Burnout by 9-5 job, where do you go from here?

“You’ve been putting in your 40 hours per week at the job for the past couple of years. The work is stable, and pay is enough to cover all your bills – Where do you go from here?”

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I hear you all

If you dread going to work every morning, I hear you. You went on a vacation and it’s the last day; you wish to stay an extra day but can’t skip work – I hear you too.

The 2-day weekend is not enough. It feels like a day job is holding you back from all the things you want to do.

You want to spend time with your kids, spouse and family, but you can’t because you have an important meeting to attend.

You can’t move to a different state because you are location bound by your 9 to 5 job. You are stuck in traffic on your commute most of the time. You listening to your playlist and yelling at the reckless driver. You like your job, but isn’t there a better way?

It’s not only about the money. It’s about time, flexibility, and freedom.

It’s about being able to do what you want and when you want it.

It’s about being able to be where you want to be and how you want to be.

We can do 9-5 grind but how long? Will it ever stop? What if I can’t perform the work in my day job? How will the survival be if I don’t earn any income from the job? How do I enjoy what I do and support my family at the same time?

9 to 5 jobs: Looking at the Brighter Side

I do not hate 9 to 5 jobs and I don’t want you to quit your 9-5 job right away either. I enjoy my day job. I would not have the luxury of starting a blog if it was not for my day job. My job supports me and my family and supports my journey of creating a side income. Even though it limits me from doing a lot of things, it gives a freedom to explore more options.

1. Structured Life is not a Bad Thing

The 40 hours work week doing 8 hours per day and 5 days a week is a structured life.

You already know what you’ll be doing during this 8 hour every weekday thus, you can schedule your life around it. Even though your day job takes most of your hours, it’s not the end. You still have plenty of time after work to enjoy the things you love.

A structured life is better than an irregular schedule. You don’t want to answer calls in the middle of your personal life.

2. Your Day Job Pays the Bill

Everybody must pay their bills. On top of this, there are costs of housing, groceries, and transportations. None of these are going away unless you stop living. But the prices go up every year.

The 9-5 job provides a consistent income in the form of a paycheck. Until your business can support you, your day job will keep you going.

3. You’ve Access to Training And Self-improvement

Almost all companies provide training for their employees. The workplace promotes growth and improvement. It provides services like Employee Assistance and Wellness Programs for free of cost. They provide you with all the tools you need to perform your job. They enhance your innovation and creativity. You’ll learn teamwork, leadership, communication, and managerial skills.

Why do Most of Us Want an Escape From 9-5 Jobs?

Regular working hour job was created during the industrial age. Things have changed so much. Most of us want to break free of the traditional work concept because it has limitations. Breaking free from a 9-5 job does not necessarily mean to stop working. People will always need some source of income to support their lifestyle (living). 9-5 job provides income, but people want more!

1. Freedom From Location Bound

The traditional regular working hour jobs need you to come to the office every weekday and put in your 8 hours. Nowadays, the concept of telecommuting is accepted by many firms. Remote working is becoming new normal nowadays. Yet, some organizations still want their employees to come to the office and perform their duties.

The freedom from location bound maximizes one’s savings potential. The cost of commuting (vehicle maintenance, time to travel, and parking) is reduced. It increases productivity by reducing stress related to travel.

2. Flexibility

Working a 9 to 5 job locks your everyday 8-hour period. Your work is your priority and you’ll have to schedule everything around it. Things do not always happen outside of the 8-hour work period. Thus, people want flexibility.

I want to be able to take off and not work for a day or two or even a week if there are pressing events happening in my life. I’m sure everyone would like that too.

3. Multiple streams of income

People can make a living with one source of income.

But can you rely on only one source of income?

COVID-19 Pandemic has taught us a great lesson. There is no such thing called job security. The market can crash any time. Companies can go bankrupt and start laying employees without warning. Thus, you need multiple sources of income.

Your job provides living, but only your profits make you rich. If you want to be rich and enjoy all the things life has to offer then, you are other sources of income beside your day job. Day job is a base and you’ve to build up from there.

The multiple sources of income help you move towards financial freedom.

Where do you go from here?

You’ve done 9 to 5 for a while and are ready to move to the next level.

