Wikipedia defines “Moonlighting” as: To work at a secondary job, usually in the evening or during the night, often secretly, so that one doesn’t have to pay tax on the extra money earned. This is still popular but there’s a new trend emerging which I read on the book Rework (I’ll review this soon) – “Daylighting“. Instead of working during the night some opt to work secondary jobs while they are still on the clock for their primary job. During the downtime in the office you can actually use that period to work on outside projects. I experienced this myself when I was still working for the my last two employers and I wanted to share some insights in this entry.
For the purposes of this entry I’ll stick to the Pros and Cons of Daylighting.
PROS
- You earn more money – The biggest advantage of having a sideline is that you’re able to generate more income based on effort. The problem with corporate life is that you’re limited to your monthly salary and whatever bonuses come your way. By offering your services on the side you can drastically increase your income especially if you’re offering a premium skill like graphic design or programming.
- You build a bigger network – By going out and meeting new clients you are expanding your network. The bigger your sphere of influence is, the bigger potential there is for business.
- You’re potentially setting up your own business – After sometime you’ll be able to figure out and know if your sideline is good enough to actually sustain you and your family. There was a point in time when my income from Daylighting was almost double what I was getting from my day job. If your business model works then you’ve just unlocked the door to being an entrepreneur.
CONS
- Your attention is split – this is the most dangerous thing with Daylighting. The quality of work for both your sideline and your main job will never be at it’s best. Eventually you will really have to decide whether you’ll stop daylighting to focus on your main job or you’ll resign and go entrepreneur.
- Your brain will be on overdrive – Another risk is that you’ll tire yourself too much. Your brain will constantly be working on several projects at the same time. Since you can’t finish everything during the day for both jobs you’ll probably bring home work for both your day job and your sideline at home. There’s a tendency to become more irritable when this happens because every human being needs rest.
Transitioning Daylighting to a Business
Deciding on whether to resign or stay in corporate was a huge decision for me. There were a lot of factors involved. The first is the amount of money you earn from yours sideline. Always remember that business can be unpredictable. You maybe earning twice your salary this month but there’s a chance you’ll earn 0 the next month. Look into the sustainability of your business and check your pipeline of clients.
I got the best advice from Randell Tiongson and Chinkee Tan. They both advised me to save up a security fund first and then take the plunge. The security fund is 6 months worth of my monthly expenses. This means that I can live without a job or any income for 6 months. I worked hard on raising this but it was worth it. Without worrying about what to eat tomorrow I was able to really pour all of my energies into building my sideline into a real business.
Note that I am not 100% encouraging everyone to do Daylighting. It really is a bit unfair for your employer especially if the quality of work you have in your day job starts to suffer drastically. Only get into this if you have superb time management skills and you can still afford to burn time when you get home.
So anyone here has experience Daylighting? If you do, please share below in the comments section for the benefit of the NMP community.
I am actually shocked that people are doing this on the job. It is not just a “bit” unfair but really unfair for the employer, in my opinion. For example, if I plan to hire someone for 8 hours worth of work, only to find out he is working on another task for 6 hours of that, it’s quite unethical.
Either the employee should look for additional tasks or hone his skills related to what he was hired for.
This would be a nice topic to bring up to an HR consultant.
I’m not one so all of these are just my thoughts.
I think this is more common for professions that involve creative work like writing and design.
I agree. Creative work FTW!
Yeah, it does sound unfair. I guess the best type of daylighting is when you’re doing work on the side that serves as training for your day job.
An example of this is working as a web designer or programmer in a day job and working on your own website in your spare time.
This not only gives you extra income when the project is complete, but also the extra practice to help you do better in your day job. :p
Like what I said above, I have a lot of web designer/developer friends who do this kind of thing, lol.
you can do it if you get your main job done early, but if you procastinate and put more time and effort into the 2nd job then you should get fired
Ditto! Either get fired or resign.
I think it’s equally important to note that when you do decide to go into a sideline project, make sure that it’s not equally as time consuming as your main job and not directly competing with the services of the company you work for (example: if you’re in a design studio handling a Globe Telecom account, it pretty much is discrediting to your name if you accept a design sideline for Smart).
As Carlo mentioned above, the “Daylighterz” (lolz–parang movie lang) have a safe environment to test their interest/skills outside the actual workplace. I’m pretty guilty of this but I make it a point that I only attend to these matters during my break time. As far as I’m concerned the company is paying me for my 8-hours work…and not on my 1 hour break.
Great points Colin! Pwede na nga title ng movie yung “Daylighterz”, hahaha!
I admit that I’m one of those “daylighters.” A few years ago I took on a second job so I could, as Fleire and Joel have said, hone skills that would help in my primary job. Plus some extra cash wouldn’t hurt.
For the first few months, I worked on this other project after office hours and on weekends. But because the project was no new, I ended up working late and spending most of my free time on this other job. I realized it wasn’t worth it: I was doing so much for so little, and working such long hours was taking a toll on me.
Now I spend a fairly large amount of time on this part-time job at my primarily workplace, since the former expects me to work as if I were a regular employee. Further complicating the matter is having to work with the same people at both jobs…
Hi Danielle,
I think you have to strike a balance with daylighting and your primary job. The worst thing that can happen is that you churn out low quality work for both and you end up losing both your main job and your sideline clients. I suggest you drop one if you’re having a hard time already.