This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How much time do people spend on their side hustle? Their after hours project, their little thing they're trying to do to make extra money. Maybe it's not such a little thing. Whatever it is you're trying to do to create personal freedom, create additional income, give yourself more options in the future. If you have at least one side hustle already, is it the kind of thing that it's a couple hours a week, you know, nights and weekends, whenever you can fit it in, or is it taking over your life, hopefully not in a bad way, right?
You're just really excited about it. Or is it somewhere in between, you know, I would say for a lot of our listeners, the answer really varies, okay? So today's caller is wondering about some averages, you know, where's the median, as well as something about time tracking. So let's hear their question. And by the way, welcome to Side Hustle School.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. So excited you're here. Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Charlie from Salt Lake. And I've been listening to the show for a couple of years.
With all the stories you've shared, I'm curious about the average amount of time that people have spent on these projects. It seems that some are quite easy and others time intensive. Personally, my time is very limited. So I want to make sure I'm doing the right things. How should this inform my selection process?
Also, what's the best way to keep up with the number of hours spent? Looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Hey Charlie, what's up man? Thanks for being out there. Hope to see you in Utah at some point.
All right, so the amount of time spent. We actually did a survey about this once. I was really curious because I tend to sometimes go on anecdotal responses like I hear from a lot of people. But it's always nice to like actually look at some data and say, you know, does my expectation line up with what people are actually doing? And what I found was that, you know, the answers really were all over the map, right?
Because some people are like, you know, 25 hours a week on my side hustle or sometimes more. Others are like, you know, one hour a week. But if there was an average or let's say a median, which can be a more reliable metric than the arithmetic mean, like the actual average, the median was around eight to 10 hours a week. And I think that's actually a good amount, but also a reasonable commitment. Like you can actually get a lot done in eight to 10 hours a week, especially if it's spent deliberately and intentionally.
And as busy as most of us are, if we are trying to make something a priority, you know, we can sometimes find eight to 10 hours a week. I know it may seem difficult, but a lot of people watch TV, you know, for eight to 10 hours a week, sometimes more. And I'm not saying that that's bad or terrible. I'm just saying that, you know, it is possible to find this amount of time if you really value the outcome of, you know, creating a new source of revenue, potentially giving yourself more options for the future. So that's an average or a median.
As I said, of course, everybody's experience varies, but I think if you can put in some consistent effort, you know, for a decent amount of time without ever doing it, you know, that's the best path for a lot of folks, let's say. Now, as for time tracking, there are lots of tools that do that. Some are free, some are paid. Personally, I use a service called Timular, which is about $8 a month, I think. They're not a sponsor, I'm just a customer.
And I find it useful, not just for the actual time tracking, but for actually keeping me on track. And what I mean there is like, I don't always review the logs each week. I'm not doing a ton of analysis of my time. I'm just, I try to clock in a certain number of hours each day or work for certain projects. As long as I'm doing that, I don't worry so much about how the, you know, the whole week kind of turns out.
So that would be Timular, T-I-M-E-U-L-A-R. But of course, there's many others as well. All right, Charlie, I hope that's helpful. Listeners, if you've got a question, you know where to go, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what you're working on, what's going well, and what you're struggling with.
Hopefully we can help some other listeners along the same path. All right, that's it for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
