How do you find time to manage a part time business when you have a busy daytime job?
This is a question that bothered me until five years ago.
Why? Because starting a side hustle is hard when you work over 40 hours a week at a job. Most workers spend at least one hour daily commuting and working in a toxic working space. And for the majority of working adults, the last thing they want to do is get home and work on their part time business
Let’s be honest here…what you want to do instead of working on your part time business.. is to crash on your couch, have dinner, watch television, and sleep.
The key to wealth is what you do in your part time
I don’t know about you, But I had just described what I used to do…until eight years ago when I listened to the art of exceptional living inspirational audio by the late Jim Rohn
In one of the sessions, Jim Rohn talked about how it looked like he was destined for a life of poverty and personal failure in his early years.
Then his life changed when he met his mentor, who taught him a critical lesson about business and wealth.
Jim Rohn said the secret to becoming successful and wealthy was to “work on yourself.”
“When you work at a job you make a living. When you work on yourself you make a fortune”
In order words, “working on yourself “means finding time to do the essential things that will contribute to your future financial wealth and happiness.
The same solution applies to starting a part time business when you have a day job: You must find time to build your business.
The good news is it’s possible to manage a business in your spare time. When you reorganize your time and priorities, finding time to build your part time business becomes more effortless.
There are many action steps you should take in other to squeeze time out of your already busy life.
Set a goal and identify your top priorities for your side hustle
One of the first things you must do as a part-time entrepreneur is learn to set goals.
Why? Because you are responsible for what happens in your business.
No one else will hold you accountable for your business unless you hold yourself responsible.
There is a difference between owning your own business and working for someone else. Unlike your full-time job where you report to a boss, the only person you have to report to at your business is yourself.
This is why you must learn to be goal oriented. By setting goals, you are committing and working towards accomplishing your dream of business ownership.
The simple way to set goals is to list the top ten things you need to do in your business. Then narrow your list to the top three.
What you should do is make these three things your top priority.
I will show you how to work on your top priority in a few minutes
When you have identified your top priorities, the next thing you must do is make sure to spend most of your time doing them
Do a time budget
The next thing you must do to find time to run your part time business is doing a time budget.
A time budget is just like doing a financial budget. Before you do a time budget, you must track your activities the same way you will track your spending pattern.
Tracking how you spend your time allows you to identify some blocks of time you can use to work on your business.
When I did my time tracking the last time, I found out I was spending too much time commuting to work. So I stopped taking on work that was more than 40 minutes commute.
When you identify the blocks of time, you can spend building your business…make sure you schedule the tasks you need to build your business at this time. Commit to doing only things related to your business at this time… there should be no interruptions, phone calls, or web surfing.
Apply The 80/20 rule
You must make the best use of your time when managing your part time business. Over the years, I have tried many systems to maximize my time working on my business.
The One system that appealed to me is the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule says that you should do the few tasks (20 %) that significantly impact your business. And ignore the trivial tasks (80%) that contribute little to your business.
In his audio program Master strategies for higher achievement, motivational speaker and business development expert Brian Tracy says making the best use of your time is what separates successful people from the rest of us.
Brian Tracy says in other to become super productive, you must always calculate your “return on energy” [Return on energy is the product of the time you spend on a task at any given time].
This means you should spend less time on activities that count less on building your business.
If you are going to take anything away from this article about finding time to build your part time business. Then it will be to apply the 80/20 rules to your time.
A simple way to identify the few tasks you need to do that’ll impact your business is to identify the insider secrets that contribute to the bottom line of your business.
Then you ask yourself: Are you applying these secrets to grow your business? Or do you lack insider secrets?
There are two answers to these questions: Yes or maybe not
What you should do if the answer is yes, you are doing the essential things to grow your business, find more time.
On the flip side, if you are falling short of what you should do, find time to clean up your act and keep working on building your business.
Keep a Must-do list
One of the things I hated when I worked at a full-time job was working with a to-do list. Here’s why… Because when you keep a to-do list …all you are doing is ticking boxes, right?
Please don’t get me wrong…I am not saying you shouldn’t be organized.
You ought to do the essential things that will impact your future wealth. If you have been reading so far, you’ll know that your work on your part time business is more important than a to-do list.
What I suggest instead of keeping a to-do list is working from a must-do list.
Your must-do list is the list of tasks you need to do daily to grow your side hustle until it becomes profitable and you quit your day job.
Here’s what your must-do list should look like: meeting clients, marketing, website content writing, market research, new product development
Find your magic time…then spend it working on your business.
I want you to think about this for a second…have you ever noticed that you are at your peak at night?…or in the early mornings. Or midday
Finding the time you are at peak performance is crucial because that is your magic time.
Your magic time is that period during the day when you are working at your highest peak… it’s that time you seem to flow and do things quickly.
I discovered my magic time by accident during my medical school years. I noticed that I tend to focus and concentrate when I wake up early in the morning (about 430 am).
My wife is the opposite she is a night owl. It’s not uncommon for Jay to stay up late till the early morning hours.
The benefit of knowing when your magic time is that you can schedule the time you spend on your part time business, and you’ll get things done faster.
What if it’s not practicable to work at your magic time?
You can still find the time where you can spend uninterrupted time working on your business.
If you still can’t find time to work on your business… because your boss is on your neck…or life’s just tough on you…then do this
When you wake up every day …before you do anything…write a list of what you want to achieve for the day or week…then ask yourself this question: knowing what I now know about building wealth … would I make a living or make a fortune from doing what’s on my list?
I leave it to your conscience to find the answer.
Remember the words of Jim Rohn. You make a living at your job. You make a fortune when you work on yourself.