Side hustles: Classic or Dud?

Classic when optional, dud when required to cover your basic survival requirements

basically IMO, if you have a passion project and the luxury of having the ability to pursue it, that is awesome, but if you need to work multiple jobs to make enough money to survive, that is horrendously broken

Couldn't agree more.

agreed

basically if you get paid a little bit to do something you'd do otherwise, it's great

but when my now ex was out of work and i went straight from an 8 hour office day in downtown mpls to driving lyft until midnight a few nights a week, i was in a dark place

I think you nailed it in the opening post, DJP, not much more to say.

Classic when optional, dud when required to cover your basic survival requirements

this seems like all work tbh

Yeah, this is why I stopped believing/saying the phrase "money can't buy you happiness"; like sure, you cannot directly exchange money for happiness but having money frees up SO MUCH of your time to allow you the space to explore things that make you happy, it's facile to pretend otherwise.

my "side hustle" is online poker which is really fun when you don't need the money and incredibly frustrating and agonizing when you do

Something about the word "hustle" bugs me; it's like you've got a soccer coach yelling at you to run faster.

I read an article once about money's relationship to happiness (this was a while ago so don't quote me - and the dollar figure was I think a general average for the entire U.S. so obviously the number might be higher or lower depending on where you live etc)

but basically said that happiness/contentment actually did rise along with higher income, up to around $85,000 a year for a single person, then it plateaus and rises slightly but as much

i guess it was basically like getting to a point where you don't worry about money day to day and can do the things you want to do, but, say, being a billionaire vs. a millionaire doesn't have much of an effect

Yeah, this is why I stopped believing/saying the phrase "money can't buy you happiness"; like sure, you cannot directly exchange money for happiness but having money frees up SO MUCH of your time to allow you the space to explore things that make you happy, it's facile to pretend otherwise.

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP)

otm

there was research a while back (i think from princeton? but there are probably others which are more recent or more cited) which found that there is a significant correlation between money and happiness - but only up to $75K annual income. money "buys happiness" to the point that it buys you basic food, shelter, and some stability. after that those basic needs are met, money buys something, but it's not happiness

probably coke

Still trying to figure out why the phrase irritates me so much. There's something far too congratulatory about it; it's the kind of language that calls to mind MLM schemes. It seems to imply that making a living wage isn't a right or a reasonable expectation but rather a game that you win by hustling faster and more effectively than everyone else.

undoubtedly classic if it's a passion project that can also earn some income. i had side hustles through college and most of my working life until i started working full time for myself, but they were always out of necessity. generally dud.

feels like in the present moment that the side hustle-ization of so much of the economy is a pretty good way to sabotage any kind of worker organizing. v much dud.

though hey maybe in the long run it could have the unintended consequence of getting more folks on board with stuff like true universal healthcare..? <- that's me doing positivity

I saw some essay a while back - I can't remember from where - but it said that you definitely do get happier as your money goes up, but only up to like $65,000, after that it's diminishing returns

ive gotta assume the complicating factor at the upper end of those studies is work, right? like not so much that the additional money doesnt buy extra happiness, but the the amount of work/stress involved in whatever jobs correlate with those higher incomes generates too much unhappiness

although i guess as income goes up you get closer to "able to retire early" territory, which surely must generate more total happiness over the span of a lifetime, if not during the working years

the amount of work/stress involved in whatever jobs correlate with those higher incomes generates too much unhappiness

i'm sure at least some people are affected by that. but in general, i don't think it's correct that higher income = harder work/more stress. in my experience, the more tedious a job is, especially if it's psychologically or physically draining, the less it pays. and not having enough money to pay the bills, even though you're destroying your back to try to make enough money, causes a lot of stress.

and on the other side, at least in office/business jobs, the higher up the chain you go, the less you have to interact with the actual job, and the more abstract the job becomes. it may cause stress, but it's a different kind of stress.

i think the lack of correlation between money/happiness (at above-average income levels, after one has taken care of their basic needs), comes from something real, which is that unless you're an extremely shallow person, the continuing purchase of more and more objects is not going to make you happy, because happiness comes from a mystery jar in a forgotten basement, or somewhere similar, not from objects

the amount of work/stress involved in whatever jobs correlate with those higher incomes generates too much unhappiness

no job has been as stressful as working in the kitchen at a sports bar by the university of minnesota and handling a pre-hockey game rush

i still wake up from anxiety dreams about working in restaurants, and the last time i worked in one might have been 15 years ago

I do think that if you are a person of conscience, the stress of being responsible for a department/company that has 10K plus people in it and knowing your decisions will have a direct material impact on that many people is super stressful in a manner few of us would recognize.

I do think that if you are a person of conscience, the stress of being responsible for a department/company that has 10K plus people in it and knowing your decisions will have a direct material impact on that many people is super stressful in a manner few of us would recognize.

Yeah, but is it possible to get to that position while being/remaining a person of conscience? The more bosses I deal with, the more I doubt it.

I went from working for a big company to consulting to working for a small company, but keeping the consulting thing ticking over, picking up little jobs here and there.

It’s good because it keeps me involved in things (energy storage and solar) that I’m not really doing a lot of in my main work (electric vehicles), and a lot of the work is doing small expert jobs for friends. I’ve now got together with a few other people to form a company and share the work around, it’s working well because I’m getting more of these side jobs than I can handle, and some the people of the others are on reduced hours.

It’s also something of a parachute if the current job doesn’t last and if it takes off it can turn into a main hustle.

To Lily’s point - it may just be a semantic distinction.

I do remember the moment when “side hustle” entered the lexicon and kind of examining that phrase, and realizing that when taken literally it sort of applied to me personally in terms of my freelance writing vs whatever my day job was at that point (technical writing).

