11 ms·

The modern trap of turning hobbies into hustles (2019)

286 points by sdenton4 5y ago

codingdave 5y ago
I've embraced having a hobby for its own sake, and it does add joy to your life. I'm trying to get a photo of all the different bird species I see. The photos are not high quality. The web site where I post them is nothing special - just the freebie portfolio site you get when you subscribe to lightroom. I'm not even an expert birder, but learning more is part of the fun. But I really enjoy going out, finding new locations to explore, and posting my photos, even the ones so bad that I'd delete them if they were not my first shot of a species. And when I spend a Saturday morning out doing what I enjoy, it truly does energize me for everything else going on in life. I doubt I'd get that energy if I started trying to figure out how to make this return monetary value.
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throw737858 5y ago
If you turn hobby into hustle, you can claim it as business expense and save on taxes. I personally love to paint on exotic beaches in summer. My company is barely profitable, there are travel expenses, but I have some regular buyers for my paintings. Edit: why downvotes? It is not a joke, that is how it works in real life. Author obviously does not understand business. If you love cooking, you do not have to open restaurant and loose money, but once month you can organize "promotion event". That is nothing illegal.
- clarkevans 5y ago
  You're able to deduct expenses from revenue attributed to that activity.
  - sombremesa 5y ago
    This is provably incorrect.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  Because not everything is about businesses or money. Nor should there be any expectation of monetizing our hobbies / personal time. There is a modern obsession with monetizing -everything- that one does, turning -everything- into a "hustle". Why can't people just do things in their spare time for fun without being bombarded about monetizing them?
  - vmception 5y ago
    Fortunately for me, tax deductions are one of my favorite interests and talents.
  - dudul 5y ago
    Are you just disagreeing to disagree here? If they like painting on beaches and have a way to make a few bucks to finance these trips why wouldn't they? Maybe you have unlimited funds to finance your hobbies, but others sometimes need to be a bit creative to fund their passion.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  Generally businesses have to eventually make money. At least, that's how it works in most of the world. If you constantly claim business expenses and only ever see losses, eventually you'll run afoul of the "expectations of profit". Most people's hobbies will never turn a profit -- that's why they are hobbies, after all.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - ghaff 5y ago
    Which is why you don't make losses; you just don't make much of a taxable profit after costs. (I am not an accountant.) I did this for a number of years with a little side software business. The business paid for the expenses associated directly with the business, but also computer/office stuff I might have bought anyway. The business turned a profit every year. Just not much of one.
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      But that's much, much easier said than done. What if your hobby is ceramics or 3d printing or painting or craft cocktails or homebrewing or repairing old cars or gardening...
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Well, yes, you have to make enough money off your hobby that you have revenue to offset costs against. Which may be possible with art of various kinds but, then, you may not care enough about the money to bother going through the effort of selling at craft fairs or whatever.
      - throw737858 5y ago
        3d printer is 10k. Out of pocket it would be $10k plus income tax $5k plus $1k VAT. So you form "3d printing shop" company and put some money in (loan, services...). Company purchases 3d printer, but does not pay any taxes on printer, it is an expense. After a few years 3d printer is out of warranty but still functional, can be purchased from company for $1. Difference $5999. Obviously this is not advice, consult your accountant first. In reality it is bit more complex. But this is rough picture.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  Downvoting usually means people don't understand your comment or don't like it, so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I do the same with one caveat: my tax advisor always reminds me to document not only expenses, but also make sure there is some income, preferably each year, to avoid any problems from the IRS.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I agree. It looks like a joke, but I'm happy the GP has found a nice way to mix fun and work. A link to a gallery of the painting would have made clear it's not a joke. @GP: Can you post one? Perhaps you can get a few new fans.
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  - ghaff 5y ago
    And it's probably not worth it to show losses as opposed to a small profit. In the latter case you can probably cruise under the radar so long as you're not trying to deduct anything unreasonable in the context of the business. (A computer or office chair for a small software business is probably reasonable; a car is not.)
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      We've been doing this for year and deduct tons of personal expenses from our business. We're small enough that the IRS doesn't care. I laughed when she asked if she should put her breast implants on the company card. Even I knew that was going too far :)
- LegitShady 5y ago
  That's pretty awesome. I only know a few people who have managed to make any money at all on art, and very few who have regular buyers. Art these days has become so cheap and commodified. Even if you don't break even getting to travel on it and 'break even' is worth it. The questions is how did you arrive where you did? Did you paint for years without any return and then found patrons who buy your works regularly? Did you market and advertise? Did someone you knew send buyers your way? There are a trillion people on youtube trying to make money selling art, and feeding themselves on other things. There are a much smaller number regularly selling physical paintings.
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  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    There are various ways. At the high end you relentlessly self-promote until a gallery takes you on in expectation of profiting from your work. You can make a lot of money at the high end - five, six, or seven figures for each item - but it's insanely hard to get into. This person does it by cross-dressing and being famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayson_Perry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayson_Perry Mid-end you need to find a niche and possibly a physical location. I know one artist who combined demo/live painting sessions for customers. The work took minutes, but it was cheerful holiday art sold in a tourist location by someone with a good line in friendly and engaging self-promotion, and he could clear four figures a day during the tourist season. If you're selling online - that's a much tougher sell, and you'll need to create some kind of social media scene for yourself that isn't just "Here's me and my brushes".
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      I think you misunderstood my post. I understand the idea of hustling/advertising/etc to get social media following or a gallery spot or whatever. I also understand the art class/demo scene. None of that is interesting and it's a harder hustle than being an engineer for less in return. 99% of the people doing those will not succeed at making a living doing them, and those activities need huge time investments to see any sales at all. It also means you're trying to sell a particular kind of art. Galleries want a particular kind of art. Tourists want a particular kind of art. Art you can make in demo/classes is very limited. I don't have any interest in hawking my wares to tourists (because it limits you greatly on what you can offer, and how long you can spend on a painting), running classes (of which there are a million more qualified artists doing the same, all with competitive social media already), or praying that some art gallery will find my paintings interesting. This person said they have regular buyers (what I call patrons) for their choice of exotic beach landscapes, to the point that it subsidizes travel to exotic beaches. How did this person get patrons for their niche without the rest of it? That's what I want to know. Not generic ways of selling art. Are they selling to rich buddies? Is their mom really wealthy and supporting their hobby? I think its awesome they are doing what they love and it sort of pays for itself, I wish I could do the same, but there's a huge leap from 'I paint exotic beaches' to 'I have patrons for my exotic beach landscapes'.
