This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Weekend Workshop, making time for what matters. I did not plan this in advance when I scheduled out the Weekend Workshop series for 2025. They didn't actually realize that day 16 of the series would coincide with the launch of my new book. Comes out in two days, it's called Time Anxiety. Time Anxiety, the illusion of urgency and a better way to live.
So excited I'm gonna be on a book tour, timeanxiety.com. You can learn more about that. There's also a quiz to check out and a bunch of other resources. And Time Anxiety is essentially a fundamentally different way to think about time and work and life. And I could not be more excited about it.
And for today on the podcast, as noted, it is the Weekend Workshop series. It's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new hustle in 2025, one step or concept per week. Today's topic, how to spend 10% more time on your most important tasks. It's all about why you should do that, why that matters and how you can do it. So our learning objective for today is learn to identify and prioritize the activities that truly drive your business forward.
If you don't have a business yet, then just think of your business idea or your side hustle, whatever it is. And when you're starting that project or business, it's easy to get caught up in endless small tasks. You might spend hours designing business cards, organizing files, researching the perfect app or software, while neglecting the essential work, the work that actually generates income. So for this book chapter, by the way, I should have said, we're using the book "Side Hustle" as the text, "Side Hustle from Idea to Income in 27 Days." And when I wrote the chapter for this week, a while back, I told the story of Oliver Asis, who took on his first wedding photography job for a friend. And he was excited about that, but he was also a little bit nervous because he hadn't done wedding photography before.
He'd been a photographer, but he hadn't done wedding photography. So he just posted a offer on Craigslist, which is kind of a bold decision. And he said, "Wedding photographer available $250 for your special day." Now that's pretty cheap for a wedding photographer, but it was a good experience. It was a great practical experience. It taught him more than any amount of preparation could have.
He learned what worked, what didn't, what clients really valued. And most importantly, he started earning money right away. As I said, a small amount of money, but that's how it starts. Within months, he was charging $3,500 per wedding. So the lesson is, well, start before you're ready, of course, but we've covered that elsewhere.
The other lesson here is success comes from spending more time on activities that directly impact your bottom line. So for a lot of projects, these activities include improving the customer experience, delivering real value, solving actual problems for the people who pay you, and activities that generate revenue. So that includes marketing sales, creating products or services people want to buy. And really everything else, all the other tasks and things you could think about, everything else is secondary. And yes, you need basic systems in place.
We've talked about that elsewhere as well, but you shouldn't let administrative tasks consume time that is better spent serving customers and making sales. Again, making time for what matters, how to spend more time, 10% more time. That's all, 10% more time on the most important tasks. Let's take our quick break. And when we return a quick plan, you can implement in order to spend more time on what matters to you.
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All right, so here's a workflow for you. And you can modify this, however suits your needs, your schedule. Not everybody gets up in the morning and works on their side hustle. You might have something else you need to do. You might have kids to get ready, or you need to prep for your day job, or something entirely different.
But let's just say that, you know, you're gonna sit down to work on your side hustle for an hour or two in the morning. Well, before you open your email, before you get distracted by routine tasks, spend at least 25 minutes working on one thing that will grow your business. And so that might be creating something new to sell, reaching out to potential customers, improving your existing products or services, or finding ways to serve current customers better. And think of this time like investing in your business's future. Okay, so just like you save money, these small daily investments compound over time.
A new product feature here, a customer outreach effort there, they all add up to significant growth. So that's the goal. You spend a little bit of time every single day working on something that will grow your business. And your action exercise for the week, start each day by asking, what is that? What is the one thing that I could do today that would help my business grow?
But then you do that thing first before getting caught up in all of the routine tasks. So this might seem uncomfortable at first. Like there's always gonna be emails to answer and small fires to put out. And that may look different for different listeners, but you know what I mean. When I say you've got these tasks that kind of just keep coming up and they take time and they need to be done, but you also are never going to grow if you don't spend time on these other more important tasks.
So just remember Oliver Asis, the photographer, he could have spent months preparing, but instead he focused on what really mattered, which was getting actual clients, putting the ad on Craigslist, which is very unconventional, and pricing it very low so that he would get some experience and ultimately testimonials and more, and then delivering real value, like doing a great job with it. So a quick little self-check could be to just kind of consider how you spent time on your side hustle or your business this week. What percentage went to growth activities versus administrative tasks? Could you shift just 10% more time toward activities that directly serve customers or generate income? You don't have to overhaul everything at once.
Again, start by dedicating just 25 minutes a day to activities that truly move your business forward. That's my encouragement for you today, and I always say in every weekend workshop segment, it's always better to have a simple idea you can start right away than a brilliant idea that never launches. Thanks for being out there. You are amazing. It's gonna be a big week, a big couple of weeks in my world, and I'm just grateful that you're part of the community.
So thank you for that. Much more is coming up. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
