Multiple Income Sources - How To Juggle The Workload
The fragmented nature of the modern economy, the loss of job security and our increasing desire for financial independence, means that one of the best strategies for building a solid financial future is to cultivate multiple sources of income.
Being able to call on more than one revenue stream, gives us safety in numbers; if one stream fluctuates, the impact can be set off against the cushion of the others. Multiple streams also give us a life of increased variety and often the chance to spend time doing something much more to our liking than we might be doing in a full time job.
But if we are just beginning to build multiple streams, how do we allocate our time in order to give them sufficient focus and enough effort to see them through to fruition?
The key disciplines here are planning and focus.
Planning how we allocate time and planning how we use the time allocated are the first areas that must be tightened up in order to maximize our effectiveness.
Let’s say you are trying to start a small offline business in your spare time, which you hope will one day allow you to give up your day job. Simultaneously, you are dabbling with an online business, because you would eventually like to develop a completely passive income to pay for the luxuries and possibly to pass on to your family.
How you divide your time will be dictated by three factors; the hours of your day job, which for the moment are fixed; your need to spend time with your family and the relative short term potential income which you think you can gain from your offline and online businesses.
Let’s slice things up. There is a fixed total of 168 hours in a week. Right now you have no choice but to allocate approximately 40 of those hours to your job. If you sleep a regular eight hours per night, there goes another 56 hours, leaving you with 72 hours to spread between your family and your two projects.
Firstly, you must negotiate with your family. Stress the importance that these plans have to you and how they will benefit them too. Ask for their support, whether with physical help or at the very least with understanding that there will be times when you need to focus on your plans and will not be available to them.
Balance this with an undertaking that when you are with them, you will give them your sole and undivided attention and they should be willing to back you. Let’s say you agree to dedicate 25 hours per week to the family with 4 hours guaranteed every Saturday afternoon to take them out and have some fun.
Lastly take a long hard look at your two projects and decide which one you will give the bulk of your remaining 47 hours. The simplest way is to base your allocation on projected revenue. If you think your offline business is capable of producing five times as much revenue as your online work, in the next few months, then you should divide your time into six equal units. Each unit will be approximately eight hours. Give five of those units to your offline project and one to the web. It’s a harsh split, but a practical one.
Once you’ve decided how your time will be allocated, it is vital to ensure that every minute of those dedicated hours is used to utmost effect. The only way to do this is with effective and daily planning.
Steal an extra half hour each day, by getting up 30 minutes earlier or going to bed half an hour later and use that time to plan the coming day.
Write down the time slots available, fill in what you will be doing in each one, itemize exactly what you plan to achieve and list everything you need to have ready to hand so that you can achieve it. That way, when the appointed time comes, you don’t waste half of it getting ready. The two biggest thieves of time are lack of preparation and procrastination.
Finally, the only task remaining is to take action. Do what you planned and fill your time to the maximum. I wish you luck on your journey to financial independence and multiple income streams.
Hi, my name is Andrew Grant. I hope you enjoyed this article.
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Tags: making money, multiple income, online marketing, starting a business, time management, working from home