- Merad 5y ago
  It sounds like (based on this comment and several of your other replies) that you get joy out of running a business and using them to play games to minimize your taxes. That's great, you do you, but to me it all sounds exhausting. If I wanted to learn painting, or play with 3d printing, or whatever, then _that's_ what I want to put my time and effort into. I really don't care if I'm leaving a thousand dollars on the table in potential tax write-offs. That's a perfectly acceptable price to pay to just enjoy my hobby without having to spend any time thinking about managing a business or trying to optimize every single aspect of my life.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    I think you're imagining the tax advantage here as a lot of work, when it's really not. These sorts of tax avoidance strategies are only complicated the first time you do them, and then repeating the same thing each year is simple. ...as for selling enough of it to call it a company - again - it's easier than most people realize to register a company.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  You've described the legit way of doing it. And on the other end of the spectrum you can run it as a cash only side gig and make a nice little slush fund for yourself.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
A common theme of the most successful people that come through a mentoring group that I'm part of is that they don't have side projects or side hustles. They focus their time and energy on doing one thing very well, whether it's education, their internship, or their job. Somewhere along the line, tech students got the idea that the key to success is to have many side projects and side hustles going at once. While it is true that in very narrow, specific cases something like a GitHub project could fill in gaps in a resume, it's rare that companies even look at GitHub work as the deciding factor in a hiring decision. It's too easy to let your energy, attention, and motivation get diluted across too many side projects. The problem is amplified when people start entering relationships and eventually having kids, further diluting their limited time and energy. Some of the worst offenders are things that don't necessarily feel like a side hustle but nevertheless drain inordinate amounts of time. Daytrading stocks and cryptocurrencies commonly traps people into constantly checking their phone, Twitter, and portfolio to avoid losing money or missing out on breaking news. The pocket change most people make (or lose) on day trading is lost in the noise relative to a successful tech career. The best advice I have for career success is to pick one thing at a time and focus intently on it. Use your off time to do anything else: Social activities, physical activities, or even simply relax and recharge for the next day. It's better to do one thing well (usually your job) rather accumulate a lot of half-finished side projects or side hustles that are constantly stealing attention.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  You are facing the right direction, but went off onto the wrong track with the day-trading stuff. The first part of your argument can be a true distraction, as it is avoidance. It’s the same as spending hours making a checklist of tasks, instead of doing the actual tasks. The second part of your argument is not the same. Trading stocks has nothing to do with programming, so much so that you can’t even use it to lie to yourself that ‘yes indeed, today I have chipped away at being a better programmer by trading these stocks’. It certainly can steal your attention, but it can never ever be used as a form of self manipulation (therefore, not a problem if you do it in moderation, like everything else in life). It’s the first type of distraction that can destroy your soul if you indulge in it.
mihaic 5y ago
I feel that we need to acknowledge that "work" is not something we need to aspire towards, but we often need "success" and "activity", and just have a hard time separating these concepts. All members of our society that need income compete with one another with how much work they're willing to put in, and we really need to figure out how we can stop competing against one another, as we're driving down the value of work.
olivermarks 5y ago
Hustle: INFORMAL/NORTH AMERICAN a fraud or swindle. "the hustles being used to avoid the draft" 'obtain by forceful action or persuasion'. "the brothers headed to New York to try and hustle a record deal" Why is the word hustle suddenly used all the time to describe work? I blame Gary Vaynerchuk, the born wealthy marketing hustler who was a big influence back in the days when 'social media' was cute and new. It just sounds shady and seedy to me, and not something I'd want anywhere near any of my interests or hobbies
- graton 5y ago
  There are 16 different definitions of hustle listed at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hustle https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hustle You only listed one definition.
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    I listed the first two that came up in a brief search. 'The Hustler' is a good example of people making a buck out of their hobby https://youtu.be/bpc3TKhS6MU https://youtu.be/bpc3TKhS6MU
    - vmception 5y ago
      You used an antiquated nearly obsolete definition. The current - also informal - use is derived from the fraud one but only in the clever nature involved, and isnt about fraud. Its closer to the sports meaning of perseverance.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > Its closer to the sports meaning of perseverance. Which is itself a hustle per the definitions GP quoted! Probably one of the oldest-going ones. That is, promoting the image of some lofty qualities of a perfect athlete, to give additional meaning and allure to what's otherwise an exercise in competitive showmanship, an entertainment business. The nature of the swindle becomes visible when one considers that: 1) the role-model athletes, whether today or in ancient past, are people entering large championships - i.e. professional athletes; 2) every player in professional sports is driven to get better, but there's a silent, implicit "but not too much, lest the game becomes too easy, too boring for the audience, and we the spectator money" attached to this.
papito 5y ago
It's very hard to be an effective hustler. It takes a very special mindset. Just finished Billion Dollar Loser about WeWork, and one extreme hustler that stuck in my head was Masayoshi Son (Masa). Have you ever seen any of his "300-year horizon vision" slides? They are horrible: https://www.businessinsider.com/13-slides-softbanks-vision-for-next-300-years-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/13-slides-softbanks-vision-f... If anyone else popped these slides out, they would be asked to go back to elementary school, while any designers in the room would pour acid in their eyes to unsee those. What I am saying is, some people are not particularly brilliant (and IMO, Masa is not), and even the analysts at SoftBank saw the WeWork pyramid con from 100 miles out. Masa is a special kind of nuts, however, deciding to come up with one implementable idea every day, when he was at UC Berkley. He is a breed of hustler with a nuclear motor up his butt that never stops running, throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. But again, very few people have the perseverance and the energy, so know yourself.
fab1an 5y ago
The key risk when turning hobbies into a business is that the core focus area of the hobbyist's expertise will likely have to shift dramatically, and it's often that shift that may cause a loss in enjoyment and fulfillment. A hobbyists can focus on extremely uneconomical aspects of a thing, precisely because they don't need to think economically about it - a business person doing so will likely fail at both their business, and tragically, their hobby... For anyone interested in a deeper exploration of this theme, I will shamelessly plug my podcast on deep, obsessive hobbies, "When The Work is Done": https://www.whentheworkisdone.com/ https://www.whentheworkisdone.com/ Only managed to put up one episode yet (an interview with a very successful neuroscientists who spends almost all his spare time tailoring...), but am hoping to have many more episodes in the works soon.
- edgarvaldes 5y ago
  Nice idea for a podcast, will check it out.
- zaken 5y ago
  Looks really cool! I'm listening to the neuroscience tailor one now. I've been itching for the past couple of years now (ever since having a kid) to dive back into some old hobbies that I haven't been able to make time for. Things like this are really inspiring. Looking forward to more episodes!
