Not long ago, Jerrica Long literally hit a wall.
THE Give your green light The founder and storytelling expert spent 15 to 18 hours a day in Hollywood, juggling jobs from assistant to showrunner. Routine caught up with her. She was so exhausted that one night she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car into a wall.
After that, she knew something had to give.
“I left the industry for a while and knew I couldn’t operate that way anymore,” Long says. “I gave my body a break for about six months and came back knowing exactly what kind of work I wanted to do – and how to make it sustainable. »
Her story may seem extreme, but such burnout is the rule, not the exception. Most scammers don’t wreck their cars, but many hit their own version of the wall. A SideHustles.com survey found that 67% of people with second incomes feel burned out, while DollarSprout’s 2024 survey Secondary Activities Report shows that nearly 70% of Americans now have a side hustle, most of whom rely on that income.
It’s easy to see how this happens. Side hustles often mean working solo, with no benefits or safety net, just long nights on top of a full-time job. The overtime, the uncertainty, the mental load: it all adds up.
So where does this leave us?
The lifespan of a secondary activity
Most secondary activities don’t crash and burn like Jerrica did. Instead, they slowly disappear, often without the person realizing it.
It’s difficult to find reliable data on the exact duration of most side hustles, but SideHustles.com’s report also found that 18% of respondents felt more exhausted from their side hustles than from their main job. Nearly half said unstable or irregular income made the situation worse.
In other words, the work that was supposed to create freedom may start to look like other work.
Stephanie High, performance psychology practitioner and trauma-informed educator at Kaizen catalystsays many high-achieving scammers approach him after putting themselves on the brink. Burnout doesn’t always come with a crisis, she notes. Sometimes this manifests itself in subtle changes: decision fatigue, emotional flatness, loss of motivation, or resentment toward the work they used to love.
“A common pitfall I see is that people treat their side hustle as a passion project, but manage it like a second full-time job, often without the systems, rest, or boundaries they expect from a traditional role,” she explains. “The emotional charge adds up quickly when you’re also managing visibility, customer relationships and constant reinvention. »
For many, this emotional weight slowly increases. What starts as an excitement turns into an obligation, almost without them noticing.
Gemma Eves — wellness expert and founder of NeuroMassage — felt this shift firsthand while juggling a busy massage clinic and creating an online wellness school. What started as a creative outlet eventually began to exhaust him.
“Burnout didn’t hit me like an accident. It crept in,” she recalls. “I felt guilty for not doing enough, even when I was devastated. I continued to ignore the signs, telling myself it was just a tough week, until I realized I was emotionally flat, physically exhausted, and starting to resent the work I loved.”
By the time she recognized him, it was already empty. Looking back, Eves says she even regretted starting the wellness platform that once inspired her.
Related: 8 Tips for Balancing a Side Hustle and Your Full-Time Job
Why we keep going – even when we’re exhausted
If burnout is so common in the side hustle world, why do people continue to do it? The answer is simple: many feel they have no choice.
In fact, an estimated 70% of gig workers survived burnout because they felt the need to. Many face financial pressure to continue earning money or feel they have already invested too much time and energy to stop now.
Some also see burnout as part of the deal. More than 80% of Gen Z and Millennial respondents said they consider this to be normal in side hustle culture. More than half said they coped simply by working through exhaustion.
Still, it begs the question: Should we just accept burnout as the cost of finding extra income? Are passion projects worth it if they start to take a toll on your health or peace of mind?
“People ignore or downplay the signs of burnout, keep pushing, and only realize how deep they are when it’s hard to get out of them,” Eves said. “Many people think that quitting means failing. »
Related: How This AP Built a $10,000/Month Recipe Blog on the Side
How to Avoid Burnout in a Side Hustle
Burnout may be common, but it doesn’t have to end your side hustle. There are practical ways to manage fatigue and even recover if you’re already immersed in it — especially for creators and freelancers who tend to blur the line between work and life.
High, leveraging your expertise in psychology, suggests starting by remembering why you started your side hustle in the first place. Then say no to anything that doesn’t serve that purpose.
“What helps the most isn’t just superficial self-care,” she says. “It’s about rebuilding your relationship with production. That means creating sustainable rhythms – scheduling work around your energy rather than blocks of time, learning to rest without guilt, and separating your self-esteem from consistent productivity.”
For Gemma Eves, recovery came when she finally began putting into practice what she had taught others. After noticing that her heart rate variability improved every time she rested, she redefined what rest meant.
“I had to change my mindset from ‘resting is giving up’ to ‘resting is necessary’,” she says. Small changes made a big difference: limiting your side hustle to one hour a day, relaxing before bed, and allowing yourself some guilt-free downtime.
These little limits helped her regain her energy. Most importantly, they reminded him that a healthy activity is one that you can actually continue to do.
Related: How to Make $10,000 a Month: 15 Scalable Strategies That Work
When to Consider Quitting Your Side Hustle
Gig workers are often revered for their perseverance and tenacity, but these traits come at a price. Scammers don’t always know when to stop.
Burnout catches up with almost all of them, causing fatigue, emotional detachment and lack of performance. Many can combat these symptoms by resting, redefining their boundaries, and restructuring their work habits. Yet sometimes burnout persists and can have disastrous consequences for mental health.
Therapist Gabrielle Juliano-Villani — previously featured on DollarSprout for building a Five-figure Etsy shop selling digital patterns – knows this struggle first-hand. At one point, she was juggling around 15 sources of income. The founder of GJV Council said she began feeling listless while supervising clinicians seeking licensing.
“Apathy was my biggest warning sign,” she says. “I literally didn’t care about anything, I didn’t want to hear what my supervisees had to say, and at many points I would ask myself ‘why does this matter? Just Google it’. (I was) very irritable towards everyone in my life and felt lost and hopeless.
To solve her problems, Juliano-Villani audited her time, writing down all her side hustles, what she thought about them, how much time she spent doing them, and how much money they made. She realized that she felt the most resentment toward her job as a supervisor because it required active participation, did not make much money, and tied her to a schedule. So she stopped.
“Pay attention to what makes you fight or flight (makes you anxious, upset, angry, or frustrated) and notice these patterns,” she says. “It’s your body letting you know that what you’re doing isn’t a good solution. These are probably things that shouldn’t be part of your job or maybe need to be delegated.”
Her advice suggests that walking away doesn’t mean you’ve failed, just that your priorities have changed. Getting started at the right time can allow you to view your business as a productive season of life rather than a project gone wrong.
The purpose of a side hustle is to improve your life, so when it stops contributing to your happiness, you need to make some changes, whether that’s pivoting, taking a break, or switching to a side hustle instead of a side hustle. full-time work model which better supports your long-term well-being.
True victory is not about getting over the wall, but about creating agitation that never pushes you into it.
Related:
