[HN Gopher] Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
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Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
Author : shantnutiwari
Score : 255 points
Date : 2023-07-04 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| analog31 wrote:
| I was passionate about music in high school, but went to college
| and majored in math and physics, while learning electronics and
| programming on my own. Now it turns out that those things are
| hobbies too. ;-)
|
| I'm glad that I didn't pursue music as a career. I actually make
| money playing, but not enough to support myself. I also do a lot
| of programming, but on my own terms, not as a software developer.
|
| One problem that I think doesn't get enough attention, is that
| most businesses _fail_. And most people hate working for failed
| businesses, especially ones that they can 't escape from.
| petabytes wrote:
| I had a similar situation with programming, I wanted to make a
| ton of money with a successful game, but I ended up quitting
| halfway through. I hated it. Eventually I settled on making a
| niche wifi app, and ended up enjoying most it. Didn't really make
| a whole lot of money but I definitely learned a lot.
| jfvinueza wrote:
| Malcolm Lowley writes on The Literary Situation (1958; first
| published 1947):
|
| "Aside from the hard-working authors of textbooks, standard
| juveniles, mysteries and Westerns, I doubt that two hundred
| Americans earned the major portion of their incomes, year after
| year, by writing hard-cover books".
|
| This was before television took over.
| majikandy wrote:
| I'm also curious. What do you love now that you paused your
| writing?
| bdw5204 wrote:
| Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the
| market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually
| wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money
| from it. If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than
| what you want, you're going to make garbage and further saturate
| a market that is already filled with garbage that was designed to
| cash in on "what the market wants". And you're not going to be
| good at it because you're not a large corporation that has
| perfected a soulless formula so your work is just going to be a
| worse version of what the large corporations are doing (soon that
| stuff will probably be produced by AI rather than humans).
|
| You don't turn a creative field into a career or a business until
| you know that what you want to make is going to be marketable or
| you are independently wealthy and don't need an income to live.
| And once you're successful in a creative field, resist the urge
| to pay attention to marketing data.
|
| A creative who doesn't have the backing of a large corporation
| needs to lead (i.e. innovate, challenge conventions, etc.) not
| follow. That's because you can either be better, worse or
| different than the competition. If you're not different and you
| have a smaller budget, you will inevitably be worse. That applies
| to startups and even incumbent underdogs in any line of business.
| a13n wrote:
| Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of
| entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are
| interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and
| therefore build something that nobody wants.
|
| If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but
| probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are
| stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn
| drab.
| jrockway wrote:
| I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least
| have one user. If you make what you think other people want,
| you might end up with zero!
|
| Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless
| touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a
| display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be
| infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they
| ended up being some of the defining products of our time.
|
| The worst case of working on your own thing is that you make
| something nobody else wants. The worst case of working on
| something you think other people want is that nobody wants
| it, and you get burned out.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Nobody wanted those products but they did want the problems
| solved that those products addressed.
|
| IMO, focus on the problems - those often exist before the
| solutions have manifested.
| version_five wrote:
| There's something to be said for building out your vision and
| testing whether others are interested. It was refreshing to
| see the grandparent post because the usual startup advice
| seems to be to abandon your vision entirely and build some
| average SaaS thing that's a composite of other successful
| things. (a) I don't think that actually works and (b) if
| people want to do that, why not just get a job, if you're
| effectively going to be just as constrained. It's much more
| fun to try and take a risk, if entrepreneurship is the space
| you want to play in.
| poisonborz wrote:
| I never really saw this. But I always noticed if a product
| follows a sharp vision of an individual/dev team, and not
| sales/research. Even if the product was no fit for me, it
| immediately felt to be more sympathetic, and even of better
| quality.
| siva7 wrote:
| For all i've seen over the many years in the industry i'm
| pretty sure founders who make only things they're interested
| in are a pretty small club. The vast majority of all the crap
| and startups you're seeing here are doing exactly what they
| believe is ,,what the market wants" because that's what
| they're being taught all the time here. Heck, most of Show HN
| gives me rather ,,what the market wants" vibes let alone YC
| applications.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| With ChatGPT it is worse: it is a stream of bots based on
| what people hope the market wants
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| I see two conflicting motivations here and everyone has to
| decide for a tradeoff between these two: Being happy and
| being rich(er).
|
| Do what the Market wants means making a tradeoff in favor of
| earning more (and becoming rich(er)).
|
| Doing what you want to do means making a tradeoff in favor of
| your happiness. You will perhaps earn less, but what you do
| is more in tune with your values.
|
| A tradeoff is not always required and both of these
| motivations may become synergies, but in the authors case, I
| think this is what happened.
| slimsag wrote:
| There's a reason those are lucrative businesses, regulation
| around them (correctly) prohibits new entrants. Probably not
| a great idea for a small team to try and enter those markets
| unless you genuinely have some secret sauce / niche.
|
| I do agree 'what you are interested in' is often wrong,
| that's a good starting point for ideas but after that you
| need to see if there is an actual market there.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the calculus changes a bit when you're trying to
| build a business around a hobby. If the entire point is to
| see if your hobby is going to make a good business, then you
| will naturally start with "what you are interested in", and
| the goal of the exercise will be to see if that matches up
| with "what the market wants".
|
| That feels like a reasonable approach to me, though -- as
| with anything -- you need to know to pull the plug as soon as
| you have some confidence that it's not going to work out,
| which might be harder to do for a hobby, since you presumably
| have some emotional attachment to it.
|
| > _Some of the most lucrative businesses are..._
|
| You don't really need to aim for "most lucrative". If you're
| trying to promote "hobby" to "business", I think you should
| just aim for "good enough to pay the bills and give me a
| comfortable lifestyle without working myself to the bone".
