This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey listeners, friends, community. I am so glad you tuned in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The podcast is Side Hustle School. I'm so glad you tuned in today in particular.
I mean, I'm always glad you tuned in just to be clear. But in particular, this is a really fun question, okay? Today's listener has been operating his side hustle in secret while working remotely. And I know for sure that he is not the only one because I hear from people all the time. Over the past year or two, especially with the shift to remote work, they have realized that their employers don't necessarily expect 40 hours of productive work each week.
Or at least they aren't paying attention to it, let's say. So this is a fascinating phenomenon. All kinds of people who have started working remotely and then realized they had a lot of extra time. In some cases, they have started an all new job, like in addition to their current job. In other cases, they have started all sorts of side projects in businesses.
But this listener in particular now has a problem because, you know, so far so good, but now they have to go back to the office. So what happens with this secret side project? As I said, this listener is basically a proxy for a lot of people that I've heard from. So we're gonna call the episode "Going Back to Office" puts a crimp in my side hustle life. What do I do?
The detailed question and my response coming up after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Dennis from Columbus. Now I've been listening to this show for a couple of years. When the pandemic hit, my workplace went remote. At first, it took everyone a few weeks to get used to a new style of working.
But after the dust settled, I realized I had a lot of time. I still get as much done as I did before. I just attend fewer meetings. With all the extra time, I started tutoring online and began to build out some resources that could be purchased. No one seemed to notice at my day job or maybe they were all starting side projects too.
Anyway, I'm really excited about the tutoring, but now I have a problem. We're all going back to the office. I don't have a ton of time in the evenings and weekends. So my new business exists only because I wasn't needed as much at my day job. Is anyone else dealing with this unusual problem?
Thanks. Dennis is not the only one dealing with this problem. It is somewhat unusual, but now it's happening more and more. So I guess therefore it's not as unusual. I recently read a fascinating Wall Street Journal article about people who are working two full-time jobs remotely without either employer knowing about the other.
And these are people who are professionals. They make a good income. They have a lot of responsibility. But just like Dennis said, they realized when they went remote that a lot of their time was just spent in meetings and they still have online meetings, of course, but they have a lot more free time. And they actually weren't doing 40 hours of productive work before.
So they found a way to essentially do two jobs. And of course, for as long as people have been employed, long, long before the pandemic, people have had side projects. And I mean, the vast majority of our case studies consist of people like that. And they're navigating these situations of, do I tell my boss about this? Do I operate in secret?
How do I find a way to fit everything in? Maybe it's not even secret, it's just private. The secret implies there's something wrong, but if it's private, it's just your life, right? Like your boss doesn't have to know everything about your life. But now the pandemic has been an accelerant to all of that.
Because just like you hear in Dennis's story, there's so many more people in this situation and the working remote thing just adds some complexity and variables to it. So what can you do? It's hard to know exactly what Dennis should do since I don't know all the circumstances, what kind of work he does and so on. But regardless, it seems like in this situation, you need to first decide on some priorities. Like how important is it to you to keep doing both your job and the side hustle?
Let's assume for the sake of this question that it's pretty important, okay? Like you can't quit your job now, but the idea of losing your second income and this whole thing that you've been building up, that doesn't sound great either. So maybe I'm missing something, but I think the options are A, come clean to your boss, perhaps without mentioning that you were spending some work hours on this project before and just tell them like you wanna keep doing both. And just say, you know, like I want to continue to give everything I can to this role and this position, to this company, but I'm also trying to figure this out. And there might be some solutions that you can come to together.
Maybe not, but that is an option. Or B, you know, modify how you work on the side hustle. Like this is pretty much it. You have to adjust one or the other. You have to find a way to change some things that your employer, you know, assuming you're not able to keep working remotely, which would solve the problem or at least mitigate it.
Or you can modify how you work on the side hustle. And so I can't tell Dennis, you know, which one of those is better, but I would just note that workers in general do have a lot more power these days, like the employer-employee relationship in lots of different industries and lots of different environments. It has shifted a lot. And a big part of that is because so many people have adjusted to working remotely and all of the benefits that that provides. So what does that suggest to you?
And anybody else in that situation, let me know what you're going through and what you decide to do, how it turns out. It really is an interesting time that we are living in. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. There is a new episode every day.
You can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
