A different view on "hustler mode"

How to combine work, studies and side projects in a healthier way

Hi all - it’s been a while!

The past 6 weeks I enrolled in the d.MBA course, learning about business as a designer. On top of that, I traveled to New York, did a couple of webinars with CareerFoundry and I’m in the middle of big things happening in my personal life. I had to set priorities and be extra mindful about managing my time - and that’s exactly what I want to talk about today.

I regularly get questions from people asking me how I manage to combine a full-time job with content creation gigs and participating numerous online courses. Personally, finding and keeping a work-life balance is an ongoing challenge.¹

Here are 4 strategies I use to “do it all” in a healthier way.

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1. Mindful scrolling

If you want to combine a full-time job with studying, freelance gigs, personal projects and on top of that simply living life, you’ll first need to understand what takes up most of your time and where you can save time.

Now, I don’t believe each hour of the day should be productive. However, everyone has their kryptonite: Netflix, TikTok, Instagram or other platforms that lure you into hours of mindless media consumption. Figuring out where most of your time is wasted is your biggest win when you want to combine a fulltime job with side gigs, studying, personal projects etc.

Additional tips

• Track your daily activities for a week to get insight how you spend your free time and where you “waste” most of your time.

• Find ways to indulge mindfully. For example, instead of hours of binging on mediocre series on Netflix, I treat myself to a movie night with one good movie after I did my assignments for the d.MBA course. This way I can relax, but still save time to dedicate to professional growth.

2. Do your future self a favour

Whenever I hit a low spot in terms of motivation, I try to remind myself that I’m investing in my future self. Spending my weekends preparing a webinar for a side gig while my friends are out drinking isn’t fun. Attending a live class right after work at Friday 6PM while the sun is out isn’t something I particularly enjoy. What I’m saying is: a lot of the things I do for myself aren’t rewarding in the moment itself.

I do it, because they help future me.

Looking back at all the courses and trainings I’ve did in the past, I don’t think about the hours spend at home studying. I think about the knowledge I have now and how it makes my job easier.

via Giphy, Fabio Coelho

Additional tips

• Write down your long-term goals and create a development plan for these goals. This is the reason I enroll in at least one online course each year: it’s an easy way for me to develop new skills that are useful for my professional life and contribute to reaching my goals.

• Find an accountability partner when you’re doing an online course. Someone that can help you stay on track when you’re losing motivation.

3. Done is better than perfect

If you want to do it all, you have to accept the fact that you can’t do it all perfectly. This became clear to me when doing the home assignments for d.MBA. Next to two live classes each week, we were also expected to do assignments in our time - which could take up to 10-12 additional hours. That’s on top of a full-time job and freelancer work.

I quickly realised that in order to keep up with the pace of course and keeping my work-life balance, I had to be okay with delivering not-so-perfect work. That meant: strict time-boxing² and moving on when time’s up, even when the results weren’t perfect.

In my content creation work I keep this same mentality. I try not to get to stressed out over creating “perfect” content, especially since the platforms I’m active on are so fast-paced that being a perfectionist would only be a blocker.

4. Learn what to say “no” to

Keeping a healthy work-life balance whilst combining a full-time job with side gigs and personal/professional growth isn’t about saying “yes” to as many things as your calendar allows.

It means saying “no” to everything that isn’t a perfect match with your values and goals. This was a hard lesson for me to learn, as I have a hard time saying “no” to exciting opportunities. For example, a few weeks back a brand reached out for a collaboration while I was on a holiday. It felt wrong saying no to a brand partnership, but I knew it was right because it didn’t fit my schedule and would mean giving up time during my holidays.

Saying “no” in order to free up time for what really matters can also look like…

• Muting all off-topic Slack-channels to avoid distraction.

• Investing time in my personal projects instead of afterwork drinks with colleagues.

• Giving up an well-paying side hustle opportunity because it doesn’t fit my values.

• Not being as active as content creator as I was before, because social media isn’t giving me as much energy as it did before.

1. I feel like I need to add a disclaimer here: I’ll talk about my own experiences and what I do to keep a work-life balance. I don’t have a family to take care of or other big life responsibilities, which gives me time, space and money to invest in extra side hustles in my life.

2. “With timeboxing, you allocate time periods in order to put a strict limit to activities you fear would otherwise take away too much of your time.” Source: https://clockify.me/timeboxing