drooby 5y ago
I think this problem can be solved quite easily with the following mindset: Do something that might make you happy. If it doesn't make you happy, try something else. If it does make you happy, keep doing it. If the thing that made you happy no longer makes you happy, try something else. Oh, and, don't take advice on happiness from blog posts by strangers. Friends, maybe, given that they share a similar mindset to you, but not strangers. And yes I realize the irony of this.
vmception 5y ago
> Like many millennials I was encouraged to view any of my interests or talents as a possible career. Fortunately for me, tax deductions are one of my favorite interests and talents. Almost every kind of consumptive spending can be filed as a business expense, when every kind of your hobby is also rationalized as a potential business. All the endorphins and dopamine of spending on things I like go to me, and none of the money goes to the government! Eventually you have to shift hobbies or stop deducting if you arent making a profit, after like half a decade. Not hard.
- jdhn 5y ago
  If you can tell me how to apply this to making beer, I will be forever in your debt.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    See Untappd :-)
    - jdhn 5y ago
      So basically I write a review, and then tell the IRS that I'm a beer journalist, and that in order to do my job I need to deduct my beer costs? Brilliant!
      - vmception 5y ago
        Not so far off, keep searching for actual tax advice In the mean time, understand that despite the popular understanding of taxes, the outcome is that the government is seeking to incentivize transactions. So from their perspective, its not really about revenue collection and people pulling a fast one on them. They want you to spend in the economy. They want money flowing in the economy. The remainder of the hoarded money that isn’t spent is being subject to tax, so the government can figure out how to keep it moving instead. Its up to you to find transactions that reduce your tax burden, but they don't care if you choose the right or wrong transactions. They've set up a system to have a high velocity of funds flowing to all sectors of the economy without the state needing to steer it. Understanding that can help you understand why it isn't hard to create these deductions. People set up a business name and register it in a state and create a business bank account partially for separate accounting to make it simpler to pass an audit, and simpler to make it more convincing that an audit wasn't needed to begin with.
Benjammer 5y ago
I tend to think this is only true for activities where the enjoyment/experiential part of the activity is separated from the "meta business game" of the activity to a large enough degree. While this may be true for a lot of hobbies, I don't think it's always the case. If you love to play a sport, the meta game of being a pro athlete is very close to the part that a player loves, which is playing the actual sport. The sport itself is the main focus, everything else like coaching and contracts is window dressing compared to actual playing skills. If you love to cook elaborate dishes for your family from various world cuisines, you should probably consider the meta game before you try to become a chef or open your own diner or restaurant. Do you like thinking about ingredient prices versus dish prices? Marginal efficiency of how a dish is cooked and constructed? Seating layouts and service rotations? How to design, implement, maintain, and update a profitable menu, etc. If all you have is passion, and you're not able or willing to closely examine the step-by-step process for how your passion translates to cash, and how that cash makes its way to your bank account, then of course you won't enjoy a hobby as a career or business venture. You need to actually enjoy the business aspects directly if you want to be happy with a hobby-turned-career.
WalterBright 5y ago
I have a bit of a different view. I enjoy it when other people use the programs I create, I enjoy it even more when they make money using them. Writing a program just for personal seems like just work. Those programs tend to be shoddy and barely function. I enjoyed a lot that Boeing made money off of the 757. I enjoy watching them fly, it's my favorite airplane to fly on. The newspaper once ran a photo of one being cut up for scrap, and it was like someone was cutting me up for scrap. I hate it when my employer would cancel a project I was working on, I didn't work on it just for the paycheck. When I work for myself, nobody cancels my project but me.
darod 5y ago
The trap is the "business." If I love an activity and I love performing JUST that activity, as long as that's all I'm doing I'm happy. A business involves so much more -> financials, marketing, sales, employees, taxes, competition, strategy, etc. etc. etc. All these activities taking you farther and farther away from the hobby that you loved.
insickness 5y ago
I make electronic music. Last year I invested in learning promotion. I spent about $1500 and now I have about a thousand followers on Spotify. Every time I release a song, I get a couple hundred listens. I don't do it for the money. The return on a it is a meager. My 'day job' makes me pretty good money. But it got me thinking: what does it mean to me to have listeners? It's great when people 'like' my music, but in a lot of ways, it's just numbers on a screen. What difference would it make if I had 10,000 or 100,000 listeners instead of 1000? Maybe it would be cool if I were in a store and hear a song of mine playing on the radio or watching a movie and it was playing as a sound track. The validation I've felt from similar successes is great but it is fleeting. Ultimately, the most joy I get out of it is being able to sit down and create music that I myself enjoy and respect.
- apples_oranges 5y ago
  I think part of it is being part of a community. You know there are people out there who are like you. In the sense that they like your music, and this connects everyone into some sort of asynchronous musical happening. You communicate something to them with your music (and lyrics).
- rgbrgb 5y ago
  would love to check out your music and hear more of this story.
  - insickness 5y ago
    I release music under Visions of Division. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0b836tZPLcWr1M0BTr6qhp?si=M_J72BSbSkyh0EJlwnDMrg https://open.spotify.com/artist/0b836tZPLcWr1M0BTr6qhp?si=M_... I've been making music on and off for about 25 years. Have worked with different vocalists and other musicians. Now I do most of the songwriting myself but have another songwriter I sometimes collaborate with. I do most of the production myself as well but I typically hire a session vocalist or other additional musicians such as a guitarist through soundbetter.com or airgigs.com. I'll also hire professional mixing/mastering for each song. I also am an amateur photographer/videographer. I make my own videos but have also hired other people to make some videos as well. The first video is mine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMdaRwwvf8ToJSSU1sIAng https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMdaRwwvf8ToJSSU1sIAng It is amazing that now you can hire people online to do almost everything a professional record label can do--or do it yourself. Of course, paying a few hundred dollars for services like I do typically doesn't yield the same results as a record label investing $100,000 for it. But unlike decades past, there is no longer a wall out there preventing me from getting worldwide distribution and hiring professionals to assist in every way.
mym1990 5y ago
This was a bit ironic to me: “it’s just to say that it’s okay to love a hobby the same way you’d love a pet; for its ability to enrich your life without any expectation that it will help you pay the rent.” Because I feel like a portion of people who get pets today expect to subsidize some of the cost with Instagram pages.
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stakkur 5y ago
It's surprising to me how often I read articles giving life advice (or admonitions) that are written by people who live inside the warm, shiny, not-very-representative bubble of California. I play a game with myself whenever I read articles like this, trying to guess if the story (a) Relies mainly on California anecdotes or (b)is written by someone living in California.
- nlh 5y ago
  I hear (read) what you’re saying, but I don’t understand the relevance. What does the author’s location have to do with the point she’s making?
  - stakkur 5y ago
    What does the interface have to do with how the user sees the application?
okareaman 5y ago