| Starting out with a goal like "I'm going to turn my hobby
| into a blockbuster business that gives me FU money in 10
| years" is probably unrealistic, but that's ok. More modest
| goals are just fine.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of
| "what the market wants"
|
| One sure difference between these two things is that you
| absolutely know what you are interested in, but your opinions
| about what the market wants are going to be speculative until
| you have customers.
|
| edit: i.e. judging what you think is beautiful vs. a
| Keynesian beauty contest.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| I agree with pretty much this whole chain of comments, at
| least in spirit.
|
| As someone who has turned his interests into his business,
| it really can be tough. I have always loved infrastructure,
| and I have always loved maintaining certain applications
| and workload types.
|
| On the one hand, you do start to understand after awhile
| what the "MVP" looks like. On the other hand you can
| eventually fairly well predict what your top feature
| requests will be right out of the gate.
|
| Integrating the two effectively while actually getting
| something out the door can be a real challenge. I have
| criticized many firms and offerings for not having "basic
| feature X," but as someone who is building a product that's
| effectively never complete, I'm sure someone could say that
| to me too, about at least a few things. Some come
| immediately to mind.
|
| And I'm still sort of surprised at times by what my own
| customers do and do not want or ask for, or even care
| about. When my interests are aligned with theirs, the
| product/service can move forward really quickly. When
| they're not, it can be a struggle to iterate effectively.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what
| the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually
| wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make
| money from it
|
| It doesn't sound like that's the case. This specifically talk
| about stories that they wrote for fun and for themself.
|
| I think the story is a little bit more interesting because even
| if you make something exciting for yourself, that doesn't mean
| it sells
| acchow wrote:
| > If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what
| you want, you're going to make garbage
|
| 100% agree. This is also why so much music is commercial
| cardanome wrote:
| > Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what
| the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually
| wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make
| money from it.
|
| People think they can get more cake by appealing to everyone
| but in the result make products that appeal to no one.
|
| The main problem I see over and over again with creatives when
| it comes to marketing is not being specific enough. Nothing
| appeals to everyone.
|
| You got to know you target audience. What age range, gender,
| general demographic are you aiming for? What other books are in
| the niche you are targeting? What do your reader like about
| them? What is your unique selling point?
|
| You might think that marketing a book with broader appeal would
| be easier. No. The more specific you can get, the easier it
| will be. People will gladly throw their money at you for
| finally scratching their specific itch, you just gotta find
| them.
|
| Chances are if you like something, there are other people out
| there who also like that thing and are willing to pay for it.
| Sure, there is a tradeoff, as smaller niches mean a more
| limited market and some niches can be too specific to be
| economically viable but let's be honest people overestimate how
| unique they are most of the time.
|
| But yeah, marketing sucks and not everyone is or wants to be
| good at it.
| pengaru wrote:
| > PASCAL: may I say something that I learned, without being too
| big? > > PASCAL: A guy goes out to eat in the
| evening... > > PASCAL: after a long day in the
| office, whatever. Go ahead. > > PASCAL: He don't
| want on his plate... > > PASCAL: something that he
| has to look and think, "What the fuck is this"? > >
| PASCAL: What he want is steak. This is a steak. >
| > PASCAL: I like steak, you know? > > PASCAL: Mmm,
| I'm happy! > > PASCAL: Do you see what I mean?
| > > PASCAL: But don't get me wrong. > >
| PASCAL: I think that your brother is good, goddamned chef.
| > > PASCAL: Maybe the best I ever see. > >
| SECONDO: He is the best. > PASCAL: Yes, but, >
| > PASCAL: this is what I have to say to you. > >
| PASCAL: Give to people what they want. > > PASCAL:
| Then later, you can give them what you want, eh? >
| - Big Night (1996)
| z3t4 wrote:
| You have to trust your own taste. If you do what you love you
| will know if it's good or not.
|
| If you are very good at something besides singing (everyone can
| hear if someone is good at singing or not) there is no audition
| you can go to, you have to be your own judge.
|
| The reality is that people will only read the top 10 books, or
| play the top 10 games, there's like a normal distribution curve
| where the most people gravitate towards the best sellers.
|
| Embrace and welcome any good talent in your niche, they will
| grow the market for you, and even if you only get the scraps,
| you could still make some money just by being in the same niche
| as someone extremely talented, because if people really like
| the nr 1, they will also try 2, 3, 4 next best in that genre.
| abraae wrote:
| It's a bit of a trope, but real success often comes giving
| customers not what they want, but what they need.
|
| As another poster noted, just chasing market fashions is a crap
| existence, better left to soulless corps that can burn workers
| in pursuit of the dollar.
|
| The good thing is that those same soulless corps will very
| seldom invest in something visionary, something that no one has
| done before. So the field is wide open to the pioneers.
|
| (Caveat: while I believe this strongly for software, I'm not
| sure how it translates to fiction writing, the OP's domain).
| rj45jackattack wrote:
| I made an account after years of lurking to say. This is it.
|
| I use to make and sell a very specific piece of hardware. The
| only reason I started a shop was to sell my surplus. It cost
| roughly the same for 1 as it did for 20. So I started selling
| them for $2 more than I paid and sold out. Then I did it again,
| and again. I sold about 100 units all together and never once
| did I hate my hobby during this time. At the same time, it
| never paid my bills. Nor did I ever think of quitting my job.
|
| Is there a name for flipping a hobby into a full blown career?
| Does Flanderization fit?
|
| I had to stop after the whole shipping shitshow during covid.
| Prices in my country have not recovered yet.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I hope you're not lurking on some network switch with that
| nick ;)
| wvenable wrote:
| > Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what
| the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually
| wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make
| money from it.
|
| If you want to make a business, you must make what the market
| wants. Making your own stuff and trying to make money from it
| is possible, but it's no longer a business.
|
| I'm a professional software developer and a hobbyist software
| developer and while I could have sold some of my hobby software
| I explicitly choose not to. The reason is that selling
| something immediately creates responsibilities that, for my
| hobby, I just don't want to have. A business is something of
| it's own beast.
