the Nigerian terrain is how everyone has a side hustle. People say New York is the city that never sleeps, but I beg to differ; it has to be Lagos.
It’s not a rarity to find a person who has a slew of multiple businesses despite their keeping a full-time job. Some accrue it to wanting multiple streams of income, however what could also be contributing to this occurrence is the lack of job security and the need to hold down the forte in an economy that doesn’t really have credit facilities or unemployment insurance funds.
Whatever the reason might be, it is important to figure out ways to make them both work. As a full time paid staff, a contributing writer for QM as well as, running my own PR company and the residential wing of my mom’s business in my unofficial work hours, I frequently have to make sacrifices.
I have had to learn that to be efficient, that might mean foregoing the series some of my peers get the luxury of catching up on work day nights to unwind or Friday ‘turn-up’ which would leave me absolutely useless over the weekend. Basically, I’ve come to understand that my non-work hours are almost as valuable as the air that I breathe if I am to successfully balance both.
However, some days are just YOLO days and you really do crave being absolutely useless. I recently took my first official leave ever and over the holidays, my sister commented on how much I’m starting to let myself go. Gasp.
According to entrepreneur, these are some of the 5 proposed ways to get you some balance with your side hustle.
Practice energy management instead of time management
To be productive, match your tasks with your energy, says Jessica Lawlor, a former side hustler and the current CEO of Gutsy Community, a communications firm.
Lawlor knew she did her best creative work early, so she prioritized her day based on when her body and mind worked best. She woke up 5 a.m. to finish blogging and writing for her side hustle before leaving for her full-time job. Once there, she still aimed to get complete any creativity-intensive work done in the morning hours, knowing that her energy would wane in the afternoon. Rote tasks that required less brainpower were saved for the afternoon, such as email and expense reports.
This habit serves her even today as she runs the business she founded full-time. “So many entrepreneurs and side hustlers are obsessed with the idea of time management, but I’ve personally found that practicing energy management has proven much more effective.”
Seek out new tools for focus
Find out how you spend your time, says Nick Loper, the founder of Side Hustle Nation, a coaching service for entrepreneurs. The answers can be eye-opening and help side-hustlers better understand what tasks to delegate or even eliminate altogether. He suggests downloading apps such as Toggl or Everhour, or even just creating a simple Excel spreadsheet. Tracking your time can help gamify tasks and keep you alert. “Knowing you’re ‘on the clock tends to speed up your efforts and keep you focused.”
Loper’s other tip for focus? Brainwave music. Startups such as Focus@will and Brain.fm design original compositions with brain function in mind. While Loper doesn’t use these everyday, he says when he does he definitely feels more focused and productive.
Make time for growth.
Of course, if you’re consumed with running your business, you’re not growing it, something Chris Guillebeau, the founder of The Art of Non-Conformity, a platform for unconventional people doing remarkable things, realized first-hand while living on a hospital ship in West Africa and working as a hospital aide.
Since Guillebeau squeezed his side-hustle into mornings and evenings, he set aside 25 minutes every morning to complete one task that would grow his business. This ensured that emails and other tedious chores wouldn’t overwhelm his limited schedule. Key to this practice was not starting the session until he knew what he wanted to accomplish. “I made a rule to not open my laptop before beginning, otherwise, I’d inevitably end up distracted and fail to accomplish anything significant.”
The habit often set the tone for the entire day. “No matter what else happened, as the chaos of the day unfolded, I felt a special sense of satisfaction.”
Rethink the week
For some side-hustlers, productivity means getting real about what you can work on when. Luisa Zhou tried to set aside an hour a day after work but found herself too exhausted to do more than watch TV or scroll through her Facebook newsfeed. “Reality sank in,” says Zhou, who is now self-employed and helping women transition from employee to entrepreneur.
After some trial and error, Zhou realized she’d need to break up her to-dos. She saved mentally intensive activities for the weekend, where she had the energy and focus for planning and creating content for the week ahead. The weekdays were reserved for manual tasks she could complete while in “autopilot” mode, such as sharing content and responding to questions.
“This method is the path of least resistance. It doesn’t require me to change my schedule or increase my willpower,” says Zhou. “By making all my weekday tasks manual, I made them as easy as possible to do even in a tired, don’t-want-to-work, or think, state.”
Schedule ‘side hustle-only’ time
Spending every spare minute on a side-hustle is tempting for a side-hustler. And if you’re building an app to help with focus — like ShaoKan Pi did — it might even be irresistible. But while Pi and team spent every evening, lunch and 10-minute break on Forest, an app that helps cure cell phone addiction, they found their energy fading. “This is the moment most people give up,” says Pi. “And this was the moment when we decided to find another way to keep working on Forest.
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