You’re an ambitious person. You like to hustle and when you do you hustle hard. The only problem? You’ve recently hustled yourself out and now you feel like you’ve hit a slump.
It happens to the best of us.
In the personal finance niche there is a lot of talk about side hustles. In case you don’t know a side hustle is simply any job, business, or work you do or create to earn some extra money on the side.
I am one of those people who does things in spurts and I wear many hats. One day I am pumped up about finding as many freelance writing clients as I can. The next day I want to see how much traffic I can get to my blog. And yet the next, I am more interested in working on my other sites. Somehow I manage to get a little bit of it all in there.
Well, until I hit a slump, that is.
Working a side hustle can drain you – especially if you’re putting in long hours. The good news is that side hustles don’t really require long hours, they require smart work. A bit of burnout is inevitable for hustlers, but in my experience it is something that you can overcome. Here’s how.
Enjoy Your Life
There are times when your brain just gets overloaded. If you’re like me you have tons of ideas floating around in your head. You try to execute and you’re instantly overwhelmed.
While you should consistently map out time to work on your hustle each day it’s also important that you take a break.
This is one of the reasons I love going to the shooting range so much. There’s nothing more stress relieving and exciting to me than shooting guns. I often invite my youngest brother and we have little competitions to see who can hit the bull’s eye the most. When I am done I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the world.
And, since I am a small town country girl I like to take rides and just stare out the window. A lot of the time my daughters and I will ride around on back roads and look for animals. Every time we see an animal my four year old wants to stop and take a picture. This always makes for a fun day.
When you take time to schedule fun in your life you are much less stressed and feel capable of tackling the world. However, if you try and devote every waking moment to your hustle you’ll quickly get burnt out and your work won’t be up to par.
You need a good balance. Your life is meant to be enjoyed!
Make a Plan
I have goals and dreams and I know that if I want to reach them that I have to be consistent. Persistent and consistent – those are the two traits that I know push me closer to where I want to be.
Since there are some weeks that I just don’t feel like doing certain tasks I make myself a list. On the top of the list are all of things that have to be done. I complete those first. As the list progresses I make notes of all the other things that are important but not urgent. As long as I am working on one of these important tasks I don’t feel guilty about not doing something else.
Schedule Time Everyday
There are times when your ambition is just lacking. It happens to the best of us. That doesn’t mean you can give up on your hustle altogether. Your ambition is bound to come back and you’ll completely regret taking too much time off when it does.
When you aren’t feeling like voluntarily hustling like you normally would, force yourself to commit a certain amount of time each day to your hustle – even if it’s only thirty minutes. What I often find is that it’s the sitting down and getting started that takes the effort, once you get started you’ll be ready to go.
Sometimes Priorities Change
If you are still feeling unmotivated by a particular hustle maybe it’s time to move on. We’re people, we grow and our priorities change. And that’s OK.
You have to do what’s right for you. If that means ending a current hustle and starting a new one don’t beat yourself up about it. Enjoy your life and choose the things that matter the most to you and your family. That’s what life’s all about.
How do you keep your hustle?
Alexa Mason is a freelance writer and wanna be internet entrepreneur. She is also a newly single mom to two beautiful little girls. She chronicles her journey as a single mom trying to make it big at www.singlemomsincome.com.
I find that when I have too many things that I’m trying to do, I don’t do well at any of them. I need to do better at scheduling things, but that’s hard with 3 little ones. Maybe focusing on one thing per day would help.