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Not the law student

Melanie Pinola

Melanie Pinola

One of the biggest complaints or obstacles people have about starting a side business or moonlighting is they just don't have any free time.

They have full-time jobs, families, school. One person, however, writes how she had all those and earned over $50K last year on the side. This is how she did it.

Liz, a full-time law student who works part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer, just became a parent in November.

With such a busy schedule, you'd think she wouldn't have time or energy to devote to other projects, but she made the $50,000 last year as a blogger, freelance writer, and website optimization consultant and outlined how she did it on Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You to Be Rich site.

The three-step approach involved: taking the time to prepare her day and work, balancing the types of projects she worked on between ones that earned a certain amount and ones that were more risky but had the potential to earn more, and protecting her most productive time (a tip we've mentioned quite a few times).

The whole article is a good read, especially the part about preparing for success by setting up triggers—reminders or cues to get you to do something—and establishing accountability. These help you stay on task and earn more money when you have little time to spare. Liz shared her top three triggers:

Place a Prewritten To Do List Next to My Computer - Each night before going to sleep I make a list of everything I need to accomplish the next day. I leave the list open next to my computer, so it's the first thing I look at each morning when I start work. Doing this triggers me to immediately start working on the listed tasks and not get sidetracked.

Have My Computer Open and On - I used to wait several minutes for my laptop to turn on each morning. While waiting, I would read emails on my phone and get distracted from that morning's priority tasks. Now, I leave my computer on as a trigger to get right to work.

Remove "Bad" Triggers - Because triggers cue you to do something, it's critical to remove triggers that cue you to start the wrong task. Now, as a nightly ritual I remove anything from my workspace that would trigger me to start working on the wrong task.

For accountability, she not only set deadlines, she invested in services and hired independent contractors so she was held accountable to the projects she was working on.

Check out the article for more strategies and ways to find more time in your busy week.

With more careful time management, you can be on your way to earning side income and more freedom. $50K more a year is an inspiration, at least.