Featured Contributor
Daniella Flores is a former software engineer and founder of the two-time award-winning money, career, & side hustle resource platform I Like to Dabble, a resource for LGBTQ+ & neurodivergent folks. They started their business as a creative outlet between back-to-back layoffs and grew it on the side of their full-time job to over 100,000 monthly users. Daniella Flores, founder of I Like To Dabble, says that if you want to layer in a side hustle on top of a 9-to-5 job, you should strongly consider a pivot to permanent work-from-home opportunities or other income streams.
I’ve been working remotely for the past 11 years. It’s one of the reasons I was able to build a successful business on the side of my 9 to 5 job — a business that eventually helped me leave corporate America.
Starting a side hustle or a portfolio career takes time and energy, including mental energy, which is extremely difficult to scrape together when you’re spending hours a day commuting back and forth to a job.
I don’t care what inspirational Instagram post made you believe otherwise: you and Beyonce don’t have the same 24 hours a day to work with. Her time and your time are different. Your life and her life are different. It isn’t your fault that you don’t have enough time or energy to get through your day. Your commute is partially to blame, along with possible prolonged burnout from the last two years of living in a global pandemic.
Remote work is the perfect way to jumpstart your corporate escape plan. Here’s why it matters — and how to create a resumé that will make you absolutely irresistible to recruiters looking to offer awesome, work-from-anywhere jobs. Why Remote Work Is a Gold Mine for Both Your Mind and Your Money
Remote work is so much better for our mental health, our wallet, and our lives. It gives us more freedom to live more of a life outside of work and have actual balance. For me, remote work has given me the space to build something financially meaningful of my own outside of work while also exploring myself and my skills more deeply.
For queer and trans people, remote work is one of the best employment benefits we have. It grants us the freedom to be our true selves when working and building multiple income streams without feeling unsafe around homophobic or transphobic coworkers. At the corporate level, remote work is a form of financial empowerment.
This is something every worker should have access to in some capacity, whether it be hybrid work, location-independent work, or fully remote work, even for positions that have in-person requirements, such as construction, nursing, and banking.
Imagine if construction project managers could work remotely, nurses could work remotely as clinical reviewers, and bankers could work remotely for online banks. It’s already happening, and many of these workers are pivoting to remote work in ways that make the most sense for them and what they want next in their careers.
Gone are the days of coming to the office early, staying late, taking abuse from customers, and overperforming time and time again in hopes of a promotion. People are starting to value work/life balance over burning themselves out for so little in return, as evidenced in the recent rise of “ quiet quitting ”. You Are So Much More than Your Job
And remote work opens up that self-exploration for us. Plus, it saves you a ton of money. When commuting to an office every day, you spend more on gas, clothes, food, and the “Keeping up with the Joneses” game that many corporate offices like to perpetuate in their culture.
There are certainly downsides to remote work. One detail I struggled with was being able to separate my home life and work life during work hours. I found that work and life began to bleed together. This introduced a whole new type of burnout to my life that made me moody and exhausted, even though there were days I didn’t even leave my neighborhood. This experience also prompted me to get into therapy and learn that, on top of having ADHD and PTSD, I was also bipolar.
Remote work wasn’t the reason for the state of my mental health. It’s what gave me the space to notice what was happening inside me, do something about it, and tweak my lifestyle in ways that worked better for me. This included switching up the scenery daily, working from different locations, and working […]
source Remote Work can Supercharge a Side Hustle. Here’s How I Find the Best Jobs and Gigs Online