A side hustle doesn't just have to be for the money, or for Github whuffie that hopefully helps with the next job search. It can also help you at the your current stifling day job that you dream of escaping when your side hustle takes off.

I'm an entrepreneur, but not (yet) a particularly successful one. I've had some success selling "starter sites" on Flippa, usually less than a hundred dollars a month. My current project is a service that makes it easy to send validation emails directly from javascript in the browser, though it doesn't (yet!) generate any revenue.

I also have a day job, which is great because I like living indoors and having a place to keep my collection of state quarters. I'm an enlisted man in an army of office drones at a not particularly exciting tech company, doing mainly non-technical, not particularly exciting work. It's not glamorous, but they treat me decently in the scheme of things.

But like all jobs, it is fundamentally a soul-suck. There are pronouncements. There are deadlines. There are pronouncements cancelling deadlines, and deadlines relating to upcoming pronouncement audits. Rarely do I have a totally clear picture of what is expected of me, what kind of corporate shakeup is on the other side of the All-Star break, or what positions above me are currently locked in a Machiavellian opera about musical chairs (Machiavelli is mainly known for writing self-help books for scheming backstabbers, but his operas aren't half bad).

In such an environment, a proper spring cleaning of the hatrack between your shoulder blades isn't just nice, it's necessary. You can't go on sleeping on the pile of mildewed anxiety and unfulfilled dreams that has enveloped your bed. It just isn't sanitary. We all know it. What we don't know is where to get the energy to make a change.

Where does one find the huevos to speak up at the next semi-hemi-demi-quarterly planning meeting for an urgent-but-dragging, anticipated-but-unpopular, failed-but-not-yet-cancelled Corporate Initiative and say stuff like

"Actually, ma'am, I think these action items are just a waste of time. They're going to take me most of a week, during which I will be neglecting my actual job, which would be fine if it were valuable to the company, but it just isn't. May I suggest an alternate plan, which will be much less wasteful of my and everyone else's time, and which may actually be of use to someone, possibly even you?"

The answer is that you'll never get that kind of confidence by driving into work in your 2009 econo-box, keeping your head down, and stressing about losing your boots in the next round of reorganization. You have to bring it with you, and most people don't, won't, or can't. That's why there are semi-hemi-demi-quarterly planning meetings: everybody else is sleeping in their own metaphorical pile of filth too, except sometimes the executives, whom I've been led to believe get their jollies doing things like playing handball, discussing how hard it is to find good help, and using "vacation" as a verb. Most likely, these options aren't open to you, because you are the help.

This is where your side hustle comes in.

When you open Google Analytics with your oatmeal at breakfast, or look at open rates on your most recent marketing email on the can in between "check-ins" with people whose job titles you don't know, you're not merely laying up for yourself more treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt. We know that's a losing game anyway. No, you're laying down a foundation of good vibes and confidence. You built something, and people seem to like it. If you pull up the Stripe app on your phone while chewing your turkey sandwich in the break room, and see a new sale ring up in front of your eyes, you know they like it, because they just proved it by giving their credit card number to a stranger on the internet.

Those customers are telling you something that you haven't heard very much since you reached you started wearing long pants:

And even if your revenue barely covers your costs, or you've done the math and you're paying yourself less than an apprentice organ grinder, it gives you the confidence you need to stand up, even a little bit, against at least some of the neverending barrage of noise at work. With the noise quelled, even for a moment, you will be more free to find value for your organization. This is, in my experience, a rare trait, and one that tends help people hang on through a few more rounds of musical Vice Presidents than average.