“Do you ever sleep, Jo?” – a question I hear a lot, from friends, family, and coworkers. 

Now, I am not alone with the idea of doing something on the side to fuel my career. But how to get started, how to find the time when you already work a full-time job, maintain a family life and maybe, just maybe still want to get a bit of sleep?

Keep it Short

The main reason a side project fails or never gets off the ground is that it is too complex, too ambitious. Do not overload yourself with work at the beginning. Try to keep a project easy and light to work with. Most important: Keep them short. The quicker you can get a project done, the easier it is to get it done.

Try to find the essence of your project: What is it that makes you interested in it? What can you do as an MVP, a minimum viable product? What can you, with the skills you have, finish?

Make it Your Hobby

Do you go to the gym, have a book circle, or do regular wine tastings? If you have a hobby that you practice regularly, you know how to make time and room for an activity aside from your daily chores. The easiest way of getting started with your side project is to treat it like a hobby.

Make time for it every Wednesday night, maybe meet people on a regular basis you want to work with on that. Create a routine and build a habit around it. Get some gear for it, like you would for a sports activity. Tell your friends and family about how happy it makes you, like helping out in the community center does. Give yourself some homework for the next session, as you would in a book club.

Set a Deadline

Deadlines are an amazing productivity tool. Nothing pushes you more than a date to which something NEEDS to be finished.

But beware – there are two easy rules for setting deadlines:

1) Don’t go too short and 2) Don’t make them feel random. If you set yourself a deadline of one week or two weeks, you might miss it. Better: Give yourself 3 or 6 months to achieve a milestone in your project.

Make sure you can take your own deadline seriously – a made update that bares no consequences when being missed is not a great motivator. Better: pick a significant date, e.g. your birthday, an important public holiday or conference date, at which you want to present your side project. Pro tip: Many creator meetups offer lightning talk slots at which side projects can be presented. Sign up for one of those, and BOOM – you have your deadline.

Keep it Stupid (No Startup Mindset)

So you have a great idea. It has the potential to become the next Twitter or the next Facebook – if only work hard enough, right? You read The Lean Startup, Tools of Titans and you know that all successful people start their day at 4AM. You know you can make it, if only you work hard enough on your idea. Pulling all-nighters, living off of corn flakes and pop tarts. Right?

Chances are, you won’t get your idea anywhere if you push too hard in the beginning. If you expect to be launching a startup unicorn, the likelihood of being disappointed is very high. Even worse: You turn your side hustle into something really really boring right from the start: You turn it into work. My advice: Keep your side project stupid.

Make sure it stays quirky, it stays fun. Make sure that you have fun while making it, allowing for room to goof around or take your idea to other places. Many successful tech companies started exactly like that: Facebook? A dorm room «Hot-or-Not» experiment. Twitter? A platform with the serious name of «my.stat.us» to bug your friends with what you are eating right now. Even stupid ideas have the potential to grow into something interesting and, eventually, big.

Make it for Yourself

It is supercooled to help the elderly in Myanmar or to find a solution for ocean plastic in the pacific, no questions asked. Getting motivated to start projects like these though is much harder. If you are looking for a reason to build your side hustle, build something that you can benefit from. Create a tool or framework or platform or thing that you want to have, that you will be using and that helps you in your daily life. Make yourself the target audience for your project first – then think about how others can benefit from it as well.

80/20

Done is better than perfect. The Pareto principle states that 80% of the outcome is generated in 20% of the work time, while the last 20% take up around 80% of the time. The Pareto principle can help you focus on getting these 80% out. Don’t get lost in the details or polish of things – there’s always time for that later!

Now stop reading this article and start now.

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