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont really think you are disagreeing with each other. The
| first poster is saying find a niche where you can stand out.
| I'd agree with that - never fight a superior adversary on
| ther own turf. But it doesn't mean totally throwing market
| concerns to the wind.
| lisasays wrote:
| _If you want to make a business, you must make what the
| market wants. Making your own stuff and trying to make money
| from it is possible, but it 's no longer a business._
|
| Right, we get it - but it's not binary, and in turns out
| there's considerable room for nuance. In fact some of the
| happiest and most genuinely successful people I know got
| there from figuring out how to navigate this valley, and
| knowing when to trust their gut.
|
| It also has a lot to do with _taste_ -- specifically for
| stuff that is awesome and cool, but just a bit below the
| radar, as it were.
| wvenable wrote:
| I wonder if there's a distinction between doing what you
| love as work and doing what you love as hobby. I love
| software development and I especially love software
| development as work. I actually prefer to solve other
| people's problems than my own.
|
| Perhaps some of this discussion is just talking at cross-
| purposes because the fundamental thing that we're
| discussing is not the same.
| kelnos wrote:
| But you don't know what the market wants. I would think that
| a primary goal of turning a hobby into a business is to
| answer the question, "is my hobby something the market
| wants?"
|
| And sure, the answer might be a resounding "no", but you can
| change your focus once you figure that out. And that change
| in focus might make you hate it, which sucks.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You doing your hobby is never what the market wants. There
| might be a 10% intersection? Unless your hobby is business
| itself or you change what you want to what you actually
| need to do to make money.
| nurbl wrote:
| I agree, but the problem is how to avoid this. Once your
| livelihood depends on the thing you do for fun, it seems quite
| likely that you will start thinking about how to make it sell
| better. And after a while this may start to infect your
| inspiration... is your artistic integrity so strong that you
| can choose to do things that hurt your income?
|
| Of course the solution is to be financially independent
| already... but then you're not actually living off your art
| anyway.
| hugocbp wrote:
| Same thing happened with me and music. Granted, I was a teenager
| and nothing too serious, but loved writing some songs, getting
| known songs in new arrangements.
|
| It naturally progressed into forming a band, then we started
| doing small concerts. Before I could realized, most of my time
| was in spreadsheets to register the costs, the supplies we
| needed, transportation, on top of getting everyone to learn the
| same songs.
|
| In the end I got so burned out that I stopped playing almost
| completely. Went from 3-4 hours a day to 0 over years.
|
| Not the same as the author, but same case of trying to monetize a
| hobby completely killed the hobby for me.
| al_be_back wrote:
| In this case, the author chose to Self-Publish the book (amazon),
| and so they'd have to do their own Marketing, Networking,
| Editing, on-top of writing (the fun, creative part). If they'd
| had a Literary Agent, it may have worked out - Agent does the
| heavy-lifting i.e non-writing tasks.
|
| The writing business (books) is extremely competitive - keep a
| main job, write on the side (hobby) until sales / Agent /
| Publisher pays enough for you focus on writing full-time.
|
| Stephen King, "On Writing" covers this well, and it's a joy to
| read.
| jdkoeck wrote:
| Mmh, the real reason the author came to hate his passion/hobby is
| that he could not make money from it. It's that simple.
| ilyt wrote:
| "people don't want to buy it therefore it is worthless,
| therefore my talent is worthless" is easy generalization to
| make
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I love programming (not just playing with code) and making
| excellent things with code, and electronics and mechanisms. I get
| paid to be good at it and help others do so as well, and I love
| that, too.
|
| All that said, the author's warning is well heeded. There are
| things I've built and run at my own expense. They could be
| commercialized, but that bit doesn't seem like fun to me (I don't
| need the money, so there isn't a problem there to solve). I could
| give them to someone who would commercialize them, but that would
| _create problems_ for the new owners and old users - so again,
| not fun.
|
| Perhaps there is room for both - pure fun and enjoyment without
| obligation or commitment, as well as the commercial tangible
| benefit to others (i.e. paid for).
| jstanley wrote:
| What do you do where you get paid to make things with code,
| electronics, and mechanisms?
|
| I've built puzzles for escape rooms but there's just not enough
| money in escape rooms for it to be worth it.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I rarely get to work at all three. I think that is a
| manifestation of my principles - when getting paid I don't
| feel like what I _want_ to do comes into play as much as what
| my employer _needs_. When they do, it's awesome.
|
| Right now it's two of three (SaaS + embedded) and that's cool
| with me.
| gadders wrote:
| Kevin Kelly recently published a link to "The Incredible Secret
| Money Machine" which is about making a sustainable (but not
| massive) living from your hobbies.
|
| Might be of interest to somebody:
| https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf
| cushychicken wrote:
| The author of ISMM, Don Lancaster, just passed away earlier
| this week.
|
| He was also an electrical engineer by trade, and made a good
| chunk of bread in the 70s and 80s by self publishing books like
| The TTL Cookbook and selling them by mail order.
| sshine wrote:
| > His formula was, in a nutshell: Create training courses and
| sell them to others, just as he was doing. And at least one of us
| made big money (hint, it wasn't me).
|
| There is something special about courses about getting rich by
| making training courses about anything non-self-referential that
| attracts a lot more suckers than the "real" training courses.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Any get rich quick scheme is probably a scam. If it was as easy
| as, say, follow this formula, wouldn't we all be rich?
