Fortunately, for those pursuing a side hustle, numerous options exist. The amount of income one can earn from a side hustle is certainly a key consideration, but there are some other key features of the work that predict the extent to which workers will feel empowered and engaged in their side hustles. These attributes can serve as motivation to keep working outside of normal work hours, building your business and transitioning to working for yourself full time.
Features That Increase Enrichment from Side Work
Side hustles that provide autonomy by giving workers the independence and freedom to work their own schedules, make decisions, and choose how they complete their work offer more enriching experiences.
Side gigs that involve seeing tasks through from start to finish also tend to be better experiences for the contractor. Fortunately, side hustles tend to exhibit independence and offer such tasks given the nature of gig work, which make finding side hustles with these features relatively easy.
Side hustles that provide feedback, significance, and skill variety can also be rewarding. In terms of feedback, finding a side hustle that provides direct and clear information about one’s performance improves the experience of the work. Consider, for example, the instantaneous feedback provided to Lyft and Uber from rider ratings by comments and tips added to the fare. In contrast, performing a dog walking side hustle via the Rover app may provide less immediate and clear feedback about one’s performance and thus be less enriching.
Finding a side hustle that is perceived to be significant (i.e., directly influential and beneficial to the lives or work of others) also increases enrichment from the work. For example, when selling goods online, side hustlers are unlikely to deeply connect with the significance of the task, whereas a babysitting side hustle via the Urbansitter app will likely increase perceptions that the side hustle is significantly rewarding and purposeful.
Finally, finding a gig that involves a variety of skills also improves the experience. The skills can be those the side hustler already possesses, or in some circumstances, skills the side hustler wants to further develop, creating an added benefit for the worker. For example, consider the variety and breadth of skills one may use or develop by performing a variety of jobs on TaskRabbit compared to the lone skill of driving for a shared ride service. In short, finding a side hustle that offers autonomy, discrete tasks, feedback, significance, and skill variety will lead to more enriching experiences and help facilitate personal empowerment and engagement in the activity.
Motives for Pursuing a Side Hustle
Workers who pursue side hustles do so for a variety of reasons. The motives for pursuing a side hustle include the pursuit of practical interests, increased pay, and security. Forty percent of individuals said that their top motive for having a side hustle was to increase pay and prestige.
Other individuals pursue side hustles for different reasons; in fact, thirty four percent of individuals said that their top motive for having a side hustle was a desire for variety and autonomy. A cashier may seek variety elsewhere by doing odd jobs on Taskrabbit, or an accountant may pursue autonomy as an artist on Etsy.
Another seven percent of individuals said their top motive for having a side hustle was to increase social interactions and to benefit others. An individual may choose to drive for Lyft to increase social interactions or choose to teach at a community college in the evenings to benefit others. Fourteen percent of individuals said that their top motive for having a side hustle was to have more security and authority in their work. For instance, to do so, an individual may rent out a spare room in their house on Airbnb.
Do Something Similar to Your Full-Time Job or Something Different?
Should a full-time accountant undertake individual tax returns on the side of their full-time job? An advantage of holding a similar full-time job and side hustle is having a set of skills that facilitates both roles. This congruence may make managing and transitioning between the two roles easier, and make the individual more time efficient.
However, research suggests that occupying a similar side hustle and full-time job may limit a sense of being away from full-time work, as an individual extends the experience of a full-time job into what would otherwise be non-work time. Ultimately, curtailing time away from a full-time job by holding a side hustle that is similar to one’s full-time work may prevent rest and recovery from the primary job.
Developing Your Side Hustle
After choosing a side hustle based on features of the work, motives for performing it, and the costs and benefits of doing something more or less similar to full-time work, workers have a couple of key decisions to make in terms of building their side hustle. Specifically, considerations ought to be made for managing the pace of the side hustle, keeping the side hustle on the side, and disclosing the side hustle to their full-time employer.
Keep the Side Hustle on the Side or Make It Full-Time?
In a sample, seventeen percent of participants agreed that they would like to turn their side hustle into their full-time work someday. These participants tended to have side hustles that aligned with their personal interests, but did not generate sufficient income on their own. Those long-term aspirations for a side hustle can help with decisions about selecting a side hustle and pacing the work. People who are looking for a side hustle to turn into their primary work ought to select a side hustle that is more interesting and personally fulfilling than their current full-time job, yet has enough earning potential to be able to support the individual and/or his or her family.
