Make your income separate from your real thing

A real way to stress test your side project, your real thing, the thing you work on and it doesn’t seem like work is to make an income separate to it.

The test is to show whether or not you’d actually keep going with it despite having no financial gain.

It’s working the cafe job to pay the bills, to buy food, to pay rent but writing at night.

It’s cleaning up the sports stadiums but playing music in your free time.

It’s serving the local alcoholics at the liquor store whilst taking photos and making videos on your days off.

If you keep going, despite the lack of readers, the lack of listens, the lack of views, the lack of dollar bills rolling in. You make yourself resistant to any kind of disruption in the future.

Another bonus is when your income is separate from your real thing, you’re more likely to experiment to try things which might not work, even though you might not know it at the time.

The important thing to remember is not to judge how well your work does as you do it. It’s how it holds up over time.

Is it something you (and only you) could look back on and say, “I’m glad I did that”?

Better, is it something you would look back on and say, “I wish I did that”?