You may have been hearing that a lot of people now have side gigs that they keep on the side of their day job. It can be anything from freelancing services, creating products to selling on Ebay. But how are people managing it with their day job on top of that?

Be realistic

You might have big ideas in the beginning but it’s important to be realistic about the amount of work you can do in the time you’ve got. With limited time, you might not be able to grow as fast as you’d like so this is worth bearing in mind before you start a side gig.

If you overestimate the work you can do and can’t meet your own expectations, this is just going to dishearten you. Start small and build it from there instead.

Discuss with friends and family

This is particularly important for people you live with if you’re working from home. Explain when you’re working that you’d like to not be disturbed. Try to set rules clearly early on. You might have to sacrifice some time you’d usually spend with friends or family in order to work on your business. So it’s important they know about this.

Schedule

With time limited, you need to track the hours you’re spending on various things to see where you can fit work in. Make sure you’re also scheduling breaks and time with family so that you don’t end up too overworked and burned out.

Save time and become more efficient

This means making the most of automation to free yourself up. The less time you spend on business tasks and admin, the more you can spend on client work that actually gets you money and on free time too. So automate things like social media marketing, bookkeeping or emails wherever possible.

Make use of dead time

Dead time is time that fills the gaps between other tasks where you often procrastinate. So time spent on things like commuting, waiting for food, sitting in waiting rooms, checking social media can be turned into productive time instead. Try putting together a list of small tasks that you need to do and can fit into these time frames so that you’re making use of every hour.

Outsource

While this might be unthinkable in the early stages, you might be better off outsourcing some of your work early on if you can. This will help you manage the workload better which will stop you from getting discouraged. Even if it just help from a family member or friend, everything helps.

Are you worried about being able to work and maintain a business at the same time? Do you have any tips for managing workloads like this? Let us know.