My greatest wish, now that I am retired and learned a few new things, is that my fellow Americans (I can't speak to other cultures) would stop putting the focus on money. Money and the things it can buy are not that important in the larger scheme of things. If Americans didn't make life a competitive sport, then more would realize this. Near the end, it's all about what you do with time and doing what it takes to remain healthy to live longer and enjoy this time.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  Easy to say when you are retired and have $. Everything is getting more expensive. Healthcare especially. having more money and the peace of mind that comes with it is important. I would rather err on the side of earning too much than run out and be stuck.
  - anon9001 5y ago
    So true. I don't see how anyone could feel financially secure with less than a few million in net worth. Everyone else is one accident away from drifting down into poverty.
    - tbihl 5y ago
      Satire?
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Almost certainly not. A lot of people here seem to be convinced that, even if you can afford (admittedly expensive) health insurance, you're one slip on a banana peel away from bankruptcy. One can doubtless dredge up horror stories of one sort or another but they're circulating stories for a reason. (What is true is that people who can't work because of illness have an issue of income not coming in but that's somewhat separate from the healthcare costs themselves.)
    - okareaman 5y ago
      I'm living below the poverty level in Silicon Valley on a fixed social security income and I've never been happier. California Covered takes care of health insurance for almost no out of pocket money. I am healthy. I'm having fun exploring the online world, finding interesting things I never had time for before. I'm also exploring the Bay Area by throwing my bike on Bart or the Caltrans Train and getting around that way cheaply. I have almost no material things and no money anymore, but don't miss either. I realize a lot of people would be unhappy with no money, but I'm here to say I'm not. That's all.
ublaze 5y ago
This resonates well. I have a hobby software podcast (https://softwareatscale.dev/ https://softwareatscale.dev/) and the most common question I get asked is around how I'm planning to monetize it. I've had unsolicited offers from acquaintances to partner up to set up merch deals (?) and even NFTs to sell episodes.
crackinmalackin 5y ago
The tech industry is brutal in this regard. If programming and working on side projects isn’t your main hobby, then you are falling behind in some regard. Everyone wants freedom to create things their own way, while making bank in the process
jdhn 5y ago
Interesting how she talks about this being a big pressure in creative fields. I'm in the UX space, and it seems like people always like to talk about their side hustle, or getting a side hustle. This is especially true for connections on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, I couldn't care less about having a side hustle, and don't really want to have one as it seems that the people with side hustles are working all the time.
throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
Side-hustles are a thing because people think that if they have to hustle for someone, it might as well be themselves. But why hustle for anyone? We should establish a universal basic income for all, and leave hustling to people who are hustlers by nature.
NewEntryHN 5y ago
I agree with the general sentiment, although the author seems to miss the point that many people trying to monetize their hobby aren't trying to win more money, but simply to replace the time working in a pay-the-bill job with time spent working on their hobby. There is a catch, which is that monetizing will require dealing with business duties, which comes with the risk of alienating the hobby. It's not clear how it compares to wasting your lifetime on a career you don't really care about.
gumby 5y ago
> those with passion careers can have just as much career anxiety... I think people have forgotten that the origin of the word "passion" is "suffering"
- huachimingo 5y ago
  And "work" in romance languages meant "(being punched with) 3 clubs".[1] How funny to say "work makes the man" with that definition. [1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabajo_%28sociolog%25C3%25ADa%29 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https:/...
riazrizvi 5y ago
As developers, the trap is that we overemphasize how much any real business depends on the creative/product stuff. So we daydream about CEO roles where we can design a business where the creative product builders have their ‘rightful’ place at the top of the pyramid. When the reality is that every business basically shakes down to the same functions, and that founding your own tech business ultimately results in a rebalancing of your role, where you end up doing mostly mid-management in sales, finance, operations, tech, design, etc leaving you almost no time for the creative stuff you spent your life becoming great at.
shannifin 5y ago
Basically the problem with turning hobbies into hustles is the addition of uninteresting (and sometimes frustrating) additional work that comes with managing time and caring about customer satisfaction. The extra work can take all the fun out of it. Feeling the need to be constantly "productive" is, I think, really a separate issue. I also differentiate between wanting to do something vs wanting to have done something. It's easy to want to have written a novel, to have learned to play piano, or to have painted something. But if you don't enjoy the process (the actual writing, the practicing, etc), then you may just be torturing yourself for the sake of self-image. Find something enjoyable in the actual process and you won't need to force yourself so much, you'll gravitate toward it naturally for its own sake, and you won't feel guilty if you decide to just watch TV or phone scroll instead. (Plenty of books and articles out there on forming new habits.)
- koheripbal 5y ago
  I have to agree here. The pain point for the classic examples here are dealing with customers.
psychomugs 5y ago
I took advantage of the recent graduation season and hustled some photoshoots. It was a good experience where I met a lot of cool people and made enough to offset the cost of some new gear, but I probably wouldn't do it again unless I wasn't working a full-time schedule and could command a (much) higher rate. I already feel this encroachment in my main hustle; engineering is both a career and passion [1], but doing it as a living drains the reserves of wanting to do it outside of work. I recently watched an interview with Sofia Coppola right after Lost in Translation came out. She said that she made her living from her clothing company so that she could be artistically liberal in her filmmaking [2]. There's something about the truest "artist" being the one who can escape having to call themselves an "Artist." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai [2] https://youtu.be/nsf7cMjPa2I?t=475 https://youtu.be/nsf7cMjPa2I?t=475
whateveracct 5y ago
"Hustle" is the key word here. I'm currently working towards doing my hobby (gamedev) as the only thing I do. But the way I do it is collect corporate checks while allocating as much of my mind as possible towards improving my gamedev. So far it's not a bad deal - the hardest part is keeping sane in the face of the hellscape that is my corporate employers' other engineers. I have literally spent hours on Zoom calls listening to literal principal engineers discuss naming minutia. That at least gives me hope - turns out you don't need to be smart to be a principal. Easy money if I play my cards right. So while my goal is to do gamedev as my only income (pseudo-retiring in a sense) - it's fundamentally different.
shaftway 5y ago
I've run into this a lot lately with woodworking. I started it as a hobby during the pandemic, and I'm clearly still a beginner (just got my 3rd instagram follower that I don't personally know, woo hoo). But any time I show somebody a piece they tell me I should sell them on Etsy. I just finished my fourth project, a set of trays, and immediately I was told I should make them to sell. They're walnut, so just in lumber and resin a set of three trays cost $500. Then I probably spent 20 hours cutting, drilling, rabbeting, jointing, sanding, and finishing these things. I value my time at ~$100/hr. So who is going to spend $2500 on a set of trays when you can get something close enough for $150 at Ikea? Now the argument I use to shut them down is that it's a hobby. "But you could make money with your hobby." But then I have to deliver. When it's a hobby and a project doesn't go well, or you just get tired of working on it, you can put it down and walk away. If I couldn't put it down because I'm beholden to someone, and I need to deliver it, then it isn't a hobby any more; it's a job.