|
| Instead, to get rich quick, it is likely best to prey on people
| who are probably already broke and desperate, but we can't all
| be sociopaths.
| septillianator wrote:
| comes down to each individuals relationship with money imo and
| for that I say "its complicated."
| irrational wrote:
| My hobby is board gaming. I often see people on board game forums
| asking questions about wanting to open up a board game
| store/cafe. My thought is always, "Do you want to hate board
| games? Because that is the path to hating board games."
| firesteelrain wrote:
| When I was in Pigeon Forge, TN, they had a puzzle store. I
| thought it was the coolest thing. Tons of different puzzles.
| Niche. I couldn't see having one in every town though
| peruvian wrote:
| That's when people who homebrew coffee talk about opening a
| coffee shop. When you open a shop, even if it's a shop about
| your favorite hobby, 80% of the work is unrelated to that hobby
| and is now about running a business.
| haswell wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, but there are some people who very
| happily run board game stores.
|
| But they're the kind of people who love the process of running
| a store, and who also happen to love board games and decided to
| sell them.
|
| Put another way, I think there's a common mistake people make
| that "I love <this>, so I'll do <this> + business and it'll be
| great", without considering what it takes to do the business
| part.
|
| But I think the other mistake is assuming that working on
| something you love will automatically make you hate it. That
| really depends on your business acumen and mindset about the
| non-<this> factors involved.
| 8thcross wrote:
| many years ago, i wanted to turn my passion in photography to my
| career. I did a few professional gigs and found out that it was
| turning out to be a job; and i was enjoying less of what i loved.
| in fact, it was making me hate it. I was wise enough at that time
| to stop it.
| gumby wrote:
| > As if the only value anything has is by how much dollars it
| makes.
|
| Thanks for highlighting this corrosive attitude right up front.
|
| The current US frenzy in this attitude started in the 1980s
| (remember Boesky, portrayed by Hollywood as Gordon Gekko: "Greed
| is Good") and went into overdrive over the last two decades. But
| it's certainly been popular in other times in US history, as well
| as elsewhere.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I feel like this isn't so much a 2 decade thing but a 1 decade
| thing. 10-20 years ago, the open source and maker movement was
| at its peak. Even stuff like cryptocurrency was often motivated
| by interests other than money but instead ideological idealism.
| I think that changed a lot after a boom in startups and people
| just getting insanely rich for silly things... powerful fear of
| missing out killed a lot of the ideological idealism, and that
| created endless crypto scams and killed the impetus among much
| of the open source and maker movements.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| This includes the drive to monetise everything. Hobbies,
| interests, skills - everyone now thinks: "how do I turn this
| into a side hustle? Must monetise all the things..."
| jahnu wrote:
| Good to keep in mind for sure but don't assume it can't be done
| either. Currently I'm lucky enough to be managing it but there
| are two of us. Every day is great and I hope we can do this for a
| very long time.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| While I somewhat agree with the premise of this post, I think it
| is exacerbated by the fact that the author was trying to turn
| something like fiction writing into a business.
|
| When I think of businesses that suck in terms of economics and
| chances of success, fiction writing is one of the first things
| that come to mind.
|
| In general, you like things more when they make you a lot of
| money. A lot of fun things suck when you don't make money...
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I think you have it reversed, a lot of fun things suck when
| they make you money.
| vitro wrote:
| ..when they _have to_ make you money.
|
| I play a musical instrument for a long long time, nowhere as
| good as a very good players, but sometimes I get a small paid
| gig and it is actually a fun thing to do. My life doesn't
| depend on the income from playing so I just enjoy
| opportunities when they come and go.
| htss2013 wrote:
| Yes, exactly. It's not that adding money to your hobby per
| se makes you not enjoy it. It's that when you have to make
| money from a hobby, you lose agency over how you practice
| the hobby.
|
| It turns out the freedom to practice the hobby
| how/when/where you want, isn't just a nice to have, but an
| essential part of why you enjoyed the hobby in the first
| place.
|
| You might enjoy being with your wife, but if she controlled
| every aspect of how you were allowed to, or must, engage
| with her, on pain of starvation and homelessness, you
| probably wouldn't enjoy her anymore. You'd resent her as a
| slave resents his master, even if she is a relatively good
| master.
|
| Agency is essential to enjoyment of literally anything.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| How about this formulation:
|
| "A lot of fun things end up sucking when you expect them to
| also make you money."
| Robotbeat wrote:
| "A lot of fun things end up sucking when you expect them to
| also make you money ...but then don't. So you are forced to
| do sort of related unfun things instead that make a little
| bit of money for a lot of work."
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "a lot of fun things suck when they make you money"
|
| That has not been my experience...they become more fun.
| chongli wrote:
| It depends on your personality and your motivations. If
| you're intrinsically motivated to practice your hobby, you
| may not want extrinsic motivators. On the other hand, if
| you're naturally a business/entrepreneurial type who is
| extrinsically motivated (motivated by money), then yeah you
| may really enjoy turning your hobbies into businesses.
|
| I think it's unusual though. Hobbyists in general seem to
| be intrinsically motivated by their interest in the hobby
| itself. I know I personally am not motivated by money at
| all, seeing it as a necessary evil to survive in this
| competitive society. My goal is to earn enough money to
| have a stable and secure lifestyle, with enough free time
| to pursue my hobbies.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| You're an outlier. Studies have shown repeatedly that
| monetary compensation undermines intrinsic motivation:
|
| https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv
|
| > The authors synthesized the results from 128 controlled
| experiments. The results highlighted consistent negative
| effects of incentives -- from marshmallows to dollars -- on
| intrinsic motivation. These effects were particularly
| strong when the tasks were interesting or enjoyable rather
| than boring or meaningless.