An advantage of working a side hustle is trying alternative work without the risk of losing one’s full-time job. Ideally, if it’s a good fit for the individual, the side hustle can then be scaled to eliminate the main job.
Manage Your Energy
The most common time to work side hustles is on weekday evenings. Although it is tempting to slide straight from your full-time work into your side hustle, or to work each weeknight or all weekend on your side hustle, you should find time to unplug from both your full-time work and your side hustle. Many people work their side hustles an average of 4 days per week. Side hustlers should take time between full-time work and side hustles rather than starting the second job immediately after work. This will allow a break to rest and refuel, help keep the mind clear, and ease the transition from one task to the next.
Taking small breaks for as little as ten minutes during full-time work and during a side hustle will also help to manage your energy. While it’s tempting to use breaks to surf the internet, send emails, or run errands — the best breaks are those that allow you to detach from work. Consider taking time to focus on the meaningfulness or joy you receive from your full-time work or side hustle. Take some time to show gratitude toward others, eat, meditate, stretch, or relax.
The Benefits
Leaving your current full-time job to start your own business can be risky. You’ll be investing your own capital and potentially running on zero income for your short term future. If your business collapses or fails to generate any meaningful momentum, you’ll be low on cash and without a job.
Keeping your job while starting your own business is a way of maintaining income while slowly building. If you keep your job, you can quit at any time; if you quit your job, it could be difficult to get it back or find a new one.
The Drawbacks
The most obvious drawback is time. If you’re working full-time, you have to make time to pursue your own business. You’ll have to fit all your work for the side hustle into weeknights and weekends. It will take a longer time for you to get your business up and running, but stay on track, and keep up your energy for as long as you will need to stay at your main job.
Consider your time frame, make a goal, and commit to making it happen. Don’t let your safety net main job keep you from your goals.
Working on your start-up can also have a negative impact on your performance at your full-time job. Your job is your first priority; it’s what your managers and bosses have hired you to do. Don’t burn bridges, and remember, your performance is your reputation.
Formalize Your Side Hustle’s Structure & Finances
Even if it’s not your primary source of income, your side hustle is a legitimate economic enterprise. Treat it accordingly. Matters to address before your side hustle takes off include:
- Formal Business Structure. Consider a formal legal business structure for your enterprise. Registering an LLC with your secretary of state’s office might cost anywhere from $50 to $200, but the liability protection alone is well worth the cost, especially if your side hustle – and any potential conflict with your regular employer – expose you to litigation risk. You can use LegalZoom to set up your LLC in just minutes, or save money by using your state’s website to set up the business. This process doesn’t take long.
- Separate Bank Accounts and Credit Cards. Open a separate bank account for your side hustle. Novo offers a business bank account with no monthly fees and some useful perks for business owners. Use this as the central hub for your enterprise’s finances: all revenue in, all expenses out. If your personal credit allows, consider obtaining a small-business credit card that earns rewards on everyday spending. Pay off this card’s balances out of your business bank account. It’s a great time to focus on building credit as soon as possible.
- Business Budget and Plan. Even if you don’t see your side gig as a true “business,” it’s certain to be more successful with a formal business plan. If you’ve never drawn up a business plan before, look for a template online and customize it to your needs. For guidance, speak with entrepreneurs in your personal or professional network. Your business plan should include short term, medium, and long-term goals, as well as an estimated budget with revenue and net income projections.
- Tax Obligations. Set up an initial consultation with a certified public accountant or tax expert specializing in freelance and small business issues. Your current accountant or DIY tax prep software might not be the best resource for complicated tax issues. If you continue to prepare your taxes yourself, arrange for quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS and your state revenue authority to avoid penalties.
Start Your Day Earlier
If you can’t attend to your side project while on the clock at your “day job”, you’ll need to find time elsewhere in your day. For many side hustlers, that means starting the day earlier.
How much earlier is up to you. While juggling a full-time restaurant job and a burgeoning freelance writing enterprise, I routinely awoke two to three hours early and got right to writing.
Integrate Your Side Gig into Your Morning Routine
Make those early minutes count by integrating your side gig into your morning routine. There’s a whole cottage industry built around efficient mornings – see, for instance, Forbes’ interview with Benjamin Spall, co-founder of the online magazine My Morning Routine.
One trick that worked well for me was swapping out my morning scan of the day’s news for a 15-minute email session. You can always catch up on the latest headlines before you go to bed if it’s not too stressful for you, or skip it altogether.
