'My full time job is getting in the way of my part time dream'

What to do when your main gig and side hustle are both vying for your time and attention

@punodostres

This week I’m coming to you as my alter-ego, Agony Aunt Anna, and answering a question that one of my readers (also named Anna) asked last week. She wrote:

“I work as a management consultant for a tier one consulting firm and am trying to build something on the side. While I like to think I'm pretty good at making time for the things I care about, this job is so demanding and intense that it’s pushing me to my limits.

I’m unsure how long I should suffer in this job and feel like I need clarity on what my next steps are. Should I go full time into my side hustle? Should I get a different job that will provide better conditions for building something on the side?

It’s so frustrating! I’d love to hear your experience with balancing both, and if you have any advice?” - Anna #2

Oh Anna #2, I hear you. I feel you. While I’ve never worked for a top tier consulting firm before, I’ve had seriously high pressure jobs and clients so I deeply understand the struggle that comes with building your dream on the weekend while building someone else’s during the week.

My first business started as a passion project and we ran it on the side for two years before receiving positive market signals that gave us the confidence to go all in. It was tough to be pulled in two directions, and if I’m honest I still experience this tension now. Sometimes this very newsletter feels like a side hustle living in the shadow of the sometimes-demanding, always-exciting work I do with startups.

It isn’t easy going after what you want especially in a role as intense as yours, but there are still some things within your control. I suggest you look at the situation from two distinct points of view:

• What you can do in the immediate term

• What you can do in the medium-long term

Immediate term

There are some things you may be able to change today to reduce stress and make meaningful progress on what’s important:

1. Get realistic about your capacity vs. capability

People often confuse the two but there’s a big difference: capacity is what you physically, mentally and emotionally can do with the time and energy you have. Capability is what you could do if you had all the time and energy in the world.

Just because I could hypothetically develop a startup’s go-to-market strategy in a week, it doesn’t mean I can do it before next Friday. Just because you could build the bones of your website tomorrow, it doesn’t mean it’s realistic alongside everything else that’s going on.

This disconnect can be toxic because setting goals and constantly falling short only eats away at your confidence. Action can’t always meet ambition, so give yourself grace and adjust your expectations based on what you can actually give.

2. Identify the right thing to work on

The side hustle’s honeymoon phase is a magical time when no one knows what you’re working on except for your boyfriend/girlfriend, best mate and the curly-haired barista who makes your coffee. You’re excited and want to do all the things, but perhaps find yourself working on the things that don’t matter. Author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, offers an epic framework - Motion vs. Action - for identifying what will actually move your project forward. He writes:

“When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategising and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behaviour that will deliver an outcome.”

Motion:

• Talk to a personal trainer

• Research your book idea

• Explore different types of meditation

Action:

• Do 10 squats

• Write 1 sentence

• Meditate for 1 minute

Motion feels like progress. Action is progress.

3. Do one small thing each day

Consistent action (not motion!) over time builds momentum no matter how small that action may be. By doing one tiny thing habitually - like sending a LinkedIn request while in bed or a sales email before clocking in - you’ll feel like you’re moving forward rather than painfully standing still.

Medium-long term

It pains me to read you’re suffering at work, Anna #2, so perhaps it’s time to start planning your future escape. As a little thought experiment, work through the following steps:

4. List out your options

First get everything on the table and list all of the options available to you right now. For example:

• Option 1: Do nothing and stay where you are

• Option 2: Ask your boss if you can scale back to part time

• Option 3: Find a new, less demanding full time job

• Option 4: Find a new part time job

• Option 5: Say ciao to your boss and go all in on your side hustle

• Option 6: Quit your job, sell all your possessions and move to the Galapagos Islands

5. Use a decision tree to flesh out which ones are viable

Not all of these options will be realistic and lots of things will come into play as you make a call about what’s next: your financial circumstances, goals and aspirations, the strength of your support network, how resilient you are and what’s most important to you (among others).

A decision tree always helps me step through my thinking clearly. Here’s a simple one you could follow or build upon:

6. Assess the trade offs

You may have found yourself climbing down multiple branches of that decision tree, so now it’s time to consider the trade offs. In your mind, what are they for each option? What’s good about each option? What’s bad? How does each option make you feel in your gut?

Check out some thought starters below:

7. Make a call

Hopefully this exercise helped bring some clarity to your decision making and you’re a little closer to making the call. You might have decided to stay in your job for the next year for the earning potential and credibility it’ll give you for the future. Or, you might have decided that the negative impact on your mental health isn’t worth the money and you’ll look for a less demanding role instead. Whatever your choice, just remember that it won’t be perfect because perfect doesn’t exist. There are only the trade offs you’re willing to make.

You’ve got this

When you’re an early-stage side-hustler, it’s normal to feel like there’s not enough time in the day. There will be moments of feeling like you don’t have what it takes to keep going. You’ll be frustrated - at yourself, your job, the world - that it’s not happening faster. But the thing is, building a new life doesn’t happen overnight. For me, it’s been a series of fun, challenging, painful, exciting, wild, wonderful, scary and strategic steps over many years.

So keep pursuing your dream. Pursue it today, with whatever extra capacity you have. Pursue it tomorrow, no matter how small a step you take. Make brave choices. Take calculated risks.

Because if you do, you’ll soon be on the other side of thousands of decisions and millions of actions, and find a life that’s no longer pushing you to your breaking point and the limits of your sanity, but rather one that’s pushed through the limits of what you thought was possible.

---

🎙️My thoughts on how much a side hustle needs to make, to feel comfortable quitting your job:

• Quitting my dream job to pursue my first side hustle full time [1:27]

• Six months after I quit COVID happened and all our revenue dried up, yay! [2:52]

• The signal that should give you confidence to quit, and the signals that actually don’t matter [3:44]

• Calculating your survive and thrive numbers [4:55]

• Don’t forget tax [7:09]

• The 3 month rule [7:51]

• How much is in my emergency fund and what I use it for [8:11]

PS. I’ve never been, nor will I ever be, a financial advisor. These lessons are drawn from my own experience and do not directly apply to your personal circumstances.

---

❤️‍🔥 Got a question?

Send it over and I’ll do my best to answer! Ask me anything about: portfolio careers, side hustles, building a business, landing clients, generating sales, keeping millions of plates spinning, cultivating a positive mindset…and anything else you fancy.

---

🫶🏼 Subscribe for more ideas

To receive a dose of thought provoking career, business and life lessons in your inbox each Friday morning, you know what to do.