| satellite2 wrote:
| Yes but no. It's always with disappointing rewards tgat
| those studies are done. Pay people considerable amount
| and then compare.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That's a different question. People like money. People
| may like the activity and the money combined more than
| just the activity. But the studies show that they like it
| less than the activity and the money not tied to one
| another.
|
| If Bezos wrote me a large enough check to never
| participate in specific hobbies again, I would take him
| up on it. I would be happier than before I took the
| offer. But I would clearly be even happier with a check
| that wasn't tied to ruining a hobby.
| marcianx wrote:
| I don't take it that way, and I'm deeply fortunate to be
| living the life suggested by GP. If I get to do what I'm
| passionate about even if it includes the closely-related
| grungy part to make it successful (not an altogether
| different job like marketing) and I am paid enough money
| to not have to worry about my daily needs and retirement
| savings, then I have a chance to spend a solid part of my
| productive day on it, engaging deeply, and building a
| deeper intuition, all the while not having the personal
| worries of stability at the back of my mind. My passion
| no longer needs to compete with my work for my mental
| energy. And I get to work with talented people who
| complement my skill, doing the part they enjoy and I
| don't, to make what we collectively build successful.
|
| That being said, I'm a software engineer, and that's a
| really fortunate occupation to be passionate above due to
| the breadth of its applicability (e.g. allowing one to
| work more closely on my topic of interest) and salary
| potential.
| NovaDudely wrote:
| John Carmack learned this the hard way with Armadillo
| aerospace. When the team went from hobbiests to
| employees, productivity either stayed the same or
| declined despite their hours effectively doubling.
| htss2013 wrote:
| It's amazing that society still puts so much stock into
| these types of impossibly confounded studies.
|
| Ok, so they found that people who are top earners are no
| more satisfied with their jobs than bottom earners.
|
| Might this be because top earners tend to be the types
| who neglect other aspects of their lives? Or who are
| hypercompeitive and are unlikely to be satisfied at any
| level, otherwise they would have stayed where they were?
|
| Or maybe the higher the pay goes, the higher the
| concentration of high self discipline people willing to
| endure things they don't like for money. Etc.
|
| And we are supposed to wave away all of these confounders
| because of controlled marshmellow experiments done on
| random students?
|
| I'm sure Harvard meta studies do the best job possible
| distilling insight from these studies. The problem is how
| insightful these types of studies are in the first place.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > It's amazing that society still puts so much stock into
| these types of impossibly confounded studies
|
| That particular example was a meta study of over 100
| other studies
|
| But sure, I'm sure your expertise in study design and
| statistics is enough to invalidate their work and the
| work of hundreds of other researchers simply because you
| don't agree with the conclusion.
| gusgus01 wrote:
| This whole discussion reminds me about the conflicting
| studies around the correlation or lack thereof of money
| earned and happiness. There was recently another paper
| about it that re-analyzed the data, so not a meta
| analysis, but an interesting example of study design and
| statistic interpretation: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.107
| 3/pnas.2208661120#executive-s...
| tcbawo wrote:
| Needing to extract money to live from hobbies that don't
| pay is stressful and awful. If your hobby does that easily,
| good on you. Having agency -- money to live and
| freedom/time to indulge in hobbies is the ideal.
| milesvp wrote:
| There seems to be a virtuous cycle with making money doing
| something, where you learn to be passionate for things
| because they make money. The opposite seems to happen with
| passion projects trying to make money, and I wonder if it
| comes down to reality vs expecations and being on the wrong
| side of dissappointment.
|
| "I can't believe what people are willing to pay for this"
| can be either a positive or negative statement depening on
| what you value.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I would say that the issue is really one of time. A lot
| of hobbies are leisurely, but running a business, meeting
| customer deadlines requires time management, and it
| doesn't help that a lot of hobbies are labor intensive.
|
| There is a difference between knitting a scarf for a
| Christmas gift and making enough scarves, all the time,
| so that you can afford the roof over your head. And even
| more so if you have clients anxious about timelines.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| But the author did make money?! So I'm not sure your final
| paragraph really represents an appropriate response. The author
| made money, but they were unhappy because they weren't doing
| something they enjoyed.
| input_sh wrote:
| > And yet, in spite of my passionate "passion", I never made
| enough money to quit the day job.
| Timpy wrote:
| I read a comment on hacker news that I cannot find now, but it
| resonated deeply with me. Don't try to answer the question "what
| do you want to be?", answer the question "what do you want to
| do?"
|
| I answered the wrong question, I said "I want to be a musician".
| And what I did was teach music I didn't care for, perform music I
| didn't care for, work for people and gigs I didn't care for, made
| a salary I didn't care for. I had high skills and expertise that
| wasn't being used; I was never paid for playing one of Bach's
| lute suites, I made a lot of money off of really simple wedding
| music.
|
| What do I want to do? Play music that I'm passionate about. Make
| enough money to not be uncomfortable. Work in a field where
| expertise and knowledge is useful on a regular basis. I'm very
| happy now to pick up gigs for free because I like the gig. And as
| a side gig, I'm a full time programmer.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I had a coach recently frame this as "what impact do you want
| to have?" and relatedly, "how big an impact do you think you
| can have?"
|
| In your case the impact might be something like "to inspire
| others who hear the music I play". Or it might simply be "to
| increase my own wellbeing by taking joy through playing."
|
| After all, there must be some underlying reason why music is
| important to you. So this framing can help unearth that and
| thus allow you to focus your efforts on those goals.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's the difference between an "identity" and a lifestyle. An
| "identity" pretends to be what you are, but it's really _how
| you want people to see you_ , and 99% of the time is based on
| people that you _admire_ (which I 'm pretty sure means "look
| at" in Romance.) To me, it's a sort of self-hypnosis.
