How to Make Time to Side Hustle

We’ve mentioned many side hustle ideas and opportunities on Outlier Model in the past. While there’s no doubt that there’s no shortage in side hustle ideas to match your monetary needs and interests, you may find it hard to squeeze in time to do extra work on the side when you already work a full-time job.

Determining how much time you have to commit to your side hustle is a crucial first step. It can even help determine how profitable it can be and if side hustling is even worth it or not for your particular situation.

Newsflash, You May Not Have Time to Side Hustle

Side hustles aren’t for everyone, especially the people who have absolutely no wiggle room in their daily schedule. If you already have two jobs, work more than 40 hours per week at your main job or take on a lot of overtime, have lots of commitments outside of work, or responsibilities like taking care of your kids when you get off work, you may find that you lack the time and energy for a side hustle.

If you don’t have at least 5-10 hours per week to dedicate to establishing and growing a side hustle, you may not have the time to consistently earn extra money and may have to look at other alternatives like obtaining a raise.

However, odds are you may be able to free up some space in your schedule by knocking out unproductive activities and switching your priorities up a bit. Here are a few helpful ways to make time to side hustle.

Get Up Earlier or Stay Up Later

Cutting into your sleep time may not seem ideal, but if you have an hour to spare, it can really help you make progress and work toward earning more money. First, you should determine if you are a morning or night person. Then, choose to either wake up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later.

I don’t recommend doing both if you still value getting the proper amount of rest. Plus, your body may not be able to function properly if you try waking up earlier if you are a night person and you won’t be productive anyway.

In my case, I’m definitely a morning person so I started waking up at 5 a.m. to work on my side hustle each week day. I know it sounds early, but I do my best work in the morning and I usually get up at 6:30 a.m. to start getting ready for work regardless so this schedule gives me an extra 1.5 hours to work on my side hustle. Sometimes, I put in a good hour from 8pm to 9pm to do more work but I always go to bed by 9 or 10 pm so I can get at least 7 hours of sleep. With this schedule, I get at least 12.5 hours in of side hustle work before the weekend even hits.

If I tried to stay up later, I would probably get a headache and become very irritable which would prevent me from getting any work done anyway so I choose to make the best of my morning work time.

Turn Off the T.V.

If you watch a lot of T.V. it could be tying up your time to spend side hustling. Television can be relaxing after a long day of work, but it’s best not to overdo your T.V. usage if you plan on side hustling. This doesn’t mean you have to give up watching you favorite show though.

Monitor how much time you spend watching T.V. every week, then try to cut that amount in half and use the rest of your free time to side hustle. That way, you find a happy balance between the two.

If the weekdays seem busier for your household, simply focus on your side hustle from Monday through Friday and save your Netflix binge watching sessions for the weekend to decompress.

Use Your Off Days Wisely

How many off days do you get? Even if you only get one or two, you can utilize your time off to make some serious progress with your side hustle. If your side hustle offers you the flexibility to choose your own hours, you can decide how you want to organize your off day so you can get a significant amount of work done, run errands and catch up on your to-do list, and still manage to take some time to relax.

I personally like to get up a bit earlier on my off day and work on my side hustle tasks for a few hours, then spend the rest of the day how I please. Nothing beats that feeling when you know that you’re done with work for the day and you can relax and do other things.

If you prefer to work later in the day, just block out enough time to complete all your side hustle tasks. If you are combining this technique with other time saving hacks, you may only need to work a handful of hours on your off day.

Utilize Your Commute

If you commute to and from work by train or bus, use that time to do some side hustle work . If your side hustle involves online work, this would be the perfect time to knock out a tasks, check and respond to emails, do outreach etc.

If you don’t have that much of a commute or you have to drive yourself to work, opt to be a passenger when traveling with family, going to run errands, etc. so you can knock out some simple tedious tasks that you can easily get out of the way.

Use Your Lunch Break

It usually only takes about 10 minutes to eat your lunch at a normal pace. Try bringing your lunch to work each day so you don’t have to go far to pick up food, then use 2/3 of your lunch time to work on your side hustle.

I only get a 30 minute lunch at my day job, but I still squeeze in some side hustle time and spend 15-20 minutes catching up on emails, sending my clients pitches for posts, responding to comments on my blog, sending follow ups, etc. and using that little amount of time to my advantage means one less thing I have to do when I get home.

Reduce or Cut Out Other Time Consuming Tasks

For my final tip, I recommend you try to reduce or cut out other tasks that seem to be eating up your time. You can outsource certain tasks to family members, prep your meals for the entire week so you don’t have to spend as much time cooking, and limit your time spent on social media.

Gaining back time is necessary in order to manage your side hustle and main job properly. These techniques can easily help you get back 20 hours per week which can be used to work on your side hustle without having to sacrifice a ton of rest.

Do you have a side hustle? How do you make time for it?