How To Use Periodization To Boost Your Side Hustle

The Benefits of Periodization

Using periodization gives you many benefits:

• For example, it improves your performance by allowing you to work harder after a deserved relaxation period.
• It pushes you to learn new skills in the free time you get away from your usual work.
• It helps you avoid the effects of burnout by distancing yourself from your daily life.
• And it makes you avoid accommodation by introducing a variety that forbids you from getting used to your job.

So let’s see how to use periodization over one month to boost your side hustle and content.

Sports and side hustles are very similar. You work on them every day. You train to get better and build new skills. And you compete with other content creators to gather the wider audience possible.

But there is a big difference in how people approach them.

When you start practicing a new sport, you hire a coach that teaches you everything. You will start with the basics, and you will progressively get better. But a side hustle is different.

You usually start it as a passion, and then it grows bigger. It evolves with you as you grow older. And only a few people hire coaches that follow them.

The first phase of the periodization method is about setting up the work. So you will:

• define the best environment for your work,
• pick the activities you want to accomplish,
• and schedule each task.

You must give the right amount of time to each activity without rushing it. Otherwise, you will organize too many tasks and won’t finish them. But scheduling too few is also problematic. So one technique I use to avoid planning too many activities or too few is the double to-do list.

In the setting phase, I always write two lists :

• The first one contains the activities I am sure I can do in the following three weeks.
• The second contains all the tasks I may do if I work at my best and finish everything else early.

So I start working on every activity on my main to-do list. And if I still have time, I start working on everything else.

For the following three weeks, follow the path you scheduled on the first day. But you might have made some optimistic plans.

Activities that should take one day might be longer. So you must work with two objectives:

• First, adjust your plan by analyzing the impact of the change and how much time you gained or lost. If you can anticipate other tasks from the to-do list, do it. Otherwise, fill the remaining time with activities from your second list.
• Second, improve your performance. Track what slows you don’t and what speeds you up. So you will schedule tasks better in the future.

The intensity of the work also matters.

With periodization, you cannot start with the most challenging tasks . Your body comes from a week of complete relaxation. So your mental muscles have to warm up .

In sports, for example, you must warm up your body before each training session. And you have to start even slower if you haven’t worked out for a while. So treat your mind the same and give it time to ramp up. Start slow, and try to peak around the third week .

Trainers designed periodization to allow athletes some time to recover after more than three weeks of intensive work. Therefore, during this period, you can’t produce anything new.

Of course, you can take a few notes if you have a good idea and want to build it in the future. But don’t work on any new idea straightaway.

Also, consume as much content as possible to keep your ideas flowing.

Your curiosity and creativity might take over and produce new ideas to create content and improve your side hustle. So don’t ignore the benefits of this relaxation week.

Periodization helped me boost my side hustle and become a better content creator.

For years, I underestimated the power of taking breaks. And I tricked my mind into thinking I wasn’t working when I was. But with periodization, I structured my productivity and pauses so they never overlap. And it only took me this three-step plan.

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