|
| A lifestyle is what you do every day. Good news: If one likes
| to play music every day, it's a lot easier to do that to become
| whatever a "musician" currently represents in the society of
| the spectacle.
| d--b wrote:
| A-fucking-men.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| It's hard to imagine the economy of your hobby and all else that
| goes into any business. Taxes, marketing, customer service, and
| if you hire people, management. Very few enjoy these activities,
| let alone excel at them, especially with a hobbyists's mindset.
|
| The influencer is the closest to a marketing hobbyist, but from
| the many I've met, it often crosses the line into addiction and
| narcissism, which some see as talent.
| climatologist wrote:
| Let's think about what it means to "make money". The phrase
| itself is already misleading because no one can make money, money
| is "made" by the central banks by changing some numbers in
| mainframe databases. These mainframes are connected to some local
| distribution banks like credit unions which then enable economic
| activity by business loans and other kinds of "investments", e.g.
| local government services like street cleaning, trash pickup,
| churches, schools, electricity, sewage, &etc. On top of this you
| have peripheral financial engineering like PayPal and credit
| cards.
|
| At least that's the gist of it anyway. So no one can actually
| "make money" but what they can do is figure out how to tap into
| the flow of economic services that will get them indirect access
| to some of the numbers in the database managed by the central
| banks. At this point there are one of two things you can do which
| is either do something that enables governments to manage their
| populations by moving people around and keeping them clothed,
| housed, and fed (essential services) or you can provide non-
| essential services like keeping people entertained when they're
| not working and informing them of what's happening in the world
| at large, e.g. podcasts and newsletters. The problem is the
| following, there is no way to get rich from doing any of this
| because all of these things are saturated with enough people such
| that the overall money pie is already split between them pretty
| evenly so none of them are going to end up rich in any meaningful
| sense. This means the only way to truly get rich is to operate on
| a scale that no one has thought of before, e.g. Microsoft,
| Google, OpenAI, Amazon, Salesforce, SpaceX, Dell, Nvidia, AMD,
| Arm, Raytheon, Saudi Aramco, &etc.
|
| Most of the time people are just fighting over scraps and the
| best they can hope for is some steady source of income that pays
| their rent and affords them some basic luxuries like visiting Las
| Vegas and watching a few acrobatic shows.
|
| The people that are truly rich like Klaus Schwab operate in an
| entirely different world. Similarly for the executives at big
| pharma and big tech.
|
| I'd say the game is inherently unfair but it still doesn't
| prevent people from playing it to the detriment of all the
| players involved.
| cvoss wrote:
| > Most of the time people are just fighting over scraps and the
| best they can hope for is some steady source of income that
| pays their rent and affords them some basic luxuries like
| visiting Las Vegas and watching a few acrobatic shows.
|
| I'm sorry to react so strongly, but I think it's demeaning to
| suggest that the life condition you described is one of
| "fighting over scraps". It's also... (I'm struggling to find
| the right words) really entitled in a materialistic way to
| suggest (correct me if this is not what you suggest) that it's
| unfair that almost nobody can move from the average station to
| the station of uber-wealthy. Who is _owed_ the life of
| opulence? And who owes it to them? And how many people actually
| aspire to this extreme wealth, vs. recognize that there is a
| heck of a lot more meaningful things to do with life than make
| money?
| climatologist wrote:
| Which part do you disagree with? Money is a way to control
| the masses and it has always been used that way. The
| technology currently exists to do away with all wealth
| disparities and achieve a true meritocracy wherein individual
| talents are developed to benefit everyone collectively but
| most people can not conceive of what such a world would look
| like so they chase money and end up miserable. In the grand
| scheme of things money is entirely meaningless, it's a bunch
| of numbers in databases.
| badpun wrote:
| > The technology currently exists to do away with all
| wealth disparities and achieve a true meritocracy
|
| Can you name that technology?
| climatologist wrote:
| Give every child a library and see what happens. It could
| be electronic or otherwise.
| badpun wrote:
| Aren't there libraries everywhere already (in developed
| world at least)?
| climatologist wrote:
| Not really.
| hker999 wrote:
| They play games and watch mindless YouTube videos. This
| isn't a very good argument.
| climatologist wrote:
| I didn't say give them internet access. The internet is
| already too far gone down the drain to be salvaged.
| moneywoes wrote:
| In that case what do you suggest, do we ( i.e. the less
| fortunate not gifted these networks and connections) just give
| up?
| climatologist wrote:
| That's entirely up to you. I'm just explaining how the system
| works. Once you realize how the whole thing is engineered the
| rat race starts to look like insanity.
| fabiobruna wrote:
| Wouldn't most people say something about spending all day doing
| this (and make money). The second being a side effect of the
| latter.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The person who said this article should have been titled "Started
| doing Marketing for My Passion and It Appeared I Don't Love
| Marketing" is right on.
|
| I've met musicians who were totally uninterested in going to see
| anyone who wasn't "happening." You can't blame them, since
| they're trying to make a living.
|
| I always thought about programming: "I like it OK. Sometimes I
| like it a lot, but it's a living. I don't do it at home for fun."
|
| If you don't mind writing what sells, then that's a living. F.
| Scott Fitzgerald tried selling out in Hollywood, but he's not
| remembered for that non-passion part of his work:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald
| majikandy wrote:
| Funny, I bet many of us actually do do programming at home for
| fun! Also the day job. However I wouldn't do the day job type
| of programming at home for fun, so I guess it is a similar
| concept.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| A lot of people do. Nothing wrong with it.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Marketing for me is a soul eroding process.
