Side hustles are full of lame excuses.
A side hustle is the bridge to autonomy, doing work you love, multiple income streams, infinite online leverage, and as much money as you want to make.
You could say, it’s the holy grail. I think so.
Yet excuses take over…
- “I’m going to miss out.”
- “I’m too late.”
- “The market is saturated.”
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “The internet is too noisy.
- The worst excuse in history: “I don’t have time.”
Dan Koe shook my tiny brain into action after I reluctantly went on his podcast. He says “The magic happens when you say ‘f*ck it, I’ll make it happen.’ You eliminate the possibility of failure from your mind.”
Let’s make it happen and choke the excuses to death.
“Most people don’t have a talent problem. They have consistency problem ”
(Nicolas Cole)
Cole has one of the fastest-growing Twitter audiences on the platform. He credits Twitter Threads as his reason for rapid growth.
I’ve followed his career for years and spoken to him many times. He’s all about the art of the routine, not random sparks of inspiration that rarely happen. Cole has written online for years, since he was a teenager. His belief is a side hustle will take care of itself if you’re consistent.
If your side hustle isn’t a recurring invite in your calendar, it will never happen. That’s the harsh truth many avoid.
Work in the quiet hours of the night
Sean Kernan wrote recently about Stephen King’s side hustle of writing.
“He worked as a high school English teacher and scraped together the energy to write at night.”
I did the same in the early days. I worked at a bank during the day, and on my side hustle at night. The nighttime is when many side hustle empires are built. Do you work at night on any of the seven days of the week?
If not, give it a shot. You only miss the shots you don’t take.
Get fired up, seriously
Energy makes side hustles happen.
Energy requires three things:
- Something you give a damn about
- The right mindset
- A life built on an understanding of energy
I’m so obsessed with this topic, I wrote a book on it. Too many lifeless zombies posing as humans walk around the world with close to no energy. They can barely get off the couch and wonder why things don’t happen.
It’s not their fault. It’s just that energy gets stolen from us every day by default. Until you see The Matrix that is energy leaks, you can’t plug them.
The following robs you of energy needed to make a side hustle happen:
- The news
- Living in fear
- Trolls/Haters
- A lack of exercise
- Junk food diet built on a foundation of processed food
Humans weren’t designed to sit all day.
We’re supposed to move around. Make stuff happen. Get fired up. Be excited that we get to live while our family in the cemetery don’t.
Wake up. Make your move. Get excited by something in your life again — it’ll show up in your side hustle.
Thinking small is boring AF
Think bigger to get more excited. Read that again.
Big side hustle dreams are way more motivating than playing it small and hoping you don’t get hit by a freight train on your way to the cubicle. At the start of my side hustle I said, “I’m going to inspire millions of people through entrepreneurship and personal development.”
I had zero audience at this point. But when I read that sentence it made me excited to sit down and work. Inspiring millions of people sounded like fun to me. It was a challenge. It was a purpose greater than myself. So over time I found a way.
Why not you?
Tweet your excuses at me and I’ll debunk them for free.
Truth: you got nothing to lose by dreaming big. You might overshoot with your vision but, overall, you’ll get further ahead.
When you are not sure, choose the more ambitious path.
— OrangeBook
Accept the unknown
We don’t make it happen when we become obsessed with knowing everything before we start.
While you sit, learn and wait … the internet moves at 200 mph. By the time you think you’ve learned everything about your side hustle, the game has changed and you’re left behind.
Nobody with a side hustle has any clue what they’re doing.
We’re all just figuring stuff out as we go. Why can’t you?
The unknown parts hold all the revelations that will leave you saying WOW! WOW! WOW! looking back. Get enough revelations, and you start to see your side hustle as a gateway to the drug of embracing new things.
If you don’t learn to relax, you can’t reach the max of your potential
Basketball coach John Wooden is a badass.
During the two hours of practice on the court each day, he expected his team to be fully immersed without distractions. Outside of those two hours he wanted his players to stay the heck away from basketball.
He wanted them to stay away from the weights room, remove any thoughts about basketball from their minds, and concentrate on anything but basketball. The reason is he wanted his players to refresh and recharge themselves.
His worst nightmare?
That the players began to see basketball as a chore.
When a side hustle becomes a chore, it becomes boring. You’ll avoid anything that becomes boring, therefore, destroying countless opportunities.
The point is, while you work on your side hustle, be fully immersed. But don’t fall for hustle culture and never get time away to think. It’s when you’re doing mundane stuff, such as the dishes or cleaning the house, that new insights come to you.
Cal Newport’s deep work mantra is this:
“When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.”
Make rest the reward to enjoy after you work on your side hustle. Then you’ll have all the motivation you need to focus and make stuff happen.
Own it so you’re responsible
The difference between a side hustle versus a startup is it’s just you. There are no employees with a side hustle. It’s a solo pursuit.
The productivity gurus will throw daggers in my eyes for saying this but one-person side hustles are a better way to start. Yes, you can’t outsource all your tasks to cheap labor in a third-world country, but when it’s just you, it’s you against the internet.
Sole responsibility leads to ownership of the outcome.
If you don’t like the results, you — and only you — have the power to change them. That’s incredibly freeing when you think about it. No blaming anyone — just yourself. Blame is a lame game to get out of taking responsibility for your actions.
Choose the solo life to get leverage on yourself.
Stop sitting around. Time to get to work.
Start your side hustle. Or get to work on your existing side hustle. Say “f*ck it” to all your excuses. There’s no more time for them.
Execution produces the magical next actions.
Find out what doesn’t work so you can discover what does work. That’s how you master a side hustle and obliterate procrastination.
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