(This was maybe 2008 or 2009.)

But I just always thought of freelance as “freelance”, not hustling as in something that was strenuous or taxing or loathe some. It was still fun in the sense that I’d do it all the time - far more than I’m moved to do now! - and there’d be the benefit of extra money, even though (I was married then) we sure as hell needed the money. The money was like a bonus, a cherry on top.

(Maybe not entered the lexicon at that point but general use shot up.)

i didnt mean to say that jobs get harder as pay goes up, no question that poverty lowers life expectancy due to stress depression & sheer physical toil.

Yeah, but is it possible to get to that position while being/remaining a person of conscience?

^ this is kind of more what i was thinking. like, im lucky enough to make a middle class living and am the happiest ive ever been, as i've made more money my jobs have gotten "easier" in most senses. but from here, it seems clear that things i would have to do to make more money would make me more unhappy than the extra money would make me happy. obviously not that the work itself would be harder than the brutal toil of making ends meet on $8/hr in america. but i would certainly have to become a version of myself that i would hate, which would surely generate new levels of unhappiness, depression, and stress that i dont currently have

I do think that if you are a person of conscience, the stress of being responsible for a department/company that has 10K plus people in it and knowing your decisions will have a direct material impact on that many people is super stressful in a manner few of us would recognize.

my dad had a midlevel middle class office job for most of his career, seemed to have a healthy general view that work was important but also sucks, extremely nice and friendly and goodhearted. once i asked him why he never got higher in his career and he confided that at one point he got promoted to a position where he was overseeing a team of 25-30 people, and after a certain point he asked for his old job back, said he could never stop thinking about his work and the people under him, and was up every night sweating over the responsibility of knowing good people under him would be negatively impacted if he took his eye off the ball - or at least thats how he saw it. made a huge impression on me when i heard that from him.

Not dissimilar to something that happened with my sis, in a different context. She felt it was a lot of extra stress with little extra compensation for it.

i wonder if there's ever been a study done comparing income and relative happiness. i feel like there's probably a strong positive relationship between the two up to a point, say maybe 95k, but then after that i bet the happiness just doesn't increase much overall. anyone remember seeing anything like this?

there was research a while back (i think from princeton? but there are probably others which are more recent or more cited) which found that there is a significant correlation between money and happiness - but only up to $75K annual income. money "buys happiness" to the point that it buys you basic food, shelter, and some stability. after that those basic needs are met, money buys something, but it's not happiness

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, February 2, 2021 1:50 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i am willing to participate in a study - if anyone wants to pay me and additional $150k/yr i am willing to check in after 20 years and reveal if it made me happier

hmmm sounds like participating in studies could be a good side hustle

participating in studies where people pay me to see how it affects my happiness, that is

I was an adjunct for years and made very little money, certainly didn't make as much as my labor was worth, but was able to skate along because I lived in a cabin with no running water and was young and in relatively good health. The schedule let me take gym classes with my tuition waiver and go swimming and skiing in the middle of the day, and the work was rewarding. I couldn't afford to travel or save, and I was stuck in Fairbanks, Alaska, but other than that it was a fairly healthy and balanced life.

Then I decided I needed job security - which I really did; enrollment was dropping and they were finding excuses to pay us less for the same amount of work - and became a public school teacher in Seattle. My pay instantly quadrupled but so did the amount of work I was doing; I went from working about 2/3 of full time to working double-time. The switch to a normal professional salary felt like a sudden windfall, but I had no time to enjoy it; I mostly just spent it on takeout because I was too tired to cook.

If there is some sweet spot of teaching where you can make a living without running yourself into the ground, I haven't found it yet.

i used to see library jobs posted at the university of alaska fairbanks and they always seemed to be trying hard to recruit candidates. i was always curious about what that might be like and now i have some kind of idea, i guess. the professional life of teachers in the u.s. is criminal. i wonder if we'll ever see teachers fairly compensated and given realistic workloads. the whole thrust of this thread is a strong argument for ubi imo. i saw some tweet from someone in a financial aid office saying basically that there isn't a strong argument for liberal arts education at all (i.e. it's a grift) without ubi.

hmmm sounds like participating in studies could be a good side hustle

― Joses Chrust (map), Tuesday, February 2, 2021 4:02 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i participated in studies for a while, all pretty innocuous stuff. listening to a series of pairs of monosyllabic sounds in what i assume was mandarin, pressing a button whenever the pairs seemed identical to me for half an hour. focusing my eyes on certain things on a screen while wearing electrodes on my head. playing some weird basic video game thing while being filmed. they generally paid about $10 canadian an hour but if you were lucky you could get $20 for 2 hours and the session wouldn't take that long. i was in between work permits at the time.

i am just about on the cusp of needing a side-hustle. my wife is studying and only working a little, i don't make much money. we get by but i don't feel comfortable just getting by, would like to have some savings and whatnot. but im tired enough on 35 hours of work a week as it is, ho hum

i hate that feeling. i'm kind of there too. plateaued out and living pretty close to each paycheck. it's been no better than that for nigh on ten years, though it's also been a lot worse.

the op pretty much summed it up, as far as i can tell

i feel like we're living in weird times, as there seems to be massive unemployment, but the few who are employed (myself included) have so much work and it's almost like it's never been this good (benefits, pay, work-life balance, etc.)

playing the stock market has been kind of hilarious, and it's not really a side hustle

i try to further my tech knowledge on the side by taking a course here and there and building projects on the weekends or on my spare time. there are times when work pays for all that stuff, and i have pet projects that i try to somehow apply to work so i can kill two birds with one stone

(is this meant to be on ILE not ILM?)