Simple Ways to Create Time for Your Side Hustle

Let’s talk about some ways to make time for your side hustle by taking some things off your own plate.  Specifically, let’s talk about outsourcing.  Most people hear outsourcing and think that it’s out of reach because it’s too expensive.  So before you assume that this post isn’t for you… give me a chance.

Outsourcing can mean that you hire someone to help with tasks around the house or in your business.  That’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.  And if I’m being honest, hiring our housekeeper was one of the best things we ever did.  You can also use a home meal delivery service to help get healthy meals on the table, or a laundry service.  Another option is to hire help for your business in the form of a VA, social media manager, or online business manager.  Of course, business hires are typically more expensive than help for your home.  Now I realize that this is not a possibility for everybody.  In fact,for me, that was made possible for me by my business.

So, if you are just at the beginning stages of your business and you don’t have spare money to throw at a housekeeper or a laundry service, there are some other ways that you can outsource, especially if you are part of a nuclear family and you live with other people. For one thing, ask your partner for help. Your spouse, your domestic partner, your girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. Ask them to do more. A study came out recently that says women are taking on more responsibility at home. When you combine that with the trend of starting businesses, it’s important to make sure that everyone’s doing their part.

Now let’s take a look at your kids. Our kids are capable of doing much more than we actually ask them to do on a day-to-day basis. And if we start expecting them to contribute to the house in more ways than just look cute and pick up their toys, that frees up time. Now does it take time to train them to do that? Yeah, it’s kind of like adding a member to your team, like hiring a VA or you know, hiring someone to run your social media accounts. You have to train them and you have to work with them to get them to do it the right way, the way that works you in your family. But once that is done, you’ve given your kids a skillset that not only benefits them in the future, but also helps you achieve your goals.

You can also outsource to friends and families. This is not to say that you should be taking advantage of your friends and family. You shouldn’t be demanding that your mother in law babysit every Friday or take the kids after school until seven o’clock and then you just pick them up and put them to bed. This is a way for you to utilize the village. Remember the old saying, it takes a village to raise a child? Well, I don’t know where the hell our villages have gone, but we’ve stopped making use of them and if we got back to that practice, we would have a lot more time to build the businesses that we want.

For example, if I were to set up a childcare ring in my neighborhood where kids went to one parent’s house after school for a couple hours, they did their homework there, played for a little bit, and then they went home. That means that I would only have to deal with homework and some playtime once a week. Would it be for more kids? Yeah. But no matter how many kids I have at my house or out in my yard, it’s still the same amount of time that’s being spent. So get creative with how you can utilize your friends and family network in a way that benefits you and your business, your kids, and your neighborhood network, or your friends and family network.

Your time is like a house

Now bear with me here cause I know that doesn’t make any sense.

When I first left school and I got my first job, I had an apartment that was about 600 square feet.  I had a couch and a chair and tables, and it was a nice little place and it had the right amount of furniture.  Then I moved into a condo that was 1,100 square feet. And guess what? I got more furniture to fill up my bigger house. And then when we moved into our current house, which is just under 3,000 square feet. We got more furniture and more stuff to fill up our even bigger house.

This is how we are with our time. If we have an hour of spare time, we don’t see it as an hour of spare time. We will fill that time. We will not just sit and stare at the wind blowing through the trees because we got shit to do.

So when it comes to our time and saying that we don’t have any time, we have to look at how we are currently filling our “house.” You know, there is a lot of pieces in my house that if I were to downsize, would not come with me and I would not feel badly about it. I would not miss them, they would just be gone.

So I want you to think about your time. What things are you using your time for that. If all of a sudden you had to free up 5  to 10 hours a week, what would you not miss? What would you say, “Peace out.” to without feeling its loss.

What are some things that you think you might miss, but if you actually tried to cut them out, it wouldn’t make much of a difference? Things like surfing Facebook, searching through pins on Pinterest, or even watching every single practice that your son or daughter has.

Those are times you could be doing something for you. Instead of looking for recipes that, let’s face it, you’re probably never going to make, or searching through comments of people that, again, let’s face it, you don’t really care about other than the fact that you are “Facebook friends”, how could you be making your own dreams come true? Are they like the cabinet that I bought to fill up an empty space on my wall? Are they like decorations that I bought because we decided to redo a room? What is the actual need of your space and time?

Once you can eliminate those things, you can start to move forward with building your business. Once you take the time to get rid of the tasks that are no longer needed to be done by you, and then look at how you’re filling up your time, I’m almost positive that you will easily find a few hours a week that you can put aside to building your business, your passion, and your future.

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