286 points by sdenton4 5y ago

I've embraced having a hobby for its own sake, and it does add joy to your life. I'm trying to get a photo of all the different bird species I see. The photos are not high quality. The web site where I post them is nothing special - just the freebie portfolio site you get when you subscribe to lightroom. I'm not even an expert birder, but learning more is part of the fun. But I really enjoy going out, finding new locations to explore, and posting my photos, even the ones so bad that I'd delete them if they were not my first shot of a species. And when I spend a Saturday morning out doing what I enjoy, it truly does energize me for everything else going on in life. I doubt I'd get that energy if I started trying to figure out how to make this return monetary value.

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throw737858 5y ago

If you turn hobby into hustle, you can claim it as business expense and save on taxes. I personally love to paint on exotic beaches in summer. My company is barely profitable, there are travel expenses, but I have some regular buyers for my paintings. Edit: why downvotes? It is not a joke, that is how it works in real life. Author obviously does not understand business. If you love cooking, you do not have to open restaurant and loose money, but once month you can organize "promotion event". That is nothing illegal.

clarkevans 5y ago
You're able to deduct expenses from revenue attributed to that activity.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  This is provably incorrect.
andrewzah 5y ago
Because not everything is about businesses or money. Nor should there be any expectation of monetizing our hobbies / personal time. There is a modern obsession with monetizing -everything- that one does, turning -everything- into a "hustle". Why can't people just do things in their spare time for fun without being bombarded about monetizing them?
- vmception 5y ago
  Fortunately for me, tax deductions are one of my favorite interests and talents.
- dudul 5y ago
  Are you just disagreeing to disagree here? If they like painting on beaches and have a way to make a few bucks to finance these trips why wouldn't they? Maybe you have unlimited funds to finance your hobbies, but others sometimes need to be a bit creative to fund their passion.
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
Generally businesses have to eventually make money. At least, that's how it works in most of the world. If you constantly claim business expenses and only ever see losses, eventually you'll run afoul of the "expectations of profit". Most people's hobbies will never turn a profit -- that's why they are hobbies, after all.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ghaff 5y ago
  Which is why you don't make losses; you just don't make much of a taxable profit after costs. (I am not an accountant.) I did this for a number of years with a little side software business. The business paid for the expenses associated directly with the business, but also computer/office stuff I might have bought anyway. The business turned a profit every year. Just not much of one.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    But that's much, much easier said than done. What if your hobby is ceramics or 3d printing or painting or craft cocktails or homebrewing or repairing old cars or gardening...
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Well, yes, you have to make enough money off your hobby that you have revenue to offset costs against. Which may be possible with art of various kinds but, then, you may not care enough about the money to bother going through the effort of selling at craft fairs or whatever.
    - throw737858 5y ago
      3d printer is 10k. Out of pocket it would be $10k plus income tax $5k plus $1k VAT. So you form "3d printing shop" company and put some money in (loan, services...). Company purchases 3d printer, but does not pay any taxes on printer, it is an expense. After a few years 3d printer is out of warranty but still functional, can be purchased from company for $1. Difference $5999. Obviously this is not advice, consult your accountant first. In reality it is bit more complex. But this is rough picture.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
Downvoting usually means people don't understand your comment or don't like it, so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I do the same with one caveat: my tax advisor always reminds me to document not only expenses, but also make sure there is some income, preferably each year, to avoid any problems from the IRS.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I agree. It looks like a joke, but I'm happy the GP has found a nice way to mix fun and work. A link to a gallery of the painting would have made clear it's not a joke. @GP: Can you post one? Perhaps you can get a few new fans.
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- ghaff 5y ago
  And it's probably not worth it to show losses as opposed to a small profit. In the latter case you can probably cruise under the radar so long as you're not trying to deduct anything unreasonable in the context of the business. (A computer or office chair for a small software business is probably reasonable; a car is not.)
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    We've been doing this for year and deduct tons of personal expenses from our business. We're small enough that the IRS doesn't care. I laughed when she asked if she should put her breast implants on the company card. Even I knew that was going too far :)
LegitShady 5y ago
That's pretty awesome. I only know a few people who have managed to make any money at all on art, and very few who have regular buyers. Art these days has become so cheap and commodified. Even if you don't break even getting to travel on it and 'break even' is worth it. The questions is how did you arrive where you did? Did you paint for years without any return and then found patrons who buy your works regularly? Did you market and advertise? Did someone you knew send buyers your way? There are a trillion people on youtube trying to make money selling art, and feeding themselves on other things. There are a much smaller number regularly selling physical paintings.
- deleted 5y ago
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- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  There are various ways. At the high end you relentlessly self-promote until a gallery takes you on in expectation of profiting from your work. You can make a lot of money at the high end - five, six, or seven figures for each item - but it's insanely hard to get into. This person does it by cross-dressing and being famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayson_Perry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayson_Perry Mid-end you need to find a niche and possibly a physical location. I know one artist who combined demo/live painting sessions for customers. The work took minutes, but it was cheerful holiday art sold in a tourist location by someone with a good line in friendly and engaging self-promotion, and he could clear four figures a day during the tourist season. If you're selling online - that's a much tougher sell, and you'll need to create some kind of social media scene for yourself that isn't just "Here's me and my brushes".
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood my post. I understand the idea of hustling/advertising/etc to get social media following or a gallery spot or whatever. I also understand the art class/demo scene. None of that is interesting and it's a harder hustle than being an engineer for less in return. 99% of the people doing those will not succeed at making a living doing them, and those activities need huge time investments to see any sales at all. It also means you're trying to sell a particular kind of art. Galleries want a particular kind of art. Tourists want a particular kind of art. Art you can make in demo/classes is very limited. I don't have any interest in hawking my wares to tourists (because it limits you greatly on what you can offer, and how long you can spend on a painting), running classes (of which there are a million more qualified artists doing the same, all with competitive social media already), or praying that some art gallery will find my paintings interesting. This person said they have regular buyers (what I call patrons) for their choice of exotic beach landscapes, to the point that it subsidizes travel to exotic beaches. How did this person get patrons for their niche without the rest of it? That's what I want to know. Not generic ways of selling art. Are they selling to rich buddies? Is their mom really wealthy and supporting their hobby? I think its awesome they are doing what they love and it sort of pays for itself, I wish I could do the same, but there's a huge leap from 'I paint exotic beaches' to 'I have patrons for my exotic beach landscapes'.
Merad 5y ago
It sounds like (based on this comment and several of your other replies) that you get joy out of running a business and using them to play games to minimize your taxes. That's great, you do you, but to me it all sounds exhausting. If I wanted to learn painting, or play with 3d printing, or whatever, then _that's_ what I want to put my time and effort into. I really don't care if I'm leaving a thousand dollars on the table in potential tax write-offs. That's a perfectly acceptable price to pay to just enjoy my hobby without having to spend any time thinking about managing a business or trying to optimize every single aspect of my life.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  I think you're imagining the tax advantage here as a lot of work, when it's really not. These sorts of tax avoidance strategies are only complicated the first time you do them, and then repeating the same thing each year is simple. ...as for selling enough of it to call it a company - again - it's easier than most people realize to register a company.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
You've described the legit way of doing it. And on the other end of the spectrum you can run it as a cash only side gig and make a nice little slush fund for yourself.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

