From Procrastination to Productivity: How Routines Can Boost Your Side Hustle Journey
Struggling to work on your side hustle after a busy day?
Does this sound familiar?
You’re trying to build a side hustle (of course you are, that’s why you’re here), but…
When you sit down to work it’s a real struggle to get started, especially as you’re feeling tired after a long day at the office, looking after the kids, or both.
You look at that long to do list and feel overwhelmed by all of the different tasks you need to get done in your side hustle. It’s too hard to decide what to do and you spend more time choosing a task to tackle than actually getting on with what needs doing.
You often find yourself giving up and flopping down on the sofa instead to watch your favourite programme, feeling deflated and with the thought that you’ll never make progress on your side hustle going round and round in your head.
When you’re not working on your side hustle great ideas often pop into your head. You feel guilty for not acting on them now. You worry that you’ll forget the idea if you don’t. You stress out that come next week you won’t have any ideas for pitching your products or posting on social media if you don’t implement the ideas as soon as they pop into your head.
The harsh truth is that if you continue like this you aren’t going to make progress. In fact, you’re probably not going to get off the ground. Your side hustle will remain an aspiration, a dream, never to be brought into being.
Let me tell you about Sarah. She and I worked together when I was offering one to one coaching. The problem that she was trying to tackle was how to deal with her life admin. Those small tasks such as paying bills, booking hairdressing appointments and renewing library books, that we all have to do every week.
After a long day at a very demanding job she struggled to relax as these small tasks would constantly pop into her head and she would feel as though she had to go and do them immediately. If she didn’t, she worried that she would forget them. She got stressed that if she just constantly put them off she would never get around to them. This detracted from her enjoyment of time with her family, as she felt guilty about ignoring these life admin tasks.
In order to address this we agreed that she would implement a weekly routine to deal with her life admin. Every time a life admin task popped into her head she would record it on a designated list in her notes app. Then every Thursday evening she would open up the list and do the tasks.
This benefitted her in several ways:
She was able to empty her brain of those tasks when they popped into her head, helping her to focus on and more importantly, enjoy, whatever she was doing before she had that thought.
As she had made a note of the tasks she wasn’t distracted from what she was doing by worrying that she was going to forget about it and it would get missed.
By designating Thursday night as life admin night she made it easier for her to start tackling these tasks on a regular basis so nothing got missed. It became routine. Thursday at 8pm meant life admin. She didn’t have to argue with her brain or procrastinate about whether she was going to tackle any life admin tasks that evening. Of course she was, it was Thursday night.
It took away the guilt of not tackling them when they came into her head. She wasn’t just ignoring them or putting them off indefinitely. She was following the routine she had designed. She would tackle that task, just not today.
Use a notes app to capture great side hustle ideas
Let us return to the scenario we talked about at the beginning and the challenges facing you as a struggling new side hustler.
How about instead of that:
You have regular slots in your week for each of your side hustle tasks e.g. an hour on Monday evening for creating social media posts, an hour on a Sunday morning for following up sales leads.
When an idea pops into your head for a blog post you open up your notes app, click on the relevant list and make a note of it. Then you go back to whatever you were doing, without worrying you’ll forget that great topic or feeling guilty for not acting straight away, as you know you’ll do so on Wednesday evening when you have your regular blog writing slot.
Come Wednesday at 8pm when you sit down to work on your side hustle you no longer waste time procrastinating because you know exactly what you’re going to be doing – writing that blog post, all about the great topic you made a note of when it popped into your head the other day.
How does that sound? Great right? And this can be you. You just need to follow the steps that I have set out below.
Here’s your homework:
Brainstorm the different tasks you want to do in your side hustle next week.
Give every category of task a slot on your calendar.
Remember to start small. Although ideally you might want to create 30 posts for Facebook every month and post daily, perhaps start with 3 per week.
Follow through. If it’s 8pm on Wednesday and your calendar says you’re meant to be following up sales leads, follow up sales leads.
Create somewhere to capture ideas, such as a notebook or app.
Repeat and develop that weekly schedule over the coming months.
Enjoy your time, guilt-free, when you’re not working on your side hustle.
Watch your side hustle grow and experience the success you’ve been dreaming about.
Creating routines can really help address procrastination, but this is just one technique. In my procrastination cheatsheet I have lots more tips and advice for understanding and tackling procrastination. Click here, fill in your name and email address and get a copy sent straight to your inbox so you can stop procrastinating today and start moving forward in your side hustle.