Sacrifice Part of Your Evening Wind-Down
The evening is another place to find time for your side gig. If you’re not too ground down from the day, skip that second Netflix episode and use the time for tasks that don’t require excessive effort or concentration, such as:
- Plan the coming week’s tasks
- Send and respond to emails
- Research competitors
- Prospect for new clients or opportunities
- Attend to clerical tasks
Don’t work right up until bedtime, to increase your chances of a restful night’s sleep. Give yourself plenty of time to wind down.
Give Up Part of Your Weekend
Most of your unstructured time likely falls on the weekend. If you’re serious about carrying on a legit side gig, you’ll need to sacrifice some of that time.
After some experimentation, I settled on writing straight through weekend mornings, from about 8am to noon or later. I left the rest of these days open for relaxation, housework, and socializing, though more often than not, I managed to squeeze in another stretch or two of writing.
Work on Your Side Projects at the Same Time Every Day of the Week
Whether you’re a morning, night, weekend, or all-of-the-above side hustler, do your best to work on your side gig at the same time every day. It’s important to maintain a scheduled “work appointment” with yourself, which reduces uncertainty around when you’ll find the time to make progress toward your side goals.
Set Tight (But Realistic) Deadlines
As Parkinson’s Law posits, work is temporally elastic. In other words, a given task “expands” to fit the time assigned for it. If you have all day to complete a routine chore like cleaning the bathroom, you’ll feel no need to hurry to complete it and might postpone or do it in segments. If it’s 11am and you need to get the bathroom clean for guests arriving at noon, you’ll power through it as quickly as you can without stopping. The same reasoning applies to your side gig. Without firm deadlines, you’re likely to complete side project tasks at your leisure, even if you realize you’re moving slower than you’d prefer.
Some find it beneficial to temporarily take on more work than they can handle to compress the time available for each task, and set aggressive, but realistic, deadlines for every side project task. I find I always work best when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time.
Create a Task Calendar & Stick to It
Use a free calendar application like Google Calendar to create a dedicated tasks calendar for your life. Block times for different purposes and stick to it. If you use separate email suites (as you should) for your day job and side gig, it shouldn’t be difficult to keep two separate calendars and one integrated system of calendar.
Use your calendar to batch and set deadlines for similar tasks. Unless you’re a truly capable multitasker, block out each side gig session into discrete chunks of time and allocate one specific task to each. For instance:
- 6am to 6:30am: Respond to client emails.
- 6:30am to 7am: Add three new slides to your marketing deck.
- 7:30am to 8am: Draft a new post for your professional blog.
Eliminate Distractions & Time Suckers
Your side hustle may not be your top professional priority, at least at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you should take it any less seriously. When you’re working on tasks related to your side gig, no matter how trivial or routine, give them your full attention and be ruthless about eliminating anything that erodes this attention. Strategies to eliminate distractions and stay on task include:
- Setting strict social media time limits using apps or controls built into your phone (some lock you out of your accounts for the rest of the day if you exceed your allotted limit)
- Hiding your phone in a drawer in another room until you’ve completed your scheduled tasks
- Using a parental control app to block websites you know will distract you (Digital Trends has some good tips on this)
- Taking 5 to 10 minute breaks every 60 to 90 minutes to walk around the block or engage in some other head-clearing activity
- Allowing yourself a small reward, such as a nice meal out, for meeting deadlines or milestones you’ve set for yourself
Maintain Strict Separation Between Your Day Job & Side Hustle
Resist the temptation to work on your side hustle during company time, even when the infraction seems trivial – say, using a work device or network to answer emails or calls related to your side hustle.
Technically, using company time to work on anything other than your job duties is time theft, and it’s a great way to get on your boss’s bad side.
Don’t Overschedule Yourself
No matter how efficiently you manage your time, you can’t add more hours to the day. Start by setting a hard limit on the number of hours you’ll devote to your side hustle each week. Re-examine this number periodically and adjust it up or down as necessary.
Use Time Off
Use your vacations to get ahead. You can relax when you get to your goals, for now you have plans so keep to them. Make sure your work and side hustle give you enough social aspects and fun to maintain balance.
Being in business for yourself takes serious guts and hard work. The risks are numerous, but when we go slowly and stick with what we know, while doing what our heart calls us to, we can find the energy to stick with what brings in the money while building what will make our dreams come true. Be patient with yourself, and have fun!
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