How to Create Time for Side Hustles?
A Lazy Entrepreneur Creates Time by Supporting Other Entrepreneurs
Subscription businesses are on fire at the moment and I am ripping the benefits as a consumer.
As a starting entrepreneur who spreads time across my business, my side hustle, and my part-time job, it’s surprising that I still find time to hang out with friends, binge-watch Never Have I Ever season 2 (go watch it now if you haven’t!) and swipe Bumble.
How?
Extreme regularisation.
You might have heard people wearing the same t-shirt (hopefully a few of the identical ones) to minimize spending on looking good. This is taking it further, yet more do-able than looking like Matt D’Avella.
In turn, you can also support ethical businesses.
A lazy person’s unique mindset
If you are bloody hard-working, good luck with not burning out.
I am lazy, I burn out easily.
It’s better to admit our laziness than to fake it. Our starting point to live a good life is to know who we are and our aims.
About me. I am a lazy person and a thinker. This means I like things simple, so I can spend time thinking about complicated things. Also, I can’t do back-to-back non-stop working, I need at least 2–3 hours acting like sloths every day. That’s just how I recharge. P.S. sleeping doesn’t equal being a sloth.
My aim: Live my life how I want it — i.e. do a job I like, make money, help others, and be lazy.
I also think that the idea of working hard to achieve the life you want is illogical. We need to start living the life we want in order to make work sustainable and enjoyable.
Based on the above, I adopt a lazy person’s mindset. How to make life works for you so you don’t need to work as hard? I think this is a golden mindset that all entrepreneurs and other people should take.
My answer is extreme regularisation through subscriptions. My fellow entrepreneurs are making the industry on fire and I support them fully.
Here are the things I subscribe to
Everything that has nothing to do with making money.
Here’s a list of stuff I subscribe to:
Washing powder, dishwashing liquid, meal boxes, Courier magazine, summaries of good books, tights, underwear, tampons, wine, makeup, skincare, toiletries, bus passes, co-working space, swimming pool, razors, stationery, peanut butter, bread, coffee beans, filter papers…
But it’s not just this, I also subscribe to things that are part of my business but it’s not directly making money:
risk management, name cards, web hosting, WordPress building, data management, email marketing, accounting, tax…
Basically here are the only things I’m actually doing, almost in the order of my day:
sleep, meditation, exercise, make coffee and PB&J sandwich, write an article, see clients, be a sloth, do my part-time job, eat dinner, do my business, read, sleep and repeat.
A few important notes about a successful extreme regularisation
I don’t live like a robot, I live like a motivated entrepreneur always in animated conversation, and a sloth.
Extreme regularisation is not minimalism, it is not stripping away desires or anything like that. In fact, I have too many underwears and clothes to avoid doing laundry too often.
Here are some big tips:
- Identify your “sloth time”: this is the time when you are least productive. Rest and be a sloth then. The good thing about entrepreneurs is that I can rest anytime I want, which is bloody 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm. I literally siesta the f of it.
- Identify your “extra moment”: I live in England, so when the small window of summer arrives, I get extra. I hum a folk song and hang my duvet and laundry under the sun, I put my sea shoes on and jump into the sea, I party till 4 am and be beach-dead the next day. Those are extra moments that take up quite a bit of time, but I know what they are and they make my life awesome.
- The more time you spend on others’ work, the less on your own: I do Youtube live and write on Medium, and it’s only logical that when we spend more time on others’ content, we spend less working on mine. It’s good to appreciate quality creations, but if we get hooked on something (like how I binge-watched Never Have I Never), then by logic they have rightfully stolen our time.
- Don’t subscribe to Disney +: they have Marvel.
- Don’t add more stuff to your to-do list: echoing sloth time, don’t contaminate it with more work. People emotionally blackmail us by saying: “why can’t you do this for me when you’re just napping in a hammock?” Nope, that’s my sloth time, don’t let people steal it from you. Better yet, turn off your phone.
- Don’t neglect ethical standards: Don’t you dare skip this point. I worked in a highly time-sensitive area in the past and my colleagues were buying low-quality food with plastic packaging near the office in order to save time. Without good regularisation, evil corporates will rip off the world’s resources in the name of convenience and selfish busy people will claim innocence.
Extreme regularisation needs a bit of up-front research, sometimes there’s a green premium too. But when done right, your ethical standards and quality of life are maintained whilst your productivity improves. In a long run, it will make us money, cause time is money.
Being kind to ourselves, to the planet, and creating a life that’s balanced and motivated, is something we owe to our world, ourselves, and our family and friends.
Be a sloth, don’t be a dick.
More entrepreneur/self-improvement articles from me Midori by the Sea a 30-something-year-old woman who quit her job in London and move to a seaside town.
