This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up, welcome. Today, we've got a caller who is wondering, very common question, how to manage multiple side hustles, specifically where to invest one's time. Limited free time, we should say, because all of us have limited time, but especially those who listen to the show. I said from day one that my market is busy people. So, there are at least three different approaches to this conundrum, in a short period of time, because you're busy, I'll give you a rundown of all three.
How to manage multiple side hustles, stay tuned. [Music]
Hi there, this is Angela from Toronto. I've been listening to the show since year two, and have binge listened to the episodes I originally missed. I was inspired by Aaron from episode 906, and have started working on publishing public domain titles as eBooks. My question for this hustle is, how to determine how to best use my time.
I'm a full time school principal, and already have an income generating side hustle, restoring and refinishing furniture. If I spend time on the books, I'm not able to spend time on my other side hustle. How do people handle multiple side hustle projects? Thanks, Chris, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Thank you so much, Angela.
I'm so glad you're out there, and I, for one, am impressed with your ability to do all these things, especially being a full time school principal. So this is one of those topics in which there is no single answer for everyone. So I'll give you three approaches. And for both Angela and our listeners, maybe just kind of listen to these, sit with them, and see, okay, which one is best for me? Or perhaps, which one is best for me now?
Because it might change over time. Okay, so approach number one is start with many, narrow to one. So you're new to this world, you're experimenting, you've got several different ideas, you try different things, all totally normal. And over time, what you're probably going to see is that you're better at some of them than others. You're getting a better response from some of them than others.
What you learn along the way will inform decisions and make you think, oh, actually, I don't wanna do that right now. Or this other thing is really cool. It's gonna take off, or I'm really just enjoying putting the time in on it. So you start with many, and then over time, you're like, okay, I'm gonna go all in with this. And when I say all in, I don't mean, you're risking your life savings in years of your life.
I just mean like, okay, for the next month or two. For the foreseeable future, you're going to make that your focus. Approach number two is kind of the opposite. Start with one, and then add as you go, if you can. So in this case, you work on one project for a while, and then you see, just like what Angela is doing here, what your capacity is for more.
You may learn that it's totally manageable to do two or more sidekicks, or you may discover that it's either not good for you personally, it's just kind of burning you out, taking all of your time and energy, or one project ends up suffering at the expense of the other. So in that case, you probably do have to make some choices because life is all about choices. We're always choosing one way or another. But the only way you acquire that information is by trying to add something and then seeing what happens. Lastly, approach number three is just kind of recognizing that to everything, there is a season.
So you might have multiple projects going on, but you're not necessarily trying to split the time 50/50. In fact, you're going to get specific about scheduling the time that you spend on each project and recognize that it probably won't be that even balance. There's a time and a place to really sprint on a project and say, okay, I'm going to spend all my limited free time, or all my side hustle time at least this month, on this furniture restoring business, or on listing the public domain eBooks, or whatever else it is. And then I'll probably go back to the other thing and I'll continue to monitor what happens with the first one and then we'll evaluate from there. I was thinking about this myself from my own process recently.
I started working on another course for LinkedIn. I've done three courses with them so far and we've got a couple more coming out. And when they approached me to do this new one, I was like, wow, I don't know if this is the greatest season in the world for me to work on it because I'm quite busy with other stuff, but I find the process of working on these things enjoyable. So in this case, I was able to spend a few hours outlining, not totally diving into the whole thing, but just kind of outlining and was still able to finish the other work I had on my plate that week. So I just think of it as kind of a seasonal thing for myself.
Later, I'll be able to dive in and actually write the material for the course, but for now I can kind of just dip my toe in the water, so to speak. All right, Angela, thank you again so much for listening. I'll be cheering you on whatever happens. Listeners, if you've got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year.
We'd also love to hear updates from listeners as they launch their projects. So keep those emails coming, keep the voicemails coming. All right, signing off for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
[Music]
From the Onward Project.
