Do you have to work a day job while you’re starting up your lifestyle-focused business that will eventually produce a full-time income? If so, the idea of having a more balanced life right now may seem difficult and even impossible.
After all, you must earn a living and keep a roof over your head. This often means working 40 hours plus a week, spending a couple hours a day traveling, and all the other time suckers that go with a full-time job – plus try to turn the side hustle into a full time living. Not to mention still enjoying life and spending time with your family and friends. It seems impossible at times. However, you can balance your day job with the side hustle. In fact, you can do anything if you don’t have to do it forever.
Schedule Everything
Use your calendar to block out the right amount of time needed (and no more) for each of the activities that you need and want to do. Block out the time you’re sleeping, and the time you’re at your job, and then add in the most important tasks first, and then work the rest of the entries into your calendar around those important things.
Get Up 1 Hour Earlier
Sleep is important. You really should sleep 7 to 9 hours per night, so don’t do this forever unless you can still get in 7 hours a night, but definitely no fewer than six hours. It helps if you fall asleep fast. Set your room up to be a sleeping sanctuary, so you can get right to sleep faster, and you may wake up earlier without any problems.
Go to Bed 1 Hour Later
To get another hour in your day, you may choose instead to stay up after everyone else goes to bed. Again, double-check with your sleep schedule to sure that you stay healthy and are sleeping enough. However, you can do this with less sleep for a short period of time. Another method is to just do it three out of seven nights.
Work During Lunch
If you have a good lunch hour at your day job, you can bring your laptop and get some work done in the break room, in your car, or in the park (or a nearby café). You can get a lot done in thirty minutes if you break things down. For example, to write a blog post, you will need a title, an outline, a point you want to make, keywords, and so forth. You can work on one part at a time in chunks.
Work During Your Weekends
This is probably the hardest part to accomplish when you’re trying to find time to get work done as you work a job and start a side business. But weekends are often the only time you really must get things done. Instead of using the entire weekend, use parts of your weekend in two to four-hour chunks to get more done but still give yourself time to see a movie or spend with your family.
Delegate More to Your Family
You aren’t in this alone if you have a family. They can do a lot more. Start setting up your family to be automatic too. Set up a family calendar that everyone adds to and uses. Set up a chore list so that everyone can do chores. Teach kids to wash their own clothes and take care of their own stuff without you. By the time they’re 9 to 11 years old, they should be mostly self-sufficient.
Eliminate Busy Work
Stop doing things that feel like work but are not really. For example, if you make a lot of lists and you never look at them again, that’s just a waste of time. If you’re not going to use a method in its entirety, stop doing it. Also, filing shouldn’t take all day.
Stop Multitasking
You really can only do one thing at a time, even though you may feel like you’re good at multitasking. Moms often believe they multitask very well since their kids are still alive. But honestly, it just means that you’re good at switching between tasks. The truth is, studies show that multitasking adds about 30 percent more time to any given task.
Outsource to Contractors for Business and Home
Just like you can delegate to your family, you can also delegate to a team that you outsource work to. You can outsource work from home, like housework and yard work, and you can also outsource lots of work in your business, such as customer service, graphic design, social media marketing, writing, and more. If you can save up money to invest in human resources, you’ll build your business where you want it much faster.
Organize and Systemize your Business and Home
Almost anything you do in life can be made better with proper organization and systems put into place. Work toward getting your home and home office very organized. Create systems for the things you need to do. For example, when you check the mail, do it the same way each time, over the trashcan.
When you put the important things into your schedule first, it’s more likely to get done. By important, I mean, whatever you think is important. For one person, ensuring they spend time reading to their kids before bed is something that cannot change, for another, date night with their spouse cannot change. Whatever it is for you, remember that. Those are the things you should keep doing because that’s what will make your life feel more fulfilling and balanced – no matter how busy you are.
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