This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to a brand new week. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Sidusle School." Every week we begin with an episode called "Classroom," where from January through December, we're looking topically at the entire lifespan, the growth process of starting a side hustle from ideas to action, ideas to income, we could say. Now, in recent classroom episodes, we have looked at different side hustle ideas, where they come from, categories of different ideas, how to decide between competing ideas, and so on. We looked at the three elements of every compelling offer. Those elements would be a promise, a pitch, and a price.
And we examined the difference between what people say they want and what they really want. Really critical to understand that. Last week we went back to nuts and bolts in asking what is your basic product or service, your minimum viable product, the only time I ever used a startup language. What is the simplest way we can get your product to market, okay? Now this week I'd like to look at a question I hear over and over in different ways.
No doubt some of this year's callers for our Q and A episodes will ask and probably have asked in different ways. So we'll consider those questions situationally as they arise, and I'll try to operate some general advice here. What are we talking about? We're talking about finding the time to work on your hustle. Where does the time go?
It's a common concern of busy side hustlers. How can you find the time you need to make short-term changes that will benefit you for years to come? Because ultimately that's why you're doing this project. That's why you are starting your side hustle. I mean, people have different reasons and such, but I think ultimately it comes down to that question of making a short-term change for a long-term benefit.
So a couple of stories here to frame the discussion. I'll give you some really practical tips. I think I got seven tips for you actually. But two stories to frame the discussion. Number one, Jake Posco, the guitar teacher from Side Hustle, the book "Side Hustle" from idea to income in 27 days, told this story in the book, which I think he was also on the podcast, but this goes back hundreds and hundreds of episodes.
So this guy is a guitar teacher who did that part-time and was trying to make real money with it. Now, most guitar teachers do not make real money because there are so many of them. And in the book, I told the whole story of how he found a way to kind of maximize value and keep raising his prices, reach a different market, et cetera, to where I think he was earning $75 an hour when we last left off. So that's great, a whole story about that in the book. But the side note, the side lesson I took from him was that he started this whole project while he was working a full-time job, a different full-time job, with a nine-month-old at home.
And it wasn't just like he was out there working and his wife or his partner was at home caring for the kid. His wife also worked and went to school full-time. So this was a very, very busy household. And something he said to me, I've thought about since then, he said, "You know, there's no perfect time to start. Like there is no perfect time to start your business or your side hustle.
And people are always waiting for the perfect opportunity, but ultimately, you know, if you believe in something, if you want to make something happen, you just need to start." So because he made those short-term sacrifices, didn't get a lot of sleep for a while, he was able to achieve a much better long-term result for himself and his family. That's story number one. The second story, or the second analogy essentially, is my own experience many years ago when I was working as a full-time volunteer on a hospital ship that was docked in West Africa, and I was there for about four years. And I did that, as I said, as a volunteer. And I ran a little business at night, which, you know, most people didn't know about.
I kind of had two lives there for a while. I wrote about that in one of my books as well. But I had very, very limited time to work on the business. And often I was exhausted by the end of the day and would probably only have 20 to 40 minutes maximum that I could really spend. And I learned through that process a lot about myself.
But one of the most important things was learning that managing your energy is as important as managing your time. There's actually a wonderful book about this called "The Power of Full Engagement." But just basically the notion of understanding that it's not just time that's limited, it's your energy that's limited as well. And so understanding that and learning how to identify in advance what I was going to work on, which is part of what I'm gonna talk to you about in just a moment with some practical tips really, really helped me a lot in terms of finding limited time in a busy day. So I'm gonna give you seven things that will help you find the time slash energy to make progress on a goal that's important to you. Now, by the way, I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life because you have your own priorities.
There's stuff that you like to do that I probably don't wanna do and vice versa. So I'm not gonna tell you to never do anything fun. I'm not gonna tell you to never watch TV. I'm not gonna tell you also to sleep less. Even though Jake Pasco had to not sleep for a while, I'm not gonna say that the answer is, hey, stop sleeping one hour less a night because I already know that a lot of our community, a lot of our listeners and just people in general these days are already sleep deprived.
So you gotta work with what you have. You can't just take away that precious resource. Okay, so seven tips coming up along with your assignment for the week. First, I wanna take a quick break, thank our sponsor for making this series completely free to you. And I'll be right back with those tips and that assignment.