Where do you go from here?

I’ll tell you exactly where to go to advance to next level.

The fact that you’ve made all this way means you’re eager to learn and take the leap. You’ve made your mind. You want something from this life and are tired of just living. You’re ready to make changes in your life.

1. Read books

People learn from their experience. Life is the greatest teacher. Your exposure to life’s situation helps you learn valuable lessons every day. We must accept them and get most out of it.

It’s not possible to learn everything through personal experience. Therefore, it is recommended to read books. Books are great source of writers’ experiences. Every book will have a valuable lesson you can implement in your life.

I would not suggest reading 100 books but let’s start with reading one book. Get as much information as you can from the book and apply it.

Life is busy and you have important things to do.

The one of the top excuses for not reading a book is – “I don’t have time to read books”.

There are alternative ways to sitting down and reading a physical book. Everything is digital now. You can access books from anywhere you want. You can listen to podcast, audio books or webinars.

Most of the audiobooks are freely available in YouTube. If you don’t like Ads, you can use my trick to save up to 80% on YouTube Premium subscription.

If you can’t complete the book in one sitting, you can listen to the book summary to the very least. I started with listening book summary for inspiration.

You can find many YouTube Channels related to book summary in different languages. “The Swedish Investor”, Readers Book Club” and “Money Audibles” are some of the good YouTube Channels. I’m also keep my eye on an emerging YouTube Book Summary Channel “Gyan Bhandar”. You can learn so much from the new comers.

2. Learn about investing

Investing is the basic and simple way of making your money grow. You should always invest a portion of your earned income if you want to make it grow. The money saved in the fixed deposit does not grow much. The money will lose its value due to inflation. Therefore, it is always a good idea to invest money immediately after it’s earned. By investing, you are putting your money to work.

You need to learn the basics of investing before jumping into the world of investing. Lean about the investment products, techniques and laws of investing. Read some of my articles on investing below.

Investing is not risk free. An investor needs to learn how to manage risk. They need to understand position sizing based on the risk tolerance. They also need to be familiar with the tax implication and tax write-offs.

3. Save money when you can

I love saving money. I have a philosophy that I should not pay full price (inflated) for any product or service. There are millions of ways to save money and I want to find them and use them to get discounts.

That does not mean I’m cheap. 😊

I do not mind paying full price for anything that is worth. Also, I do not bargain for anything less than $10. It is a waste of time and effort. I’m talking about cutting the cost by half.

We should always try to save money whenever we can. The biggest place where we should always look for saving money is for the bills that is reoccurring. The examples are internet bills, software subscriptions and any big purchases.

Read my guide on saving money to learn tips and tricks I used to get the best deal.

4. Put your skills to work (generate income)

We all have some sort of skills. If we are old enough to make our own living, gone through school (this is not even necessary) and have a nag to learn new things then we have skills. It might take a while to find our own skill that can generate income, but we all have some kind of up skills. These skills are perfect for an income generating side hustle.

To find your skills, think deeply about what you are most passionate about. Find the things that people come to you for help with. Find things that you enjoy doing and don’t mind learning more about.

Do you know a lot of technology, gardening, history, geography, or anything? Do you how to carve? Are you good with excel, Word or any other software? Are you excited to talk about personal finance?

Once you’ve determined your skills and area of interest, put them to work. You can monetize almost every niche. There is a demand for every skill. The only different is some are highly profitable, and some are not (you’ll still make money).

Read my articles on how to get started with monetizing your skills.

5. Test, review, refine and revise your approach

When you are trying to gather information, do it by testing methods that have been proven to work by others. Do not just assume that your idea will work without proof. After you have launched your product, you can start gathering valuable information from customers. This will show what works and what does not.

Once you have gathered information, you can adjust your approach and retarget to the audience you tested with. Next time, your product will be better than your first try. After that, just rinse and repeat.

The best part of working on a 9-5 job is that it provides a foundation for your other venture. It help support other ideas by supplying consistent cash flow.

We all need more than one source of income. I’m targeting to have at least 5 sources of income. And make these sources of income as much passive as you can. You need to start slow and you’ll eventually get there. Please feel free to comment and subscribe to our community for valuable information to your personal finance journey.