A common theme of the most successful people that come through a mentoring group that I'm part of is that they don't have side projects or side hustles. They focus their time and energy on doing one thing very well, whether it's education, their internship, or their job. Somewhere along the line, tech students got the idea that the key to success is to have many side projects and side hustles going at once. While it is true that in very narrow, specific cases something like a GitHub project could fill in gaps in a resume, it's rare that companies even look at GitHub work as the deciding factor in a hiring decision. It's too easy to let your energy, attention, and motivation get diluted across too many side projects. The problem is amplified when people start entering relationships and eventually having kids, further diluting their limited time and energy. Some of the worst offenders are things that don't necessarily feel like a side hustle but nevertheless drain inordinate amounts of time. Daytrading stocks and cryptocurrencies commonly traps people into constantly checking their phone, Twitter, and portfolio to avoid losing money or missing out on breaking news. The pocket change most people make (or lose) on day trading is lost in the noise relative to a successful tech career. The best advice I have for career success is to pick one thing at a time and focus intently on it. Use your off time to do anything else: Social activities, physical activities, or even simply relax and recharge for the next day. It's better to do one thing well (usually your job) rather accumulate a lot of half-finished side projects or side hustles that are constantly stealing attention.

runawaybottle 5y ago
You are facing the right direction, but went off onto the wrong track with the day-trading stuff. The first part of your argument can be a true distraction, as it is avoidance. It’s the same as spending hours making a checklist of tasks, instead of doing the actual tasks. The second part of your argument is not the same. Trading stocks has nothing to do with programming, so much so that you can’t even use it to lie to yourself that ‘yes indeed, today I have chipped away at being a better programmer by trading these stocks’. It certainly can steal your attention, but it can never ever be used as a form of self manipulation (therefore, not a problem if you do it in moderation, like everything else in life). It’s the first type of distraction that can destroy your soul if you indulge in it.

mihaic 5y ago

I feel that we need to acknowledge that "work" is not something we need to aspire towards, but we often need "success" and "activity", and just have a hard time separating these concepts. All members of our society that need income compete with one another with how much work they're willing to put in, and we really need to figure out how we can stop competing against one another, as we're driving down the value of work.

olivermarks 5y ago

Hustle: INFORMAL/NORTH AMERICAN a fraud or swindle. "the hustles being used to avoid the draft" 'obtain by forceful action or persuasion'. "the brothers headed to New York to try and hustle a record deal" Why is the word hustle suddenly used all the time to describe work? I blame Gary Vaynerchuk, the born wealthy marketing hustler who was a big influence back in the days when 'social media' was cute and new. It just sounds shady and seedy to me, and not something I'd want anywhere near any of my interests or hobbies

graton 5y ago
There are 16 different definitions of hustle listed at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hustle https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hustle You only listed one definition.
- olivermarks 5y ago
  I listed the first two that came up in a brief search. 'The Hustler' is a good example of people making a buck out of their hobby https://youtu.be/bpc3TKhS6MU https://youtu.be/bpc3TKhS6MU
  - vmception 5y ago
    You used an antiquated nearly obsolete definition. The current - also informal - use is derived from the fraud one but only in the clever nature involved, and isnt about fraud. Its closer to the sports meaning of perseverance.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > Its closer to the sports meaning of perseverance. Which is itself a hustle per the definitions GP quoted! Probably one of the oldest-going ones. That is, promoting the image of some lofty qualities of a perfect athlete, to give additional meaning and allure to what's otherwise an exercise in competitive showmanship, an entertainment business. The nature of the swindle becomes visible when one considers that: 1) the role-model athletes, whether today or in ancient past, are people entering large championships - i.e. professional athletes; 2) every player in professional sports is driven to get better, but there's a silent, implicit "but not too much, lest the game becomes too easy, too boring for the audience, and we the spectator money" attached to this.

papito 5y ago

It's very hard to be an effective hustler. It takes a very special mindset. Just finished Billion Dollar Loser about WeWork, and one extreme hustler that stuck in my head was Masayoshi Son (Masa). Have you ever seen any of his "300-year horizon vision" slides? They are horrible: https://www.businessinsider.com/13-slides-softbanks-vision-for-next-300-years-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/13-slides-softbanks-vision-f... If anyone else popped these slides out, they would be asked to go back to elementary school, while any designers in the room would pour acid in their eyes to unsee those. What I am saying is, some people are not particularly brilliant (and IMO, Masa is not), and even the analysts at SoftBank saw the WeWork pyramid con from 100 miles out. Masa is a special kind of nuts, however, deciding to come up with one implementable idea every day, when he was at UC Berkley. He is a breed of hustler with a nuclear motor up his butt that never stops running, throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. But again, very few people have the perseverance and the energy, so know yourself.

fab1an 5y ago

The key risk when turning hobbies into a business is that the core focus area of the hobbyist's expertise will likely have to shift dramatically, and it's often that shift that may cause a loss in enjoyment and fulfillment. A hobbyists can focus on extremely uneconomical aspects of a thing, precisely because they don't need to think economically about it - a business person doing so will likely fail at both their business, and tragically, their hobby... For anyone interested in a deeper exploration of this theme, I will shamelessly plug my podcast on deep, obsessive hobbies, "When The Work is Done": https://www.whentheworkisdone.com/ https://www.whentheworkisdone.com/ Only managed to put up one episode yet (an interview with a very successful neuroscientists who spends almost all his spare time tailoring...), but am hoping to have many more episodes in the works soon.

edgarvaldes 5y ago
Nice idea for a podcast, will check it out.
zaken 5y ago
Looks really cool! I'm listening to the neuroscience tailor one now. I've been itching for the past couple of years now (ever since having a kid) to dive back into some old hobbies that I haven't been able to make time for. Things like this are really inspiring. Looking forward to more episodes!

drooby 5y ago

I think this problem can be solved quite easily with the following mindset: Do something that might make you happy. If it doesn't make you happy, try something else. If it does make you happy, keep doing it. If the thing that made you happy no longer makes you happy, try something else. Oh, and, don't take advice on happiness from blog posts by strangers. Friends, maybe, given that they share a similar mindset to you, but not strangers. And yes I realize the irony of this.