|
| I can't help but quote Terry Pratchett in Equal Rites, where
| he's talking about the Zoon tribe, who genetically cannot tell
| a lie. Some Zoons figure out a way to twist the truth and they
| develop great respect for him.
|
| "It must be understood that while the majority of Zoon cannot
| lie they have great respect for any Zoon who can say that the
| world is other than it is, and the Liar holds a position of
| considerable eminence. He represents his tribe in all his
| dealings with the outside world, which the average Zoon long
| ago gave up trying to understand. Zoon tribes are very proud of
| their Liars.
|
| Other races get very annoyed about all this. They feel that the
| Zoon ought to have adopted more suitable titles, like
| "diplomat" or "public relations officer." They feel they are
| poking fun at the whole thing."
| pseudonym0us wrote:
| The article should be called:
|
| >Started doing Marketing for My Passion and It Appeared I Don't
| Love Marketing
| ryanisnan wrote:
| Agreed. As soon as the post pivoted from doing the writing, to
| all of the other aspects associated with running a business, I
| lost interest. The author would do well to understand the power
| of delegation.
| farley13 wrote:
| I'm not sure delegating would have saved him either. I think
| his boredom about marketing shows a missing essential
| curiosity about things. Boredom kills!
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| There is a lot to that thought. Perhaps the author just needed
| a book agent, someone who would take their creative output and
| find the publishers that wanted that sort of material.
|
| In my experience mentoring folks, when they hate what they are
| doing it often comes down to "not enough money" or "because
| someone would pay me to do it." The money discussion is always
| interesting because people often goal "lots of money" without
| asking themselves what they would do if they had "lots of
| money." I know a bunch of engineers who, through fortuitous
| circumstances got to the "lots of money" stage, decided to
| "retire" and do only what they wanted to do, only to find
| themselves going back to work because after you take a year off
| or so the lack of mental stimulation and challenge (the whole
| thing that attracted them to engineering in the first place)
| was missing in their life. They learned late that setting a
| goal of "interesting problems which challenge me creatively" is
| much better for them than "lots of money."
|
| I personally love programming, always have. But I have come to
| _hate_ programming something again that I already have, in a
| different framework /abi, because some third party had to re-
| invent the wheel and forgot that all wheels need axles and
| attachment points Etc.
| imadj wrote:
| The problem isn't that you started doing it for money, it's that
| you didn't get much money in return. Your "business" has failed,
| but if you had managed to make money, you would've been
| satisifed.
|
| Turning passion to business doesn't sound right, as if you're
| selling your soul, if you looked at it like "I tried to make
| money doing it but the ROI wasn't good" like any other project, I
| feel like it'd have been more graceful.
| kodah wrote:
| I think there's a way about going about these things that can
| make you hate it or enjoy it. I'll share some of my story as an
| example of how I compartmentalize my different activities.
|
| I code for myself, I have been since I was a kid. Often they're
| little utilities that I find fun, interesting, or useful.
| Sometimes they're tested, if for instance it's something running
| part of my house. Most of the time they're not because testing is
| arduous at times. I feel very attached to what I create for
| myself; it's often creative or exploratory in nature. I enjoy
| this kind of code and share it freely, usually without a
| warranty.
|
| I code for a large firm. The way I code there is entirely
| different. I'm very unattached to that code. It receives lots of
| criticism that I learn from but at the end of the day as soon as
| I put hands on keyboard that code is _their_ code. I 'm talented
| so I get to work on things I find interesting, but this job is a
| paycheck where I'm paid for meeting delivery deadlines at a
| standard of quality. As a result the code I write here is of a
| different nature, it's easily maintainable, testable, and quite
| rote. This money funds my day to day life and savings account. I
| enjoy my coworkers and select them carefully to the best of my
| ability but it's a job at the end of the day.
|
| I also have a consulting business. I build solutions for clients
| or help them attain their goals. This job isn't _just_ a paycheck
| because I often work with small and medium businesses who don 't
| know what they need or how it needs to be done. I get more agency
| than I do at my FAANG job, but I'm still working to get paid
| according by meeting the clients goals. The code I write here is
| less rote than my enterprise code, but not as creative as my
| personal code. This money usually funds projects around my house
| or trips. I enjoy helping small businesses, but it's a job.
|
| I also have some for-profit ventures I work on with friends. I
| have much more agency here, but I'm working to serve the needs of
| potential and current customers. My quality standard is higher
| but it's not enterprise code; it's not quite as rote as my
| enterprise code but a little more on the creative side. The goal
| here is to eventually replace my corporate job. I have fun doing
| this because it's with people I enjoy but it's a job.
|
| Compartmentalizing my commitment and knowing my desired outcomes
| has greatly helped balance this whole act. Outside of those
| things I have other serious hobbies: biking, gardening, camping,
| festing, recreational hallucinogens, spending time with my dog
| and my partner. Many of these overlap.
| twodave wrote:
| How do you prioritize your time?
|
| I see a lot of similarities in us. I feel the same way about my
| main job, though at a smaller firm. I also consult with small
| businesses on the side and have had very similar experience.
|
| What I don't have are any for-profit ventures (of my own or
| with friends), and I've almost totally stopped coding for
| myself. I used to write code for fun all the time, and would
| wonder that many of my classmates/coworkers didn't do this. But
| I'd like to recapture it. I'd also like to take a few risks
| without quitting my job. I can probably spend 10-15 hours/week
| between all side/personal ventures combined. Currently I have
| all of that going towards the same consulting project, and I've
| found it somewhat unpalatable to "spend" the opportunity cost
| of working for myself instead.
| kodah wrote:
| > How do you prioritize your time?
|
| When I worked in an office this was difficult. I had to
| assign values to certain activities, sometimes subliminally.
