The modern world has made it extremely easy to start a side gig out of your own home. Once you have the time and resources to dedicate to it, a side gig could bring in a lot of extra capital. Eventually, if it's successful enough, it could even replace your regular job.
However, as with most gigs, finding a perfect balance for work and life is a complicated process. Side hustles are notorious for cutting into relaxation time. If you opt to have a side job, it could significantly impact your current work-life balance. To help professionals who are trying to figure out the right way to balance their responsibilities, 12 members of Forbes Coaches Council offer advice on how you could balance work, life and a side gig successfully.
1. Create Work-Life Alignment, Not Balance
I don't believe in work-life balance. It requires you to compartmentalize aspects of your life, which prevents you from living a full and meaningful life. Instead, you should explore why you're doing the side gig and how this supports your overall goals and objectives for your life and career. Seek ways to leverage your time to achieve your efforts and support in areas that you can't manage alone. - Carol Parker Walsh, Carol Parker Walsh Consulting, LLC
2. Set And Manage Your Priorities
We can never manage time, but we can manage priorities. If you are juggling three different paths such as work, family and side gig, it's imperative you focus on one at a time. When you're at work, work. When you are at home, focus on family, and when you're doing your side gig, do that. There is plenty of research suggesting that multitasking is the most unproductive way to live life and do business. - Adriana Rosales, Adriana & Company™ LLC
3. Include Your Family
It is exciting to be taking action to achieve your goals and it’s important to still perform well at work plus keep the home fires burning brightly. Slow and steady can still win the race. Include your family in making the side gig successful, from visioning, planning, marketing to product development—leverage the strengths they have and the emotional support they have for you. - Maureen Orey, Workplace Learning & Performance Group
4. Run Toward What You Love
When balancing a side gig with a full-time role, try this: Run toward the activities in both that bring you energy, utilize your natural strengths and are what you love to do. Every role can be accomplished in multiple ways. What works best for you? How can you accomplish what you have to and love doing it at the same time? Run toward what you love, rather than away from what you do not! - John Hittler, Evoking Genius
5. Optimize Your Schedule
Being proactive in managing your energy to optimize your results and success is key for daily balance. Commitment to a daily routine of updating your schedule with priorities: self-care, work, education, family, entertainment and other key activities is also crucial. Being disciplined, selective and protective of your priorities that maximize excellence and afford you balance is key to success. - Lori Harris, Harris Whitesell Consulting
6. Ditch The Structure Of A Typical Work Week
The 9-to-5, Monday to Friday workweek was established in the industrial era for factory workers. Give yourself as much flexibility as you can in where, when and how you get work done (e.g., work from home some). Structure your entire week around your peak productivity windows. Negotiate this with your employer if needed. Shave time where you can, such as taking the stairs to substitute for a workout. - April Armstrong, AHA Insight
7. Think In Terms Of Focused Work Time
Trying to balance work and life is hard. Adding a side project often leads to (more) burnout or overwhelm. The most common reason is the pursuit of the endless to-do list. You're done at work for the day, only to find a gigantic to-do waiting for you at home. The solution? Replace the daunting list with a number of focused hours you'll aim to devote to your project each day or week. Life-changing! - Murielle Marie, Murielle Marie
8. Make Sure It Brings You Joy
To give up your free time and take on something that puts you at greater personal relationship risk, you need to enjoy it. It should add to you. The times I tripled up to "make more money" but did it just for the money, it created a universal imbalance and injured relationships and the effectiveness of my other work. Soul-enriching but time-consuming gigs may be OK. Beware of the imbalance they cause. - John M. O'Connor, Career Pro Inc.
9. Outsource Your Life And Business
The best way to manage your job, life and side hustle starts with outsourcing and delegating as much of your life and work as possible. Leverage automation, tools, technology and friends to help manage the heavy workloads. Be realistic in your time, efforts and obligations so you can show up for your life, work and side hustle 100%. - Jessica Miller-Merrell, Workology
10. Become An Expert ‘Juggler’
When you are balancing multiple important things—in this case, work, personal life and side gig—you must become an expert juggler. This means, focus deeply and fully on whichever of these priorities you have in front of you right now, while keeping a strategic but distant "eye on the ball," so to speak, on the other two priorities, so that each gets your full attention at some point in time. - Shefali Raina, Alpha Lane Partners
11. Respect Your Boundaries
Set boundaries for yourself and stick to them. Maintain very organized lists of your "dailies" and your workday is completed when you cross them all off. One of my strategies is giving myself timetables for completion. My workday ends no later than 8 p.m. to give me ample time to spend with my husband and my dog. Allow yourself the grace to say, "My day is over. Now it is me time." - Brooke Schultz, Brooke Schultz LLC
12. Integrate, Don't Try To Balance
If you wanted balance, you wouldn't have gotten a side hustle! Schedule your "me" time and "family activity time" for the entire year into your online calendar, then integrate your side hustle into your family life and get them involved in the process. Family members can lick stamps, attend activities and appointments, do online research, file, travel to conferences, etc. #MiSideHustleSuSideHustle - Carl Gould, 7 Stage Advisors