vmception 5y ago

> Like many millennials I was encouraged to view any of my interests or talents as a possible career. Fortunately for me, tax deductions are one of my favorite interests and talents. Almost every kind of consumptive spending can be filed as a business expense, when every kind of your hobby is also rationalized as a potential business. All the endorphins and dopamine of spending on things I like go to me, and none of the money goes to the government! Eventually you have to shift hobbies or stop deducting if you arent making a profit, after like half a decade. Not hard.

jdhn 5y ago
If you can tell me how to apply this to making beer, I will be forever in your debt.
- ghaff 5y ago
  See Untappd :-)
  - jdhn 5y ago
    So basically I write a review, and then tell the IRS that I'm a beer journalist, and that in order to do my job I need to deduct my beer costs? Brilliant!
    - vmception 5y ago
      Not so far off, keep searching for actual tax advice In the mean time, understand that despite the popular understanding of taxes, the outcome is that the government is seeking to incentivize transactions. So from their perspective, its not really about revenue collection and people pulling a fast one on them. They want you to spend in the economy. They want money flowing in the economy. The remainder of the hoarded money that isn’t spent is being subject to tax, so the government can figure out how to keep it moving instead. Its up to you to find transactions that reduce your tax burden, but they don't care if you choose the right or wrong transactions. They've set up a system to have a high velocity of funds flowing to all sectors of the economy without the state needing to steer it. Understanding that can help you understand why it isn't hard to create these deductions. People set up a business name and register it in a state and create a business bank account partially for separate accounting to make it simpler to pass an audit, and simpler to make it more convincing that an audit wasn't needed to begin with.

Benjammer 5y ago

I tend to think this is only true for activities where the enjoyment/experiential part of the activity is separated from the "meta business game" of the activity to a large enough degree. While this may be true for a lot of hobbies, I don't think it's always the case. If you love to play a sport, the meta game of being a pro athlete is very close to the part that a player loves, which is playing the actual sport. The sport itself is the main focus, everything else like coaching and contracts is window dressing compared to actual playing skills. If you love to cook elaborate dishes for your family from various world cuisines, you should probably consider the meta game before you try to become a chef or open your own diner or restaurant. Do you like thinking about ingredient prices versus dish prices? Marginal efficiency of how a dish is cooked and constructed? Seating layouts and service rotations? How to design, implement, maintain, and update a profitable menu, etc. If all you have is passion, and you're not able or willing to closely examine the step-by-step process for how your passion translates to cash, and how that cash makes its way to your bank account, then of course you won't enjoy a hobby as a career or business venture. You need to actually enjoy the business aspects directly if you want to be happy with a hobby-turned-career.

WalterBright 5y ago

I have a bit of a different view. I enjoy it when other people use the programs I create, I enjoy it even more when they make money using them. Writing a program just for personal seems like just work. Those programs tend to be shoddy and barely function. I enjoyed a lot that Boeing made money off of the 757. I enjoy watching them fly, it's my favorite airplane to fly on. The newspaper once ran a photo of one being cut up for scrap, and it was like someone was cutting me up for scrap. I hate it when my employer would cancel a project I was working on, I didn't work on it just for the paycheck. When I work for myself, nobody cancels my project but me.

darod 5y ago

The trap is the "business." If I love an activity and I love performing JUST that activity, as long as that's all I'm doing I'm happy. A business involves so much more -> financials, marketing, sales, employees, taxes, competition, strategy, etc. etc. etc. All these activities taking you farther and farther away from the hobby that you loved.

insickness 5y ago

I make electronic music. Last year I invested in learning promotion. I spent about $1500 and now I have about a thousand followers on Spotify. Every time I release a song, I get a couple hundred listens. I don't do it for the money. The return on a it is a meager. My 'day job' makes me pretty good money. But it got me thinking: what does it mean to me to have listeners? It's great when people 'like' my music, but in a lot of ways, it's just numbers on a screen. What difference would it make if I had 10,000 or 100,000 listeners instead of 1000? Maybe it would be cool if I were in a store and hear a song of mine playing on the radio or watching a movie and it was playing as a sound track. The validation I've felt from similar successes is great but it is fleeting. Ultimately, the most joy I get out of it is being able to sit down and create music that I myself enjoy and respect.

apples_oranges 5y ago
I think part of it is being part of a community. You know there are people out there who are like you. In the sense that they like your music, and this connects everyone into some sort of asynchronous musical happening. You communicate something to them with your music (and lyrics).
rgbrgb 5y ago
would love to check out your music and hear more of this story.
- insickness 5y ago
  I release music under Visions of Division. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0b836tZPLcWr1M0BTr6qhp?si=M_J72BSbSkyh0EJlwnDMrg https://open.spotify.com/artist/0b836tZPLcWr1M0BTr6qhp?si=M_... I've been making music on and off for about 25 years. Have worked with different vocalists and other musicians. Now I do most of the songwriting myself but have another songwriter I sometimes collaborate with. I do most of the production myself as well but I typically hire a session vocalist or other additional musicians such as a guitarist through soundbetter.com or airgigs.com. I'll also hire professional mixing/mastering for each song. I also am an amateur photographer/videographer. I make my own videos but have also hired other people to make some videos as well. The first video is mine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMdaRwwvf8ToJSSU1sIAng https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMdaRwwvf8ToJSSU1sIAng It is amazing that now you can hire people online to do almost everything a professional record label can do--or do it yourself. Of course, paying a few hundred dollars for services like I do typically doesn't yield the same results as a record label investing $100,000 for it. But unlike decades past, there is no longer a wall out there preventing me from getting worldwide distribution and hiring professionals to assist in every way.

mym1990 5y ago

This was a bit ironic to me: “it’s just to say that it’s okay to love a hobby the same way you’d love a pet; for its ability to enrich your life without any expectation that it will help you pay the rent.” Because I feel like a portion of people who get pets today expect to subsidize some of the cost with Instagram pages.

