This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What do you do at the end of your workday? What are you looking forward to? Are you excited to go home and work some more? Yeah, that's right. This is a tough yet common problem.
Like you wanna start a side hustle, right? You want to actually have this additional income source, but you're burned out or you're just kind of spent from all the other things you do. You know, you've got the day job, you've got other responsibilities, all kinds of things you have to do, but you still wanna make progress. So how do you navigate this? Because after all, you know that your side hustle is going to help in the long term, but in the short term, it's tough.
So our caller today, they are feeling overwhelmed with this tough yet common problem. Let's see what we can do. Let's give them and you a couple of quick tips to manage the overwhelm. And by the way, welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau, the detailed question and my answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hello, Chris. This is Jennifer from Kansas City and I just discovered the show and it's been super helpful. Am I the only one who's constantly tired? Every day I finish work and have zero desire to work for myself for the rest of the day. I just wanna put my feet up and watch Netflix.
So what's the problem? Well, I don't wanna be in this job forever. I know I need to invest in myself like you always say, but how can I do that when I'm constantly tired? Looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
All right, all right.
As promised, gonna get a couple of tips here, but first and foremost, let me just say, you're not the only one, not just our caller here, but any listeners who are experiencing this or who just kind of feel tired, they want to make progress, but they've already given so much time toward the day job or other responsibilities. Not the only one, join the club. We have all been there, some of us more than once. So a couple tips, I think it's okay to relax. It's okay to, in fact, you need to relax.
You need to take some time to recharge. It's okay if you are not able to make some progress on any given day. Sometimes if you let go of that obligation, you're able to come back to it stronger and make twice as much or maybe even three times as much progress after you've had a bit of a break. So it's okay to relax and you need to recharge. And also, this condition is one of the main reasons why your side hustle should usually be something significantly different from your day job.
It's really important to use a different kind of energy. Don't be the accountant by day who does taxes on the side. That doesn't usually work out so well, or the chef who bakes for farmer's markets at night. Those kinds of things are recipes, no pun intended this time, for burnout. If you're always baking, you bake for your day job, you bake for your side hustle, you do the taxes for the day job and at night, unless you're doing these tasks in some fundamentally different way.
Otherwise, it's just more and more work. And the next step is when you've got limited time and limited energy, which is just as important of a resource, plan in advance how you're gonna spend that time and energy. Decide before you come to the end of the day where you're gonna be tired. You might only have 20 minutes of real energy to spare in this kind of situation, but 20 minutes of focused deliberate work is better than an hour of clicking around and reading lots of websites, going through emails, just kind of clicking through them and reading them without replying, thinking, oh, I'll get back to that one later. Like I do that all the time, it's a bad habit.
So plan in advance what you need to do. Also relax, recharge, and make sure you're doing something that is giving you energy, not just draining it. Perhaps that's the most important thing. So if you're going through that, I am thinking of you. I hope you're able to work through this common problem and feel more energized.
All right, hang in there and be sure to come back tomorrow. Quick new episode every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
