How To Manage Your Time With Your Side Hustles

Side hustling is becoming more and more popular now that people are realizing a little extra money every month can truly go a long way in meeting financial goals. I’ve been side hustling for well over two years now and loved it so much that I turned it into my full time job.

If you want to do the same or just want to be better about managing your time, here are some of my tips:

1. Only Choose Clients You Really Love

Anyone who is a full time freelancer will tell you that they do their best work when they actually enjoy what they are doing. Sometimes, the work that is the least amount of fun produces the most money, so it can be hard to turn down those types of jobs.

I personally get so much more done when I am excited about a project and really enjoy working with the client. From time to time, this means accepting less pay, but I chose to work for myself to enjoy my life, not to do projects or write about topics that I’m not passionate about.

2. Identify Your Best Working Hours

If you are really groggy in the morning like I am, there’s really no point in trying to side hustle and get tons of work done during those early waking hours. It might take a few months, but over time you will slowly start to identify when you work best.

For me, this is between 7pm-1am. It sounds crazy, but when the world gets tired and starts winding down to go to bed, I get really amped up. I tried to resist this for the longest time, promising myself that I could run an errand or spend time working on my nursery if I got work done.

Eventually, after lots of days of feeling unproductive, I realized that I need to spend my time during the day running errands and doing chores around the house and the nighttime working. It’s not the most ideal scenario, especially when parents or friends want to invite us out to a last minute dinner out and I have to work. However, I’ve realized this is the best for me. You just need to find out what works best for you.

3. Don’t Overextend Yourself

In order to truly manage your time with your side hustles, you cannot over extend yourself. As much as you want to make more money, you don’t have to say “yes” to every single opportunity. In my early days of freelancing and side hustling, I would accept every offer and say yes to every opportunity. I was trying to pay down my credit card debt and didn’t want to miss the change to earn extra cash.

Now, two years into my side hustles and fully self-employed, I have to be very careful not to overextend myself. The more work I do and the more clients I take on, the more stretched I get. Instead of taking on extra work, I try to only work with quality people who respect my rates and give me consistent work.

Overall, side hustling is a great way to make money, and I really believe that more people should do it. All that time that people spend watching TV or playing online could be spent doing something productive that could pay down their debt or help them save for retirement. Sure, you have to rest sometimes, but that’s the beauty about managing your time well. If you can figure out how to fit in a side hustle without disrupting your routine too much, you’ve absolutely hit gold.

Do you have a side hustle? How much time does it require?