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stakkur 5y ago

It's surprising to me how often I read articles giving life advice (or admonitions) that are written by people who live inside the warm, shiny, not-very-representative bubble of California. I play a game with myself whenever I read articles like this, trying to guess if the story (a) Relies mainly on California anecdotes or (b)is written by someone living in California.

nlh 5y ago
I hear (read) what you’re saying, but I don’t understand the relevance. What does the author’s location have to do with the point she’s making?
- stakkur 5y ago
  What does the interface have to do with how the user sees the application?

okareaman 5y ago

My greatest wish, now that I am retired and learned a few new things, is that my fellow Americans (I can't speak to other cultures) would stop putting the focus on money. Money and the things it can buy are not that important in the larger scheme of things. If Americans didn't make life a competitive sport, then more would realize this. Near the end, it's all about what you do with time and doing what it takes to remain healthy to live longer and enjoy this time.

paulpauper 5y ago
Easy to say when you are retired and have $. Everything is getting more expensive. Healthcare especially. having more money and the peace of mind that comes with it is important. I would rather err on the side of earning too much than run out and be stuck.
- anon9001 5y ago
  So true. I don't see how anyone could feel financially secure with less than a few million in net worth. Everyone else is one accident away from drifting down into poverty.
  - tbihl 5y ago
    Satire?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Almost certainly not. A lot of people here seem to be convinced that, even if you can afford (admittedly expensive) health insurance, you're one slip on a banana peel away from bankruptcy. One can doubtless dredge up horror stories of one sort or another but they're circulating stories for a reason. (What is true is that people who can't work because of illness have an issue of income not coming in but that's somewhat separate from the healthcare costs themselves.)
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I'm living below the poverty level in Silicon Valley on a fixed social security income and I've never been happier. California Covered takes care of health insurance for almost no out of pocket money. I am healthy. I'm having fun exploring the online world, finding interesting things I never had time for before. I'm also exploring the Bay Area by throwing my bike on Bart or the Caltrans Train and getting around that way cheaply. I have almost no material things and no money anymore, but don't miss either. I realize a lot of people would be unhappy with no money, but I'm here to say I'm not. That's all.

ublaze 5y ago

This resonates well. I have a hobby software podcast (https://softwareatscale.dev/ https://softwareatscale.dev/) and the most common question I get asked is around how I'm planning to monetize it. I've had unsolicited offers from acquaintances to partner up to set up merch deals (?) and even NFTs to sell episodes.

crackinmalackin 5y ago

The tech industry is brutal in this regard. If programming and working on side projects isn’t your main hobby, then you are falling behind in some regard. Everyone wants freedom to create things their own way, while making bank in the process

jdhn 5y ago

Interesting how she talks about this being a big pressure in creative fields. I'm in the UX space, and it seems like people always like to talk about their side hustle, or getting a side hustle. This is especially true for connections on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, I couldn't care less about having a side hustle, and don't really want to have one as it seems that the people with side hustles are working all the time.

throwaaskjdfh 5y ago

Side-hustles are a thing because people think that if they have to hustle for someone, it might as well be themselves. But why hustle for anyone? We should establish a universal basic income for all, and leave hustling to people who are hustlers by nature.

NewEntryHN 5y ago

I agree with the general sentiment, although the author seems to miss the point that many people trying to monetize their hobby aren't trying to win more money, but simply to replace the time working in a pay-the-bill job with time spent working on their hobby. There is a catch, which is that monetizing will require dealing with business duties, which comes with the risk of alienating the hobby. It's not clear how it compares to wasting your lifetime on a career you don't really care about.

gumby 5y ago

> those with passion careers can have just as much career anxiety... I think people have forgotten that the origin of the word "passion" is "suffering"

huachimingo 5y ago
And "work" in romance languages meant "(being punched with) 3 clubs".[1] How funny to say "work makes the man" with that definition. [1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabajo_%28sociolog%25C3%25ADa%29 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https:/...

riazrizvi 5y ago

As developers, the trap is that we overemphasize how much any real business depends on the creative/product stuff. So we daydream about CEO roles where we can design a business where the creative product builders have their ‘rightful’ place at the top of the pyramid. When the reality is that every business basically shakes down to the same functions, and that founding your own tech business ultimately results in a rebalancing of your role, where you end up doing mostly mid-management in sales, finance, operations, tech, design, etc leaving you almost no time for the creative stuff you spent your life becoming great at.

shannifin 5y ago

Basically the problem with turning hobbies into hustles is the addition of uninteresting (and sometimes frustrating) additional work that comes with managing time and caring about customer satisfaction. The extra work can take all the fun out of it. Feeling the need to be constantly "productive" is, I think, really a separate issue. I also differentiate between wanting to do something vs wanting to have done something. It's easy to want to have written a novel, to have learned to play piano, or to have painted something. But if you don't enjoy the process (the actual writing, the practicing, etc), then you may just be torturing yourself for the sake of self-image. Find something enjoyable in the actual process and you won't need to force yourself so much, you'll gravitate toward it naturally for its own sake, and you won't feel guilty if you decide to just watch TV or phone scroll instead. (Plenty of books and articles out there on forming new habits.)

koheripbal 5y ago
I have to agree here. The pain point for the classic examples here are dealing with customers.

psychomugs 5y ago

I took advantage of the recent graduation season and hustled some photoshoots. It was a good experience where I met a lot of cool people and made enough to offset the cost of some new gear, but I probably wouldn't do it again unless I wasn't working a full-time schedule and could command a (much) higher rate. I already feel this encroachment in my main hustle; engineering is both a career and passion [1], but doing it as a living drains the reserves of wanting to do it outside of work. I recently watched an interview with Sofia Coppola right after Lost in Translation came out. She said that she made her living from her clothing company so that she could be artistically liberal in her filmmaking [2]. There's something about the truest "artist" being the one who can escape having to call themselves an "Artist." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai [2] https://youtu.be/nsf7cMjPa2I?t=475 https://youtu.be/nsf7cMjPa2I?t=475

whateveracct 5y ago

"Hustle" is the key word here. I'm currently working towards doing my hobby (gamedev) as the only thing I do. But the way I do it is collect corporate checks while allocating as much of my mind as possible towards improving my gamedev. So far it's not a bad deal - the hardest part is keeping sane in the face of the hellscape that is my corporate employers' other engineers. I have literally spent hours on Zoom calls listening to literal principal engineers discuss naming minutia. That at least gives me hope - turns out you don't need to be smart to be a principal. Easy money if I play my cards right. So while my goal is to do gamedev as my only income (pseudo-retiring in a sense) - it's fundamentally different.

shaftway 5y ago

I've run into this a lot lately with woodworking. I started it as a hobby during the pandemic, and I'm clearly still a beginner (just got my 3rd instagram follower that I don't personally know, woo hoo). But any time I show somebody a piece they tell me I should sell them on Etsy. I just finished my fourth project, a set of trays, and immediately I was told I should make them to sell. They're walnut, so just in lumber and resin a set of three trays cost $500. Then I probably spent 20 hours cutting, drilling, rabbeting, jointing, sanding, and finishing these things. I value my time at ~$100/hr. So who is going to spend $2500 on a set of trays when you can get something close enough for $150 at Ikea? Now the argument I use to shut them down is that it's a hobby. "But you could make money with your hobby." But then I have to deliver. When it's a hobby and a project doesn't go well, or you just get tired of working on it, you can put it down and walk away. If I couldn't put it down because I'm beholden to someone, and I need to deliver it, then it isn't a hobby any more; it's a job.