5 Tips on How to Balance Your Side Hustles Effortlessly

It pays to work, but handling more jobs than one can be stressful. Here are our pro-tips on how to balance multiple jobs at once (and live a happy life).
5 Tips on How to Balance Your Side Hustles Effortlessly
It pays to work, but handling more jobs than one can be stressful. Here are our pro-tips on how to balance multiple jobs at once (and live a happy life).

In a city like Toronto where the cost of living is so high, working multiple jobs has become the new normal for millennials. The gig economy isn’t just an optional opportunity for those who want to make some extra cash on the side, but rather the side hustle movement is the only way some people can afford to live comfortably.

Just because the clock strikes five doesn’t mean it’s quitting time. For those working multiple jobs, it’s only a brief break before one has to refocus and go to their second job for the rest of the night. And when he or she finally gets to bed around midnight or later, they only have a few short hours of rest before it is time to wake up and start the entire process all over again.

While working multiple jobs isn’t uncommon, people do it for a variety of reasons like saving money, paying off debt or gaining further experience in an industry — precarious employment isn’t necessarily easy. Between the early mornings, late nights and the overwhelming amount of responsibilities to keep track of, it’s difficult to find a balance between fulfilling your commitments to those jobs and still maintain your sanity.

With that in mind, here are a few pro tips for helping those juggling multiple jobs.

Find dissimilar jobs.

If you’re going to work multiple jobs, it makes sense to have each one different from the other. Whether it’s a different industry entirely or a slight shift in role responsibilities, working dissimilar jobs is ideal because it mixes up your routine.

When you aren’t doing the exact same thing at every job, you’ll find you’re less bored and have more energy as you transition between your gigs. Even if you work both jobs in the same day, you’ll likely have much more energy if your side hustles vary. Sometimes the mix of a physical job with a desk job is just the right combination people need in order to effectively work so many hours in a day.

Try to simplify life tasks.

When work life takes over, sometimes living a healthy, balanced life can become more of an afterthought. So find ways to simplify everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning, laundry and working out.

Don’t have time to cook each day? Meal prep. Don’t have time to go to the gym? Try using a condensed workout app that’s sensitive of your time constraint. There are little ways to simplify everyday tasks that will make your schedule run much more smoothly. Staying active and filling your body with good fuel will keep you energized as you move from job to job.

Plan ahead.

If you don’t have your work schedule meticulously organized, unexpected events can easily pop up and ruin your productivity. So to help keep your priorities straight and your sanity intact, take a few moments each weekend to plan for the week ahead. For example, maybe there’s a happy hour you want to attend Wednesday night, so you’ll need to be aware of that so you can shift the majority of your evening workload to Monday and Tuesday.

Once you have your workload evenly distributed throughout the week, you’ll be able to schedule your social life accordingly and make smart decisions should anything unexpected pop up. You’ll be able to get your work done more efficiently and still maintain time for the fun stuff.

Give yourself some time off.

With working multiple jobs you’ll often hear advice to take at least one full day off during the week. And if you have that flexibility and the schedule to do so then you most definitely should! However, not everyone in precarious employment has that luxury.

Working two or more jobs may not guarantee a solid day off every week, and even if you try to, you may not be able to shake that guilty feeling that comes up when you aren’t doing something job-related. You might not be able to block out an entire day for yourself, but you should at least give yourself a couple hours off at some point during the week. Most importantly, you need to take the time to let your mind relax.

With jumping from job to job, it’s easy to forget the value of a little R&R so when you’re not working, don’t think about work. Taking regular breaks (or at least one) will leave you feeling refreshed and make for easier transitions between work.

Remain focused on your long-term goals.

Let’s face it, working multiple jobs can sometimes be a real drag. Working 100 plus hours each week is exhausting and a lack of a social life can get to a person, but keeping one’s long-term goals in sight will help to push through.

Whether you’re working precariously because you’re trying to pay off student loans or saving for a down payment on a house or working on starting your own company — whatever your reason may be, all the extra jobs are getting you a little closer to that goal. So when you’re entrenched in the mundane day-to-day routines of your multiple jobs, it’s important to keep that end goal in mind, and remember that it will all be worth it in the end.

Featured image: Instagram/ @beproductive

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