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All right, seven things you can do to help you find the time and energy to make progress. We're gonna go really quickly here because, well, because your time is valuable, right? You don't have a lot of it. Number one, make a to stop doing list, all right? Stop doing things that waste time and you don't enjoy.
Make this to stop doing list. It is the opposite of a to do list. It's all the things that you're currently doing that you might not need to do or you might not need to do now or that are draining your time and energy, taking the life away from you. And if you say, well, I can't stop doing all that right now, well, what can you stop? There has to be something that you can stop doing that will free up time.
Number two, know what you're going to do before you sit down to work. This is a big one of mine. This will help you avoid getting sucked in and going away later asking yourself, hey, what did I actually do during that time? I do this every single day, wherever I am in the world, even when I'm traveling it. In fact, it helps me when I'm traveling to keep a routine.
If I've got a little work session, before I actually started anything, I will just pin in paper and right next to my laptop, I will like, here's what I'm going to do during this time. All right, so know what you're gonna do before you sit down to work. Number three, here's another list for you. Maintain a this matters list. All right, so it's a list of things that matter, a list of things that will help you in your business, specifically help you generate new business, new sales, new revenue income, or otherwise make a measurable difference in this project.
What will help you get closer to launch? What's holding you back and how can you fix it? All of those things go on the list of this matters, the this matters list, and that's your focus, essentially. So that leads us to number four, work on that list every day, even if only briefly. If all you've got is 20 minutes, work on that list, do something from that list before you do your emails, social media, or any administrative tasks.
Number five, outsource, delegate, or otherwise disappear one task every week. So at least once a week, whether it's from your to stop doing list or even something on your this matters list that someone else could help you with, what can you outsource or delegate? Or I like that word disappear because sometimes we find that some of the stuff that we're doing, we don't actually need to do. It's not that we need to find another solution for it, we just need to stop. So that kind of connects to the first one, you're to stop doing list.
But I'm always asking myself, like, does this need to happen? Do I need to go on this call? Do I need to be at this meeting, this administrative tasks that I've been doing over and over? Does it actually need to happen? Could somebody else do it?
Or would the world end if it just didn't get done? And if the answer is no, then maybe I don't need to do it. Number six, make small sacrifices without canceling everything you enjoy. So as I said, if you'd like to watch TV, if you've got a favorite show, I'm not gonna tell you not to watch your favorite show. But if you find yourself watching three hours of favorite shows every single evening, then you might need to pull back, make a small sacrifice.
Keep your favorite show or your favorite two shows, but maybe not your favorite 17 shows. So just ask yourself, where can I make a small sacrifice? Because again, I'm trying to do something that is going to benefit me in the long term. It's gonna make my life better. It's going to allow me to do more things that I enjoy, perhaps new things, perhaps challenging things.
Or maybe it is just like, I really like this one thing, but I'm gonna put it on pause for a while again so I can build something for my future. Now that was number six. Here is the last one, number seven, and we could do a whole episode about this, but I'm just gonna give it to you straight here. Number seven, maintain boundaries with your friends and family. I mean, sometimes your friends and family can be supportive of your goals and sometimes they're not.
And sometimes you may need to say, you know what, I need some time to work on this. And sometimes you may be able to ask them for support. Maybe the support is just to leave you alone. Maybe there is something else they can do to help in a practical way. But again, without turning your back on your friends and family, without missing every soccer game or whatever the analogy is, you might have to do something to carve out some time and focus for yourself and this project.
Because again, I know I keep saying this, but it's what everything is framed around. The short-term sacrifice is going to help you in the long term. The short-term sacrifice is going to help you be a better friend, family member, partner, parent, whatever it is. And maybe explaining that to your friends and family will help, maybe it won't. But either way, you need to somehow carve out this space so you can do what's important to you.
All right, making time for what matters, finding the time, energy to make progress. Your assignment for the week is, well, I mean, you could do all seven of those things, but let's just keep it simple. Make two lists. Your two lists, I've already told you about. Number one is your to stop doing list, your list of things that you want to stop doing.
Try to put at least three to five things on that list. I know that you can't have everything on it, but there's probably something you can stop doing. And then number two, your this matters list. Like here's my list of things based on what we just talked about last week, your minimum viable product. What do I really need to do to start this business, grow this business, launch it, create my next product or service, whatever it is.
So at the end of the week, I want you to have two lists. Your to stop doing list, and your this really matters list. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you found it to be a good use of your time and energy. And I will leave you now with the rest of your time today for yourself.
You can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The program is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
