5 ms·

OPs friend Kevin has it right. Make a hobby out of something that you cannot even fathom how to make money out of. Sports is ideal since you will obviously be s

OPs friend Kevin has it right. Make a hobby out of something that you cannot even fathom how to make money out of. Sports is ideal since you will obviously be super bad compared to the worst guy that makes money of it. My old coach is now World Champion in the Duathlon. The money she makes off that would not make my cut for a new dev project. Duathlon is thus a very safe choice for a hobby uncontaminated by monetary concerns. But for most of us the triathlon or running is safe. The risk of becoming world champion are overstated.

Klathmon 8y ago
For some the money is just a symptom, not the problem. I for instance try to "optimize" things. I overdo stuff, and eventually burn out of it. It doesn't matter if I can make money from it, I'll latch on to just about anything and my brain will start working overtime to think of anything and everything to be able to get better at it, until I no longer want anything to do with it. It's happened with jobs, it's happened with videogames, it's happened with things like building computers or working with microcontrollers. It's a personality trait of mine, and taking the symptom away (do things that can't make money, do things that don't have any kind of "scoring") doesn't solve the problem, it just changes it. And when I did end up trying to find hobbies that had no way of "scoring", nothing to get better at, nothing to improve on, I found myself pretty depressed. It was something I needed to work on internally, something I needed to talk with a therapist about and learn to manage. And at this point in my life, I feel I have a much better handle on it. But simply picking hobbies that can't become a source of income didn't change anything for me, it just meant that I got less benefit from overdoing it.
cableshaft 8y ago
For me it's board game design. It would be nice to make serious money off of it, and it is possible, but most people I know, even with successful games, aren't making enough to quit their day jobs (that pay a lot less than software dev). Hell, one guy I know had a game you could buy at Barnes and Noble he worked on in his spare time for two years, and the publisher considered to be one of their more successful titles, earn only $10k in royalties (which he split 50/50 with a codesigner), so he only got $5k out of it. I could take a simple dev job and make that in a week of work. And it's a very collaborative field, so I get to meet a lot of people in the industry just by going to conventions and offering to playtest their games or help publishers demo their games to potential customers.
- mrfusion 8y ago
  Hey I had an idea for a board game. Maybe worth a chat sometime? Think settlers of catan but in an office setting.
- rabidrat 8y ago
  Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan) still works as an engineer.

Klathmon 8y ago

For some the money is just a symptom, not the problem. I for instance try to "optimize" things. I overdo stuff, and eventually burn out of it. It doesn't matter if I can make money from it, I'll latch on to just about anything and my brain will start working overtime to think of anything and everything to be able to get better at it, until I no longer want anything to do with it. It's happened with jobs, it's happened with videogames, it's happened with things like building computers or working with microcontrollers. It's a personality trait of mine, and taking the symptom away (do things that can't make money, do things that don't have any kind of "scoring") doesn't solve the problem, it just changes it. And when I did end up trying to find hobbies that had no way of "scoring", nothing to get better at, nothing to improve on, I found myself pretty depressed. It was something I needed to work on internally, something I needed to talk with a therapist about and learn to manage. And at this point in my life, I feel I have a much better handle on it. But simply picking hobbies that can't become a source of income didn't change anything for me, it just meant that I got less benefit from overdoing it.

cableshaft 8y ago

For me it's board game design. It would be nice to make serious money off of it, and it is possible, but most people I know, even with successful games, aren't making enough to quit their day jobs (that pay a lot less than software dev). Hell, one guy I know had a game you could buy at Barnes and Noble he worked on in his spare time for two years, and the publisher considered to be one of their more successful titles, earn only $10k in royalties (which he split 50/50 with a codesigner), so he only got $5k out of it. I could take a simple dev job and make that in a week of work. And it's a very collaborative field, so I get to meet a lot of people in the industry just by going to conventions and offering to playtest their games or help publishers demo their games to potential customers.

mrfusion 8y ago
Hey I had an idea for a board game. Maybe worth a chat sometime? Think settlers of catan but in an office setting.
rabidrat 8y ago
Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan) still works as an engineer.