| For instance, being that my personal coding was a lot more
| creative it sometimes taught me concrete enough patterns that
| I could take to work. That made it a higher order of value. I
| was making enough money at my day job that consulting wasn't
| _needed_ , but I took less time off as a result. Gardening
| was a higher order of value because I find it very cathartic,
| and I'd end each day with a bike ride through San Jose.
|
| Now I work from home and it's much easier. If I need time to
| think I'll go pull weeds; weeds are a weekly activity and
| gardens rarely require huge chunks of time commitment unless
| you're making something new. I do my day job 8-4 and use
| breaks to garden or ride my bike. In the evening I work on my
| other money making ventures. I don't need to do so many
| decompression activities later in the day because they're
| spread throughout the day in between work.
|
| At least once a month my partner and I reserve a weekend to
| do something together. It could be restaurant or camping,
| sometimes a show. This, I think, is key for maintaining
| healthy relationships as a busy person.
|
| > What I don't have are any for-profit ventures (of my own or
| with friends)
|
| This took me a while to find. I was always willing to work on
| new things, but it took my friends getting to stages in their
| lives where they wanted to do this. Working remotely taught
| me skills to make this more possible as well.
|
| > Currently I have all of that going towards the same
| consulting project, and I've found it somewhat unpalatable to
| "spend" the opportunity cost of working for myself instead.
|
| I found a purpose for my consulting. It funds projects or
| trips that I already know that I want to do. Knowing that
| it's a budget extension tool and having a toolkit I can draw
| from to avoid situations where I have to learn while
| consulting has helped me a lot.
|
| > I've almost totally stopped coding for myself.
|
| I usually work on stuff where I'll continue to get value out
| of it day after day. Offline home automation is where I used
| to sink a ton of time but I yield benefits from it every day.
| When I got into kombucha brewing I built a system to help me
| journal batches. Then when I felt confident in that system to
| produce reproducible results I turned it into an app. It's a
| shitty Django app with frontend framework but it's actually
| immensely fun to hack on and it yields delicious kombucha
| every 10 days.
| twodave wrote:
| Ha, I started a little kombucha brewery as well, and ended
| up ditching it because it was too much work to "always have
| kombucha". The supplies instead now sit in my cabinet and
| mock me. Thanks for letting me peek into your routines a
| little. I think I see a couple things here I can implement
| myself without totally upending my life.
| kodah wrote:
| Take it day by day! None of what I do was planned
| overnight. I just began incrementally incorporating new
| things in as I saw opportunities and potential
| commitment.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Of course it did.
| gjvc wrote:
| Turning my hobby into a job made me hate it. Wish I'd become a
| plumber.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I think people who have never run a business believe that running
| say, a bakery, involves baking all day. Anyone who has ever run a
| business should know that is false. Running a business involves
| doing all the stuff around the main task (marketing! accounts!
| infrastructure! customer support!) so that the people doing the
| main task can get on and do it.
|
| If you understand this you won't turn your hobby into a business
| and be disappointed.
| anyfactor wrote:
| With hobbies the expectations are usually limited to your own
| ability. You account for the limited external influences and
| you are on it for the ride. With a business you can't avoid
| being hopeful. You can't avoid being subject to luck as the
| core factor of your success. It is a miserable experience to
| see that thing you are most passionate about isn't yielding any
| success.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| I've met many people who love beer and think they should start
| a brewery.
|
| All I can tell them: I hope you like cleaning. Really like it,
| because that is what 90% of the job is.
| [deleted]
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Similarly, I tell them, "do you own rubber boots? Do you want
| to own rubber boots?"
| brianpan wrote:
| This is how I felt when I got one of the original Roombas.
| It's great if you don't like vacuuming but really like robot
| cleaning and maintenance.
| kelnos wrote:
| Hah! Fortunately they've gotten a bit better now.
|
| But instead of spending my time vacuuming, I instead spend
| my time picking stuff up off the floor that will get the
| robot stuck.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I like trying to reseat it on the charger multiple times
| per day.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| is this still a problem?
|
| I had a Roomba 10 years ago and that was the usual
| problem I had with it. That and having to pick up a rug
| so it wouldn't get caught.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Am I the only one who detests the term 'creative' as a noun? It
| seems to have come into being in the last few years and I just
| hate it. It feels like if you're not a creative then you're not
| creative. We're all creative in some way, so calling yourself 'a
| creative' is just daft.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I'm also not a much fan of 'creative' as a noun for much of the
| same reasons. I feel this way about how we commonly use
| 'talent' to mean - "They are magically gifted in ways that are
| innate", as if they rolled 18's in all their stats, and not
| "This person has achieved a level of skill that is remarkable."
| kashunstva wrote:
| > about how we commonly use 'talent'
|
| I think the Anders Ericsson "10,000 hour" theoreticians would
| agree with you. And yet there are studies that point to a
| smaller effect of practice than Ericsson proposed. (Rather,
| practice may explain a smaller amount of the difference
| between cohorts that are divided by some measure of ability.)
| Very likely it's a nature _and_ nurture phenomenon,
| particularly at the highest levels of certain fields of
| pursuit.
| carl_sandland wrote:
| The market often doesn't know what it wants until it taste's
| something. I'm wary of any true 'formula' for creating art. It
| must be hard for artists to be heard (ironically given our
| digital age). Patreon is a good model?
| ilyt wrote:
| _shrug_ I turned one of my hobbies that I like into paying for
| other hobbies I like. The key thing I was relatively good at it
| so finding people to pay me to do it on good conditions was easy.
|
| I might do that hobby far less in free time but it is far better
| than doing something I hate for a living.
|
| So I guess key point here you need to _also_ be relatively
| competent and the hobby has to be marketable. I 'd be miserable
| if my ops jobs would just be managing someone's shitty Wordpress
| instances all day.
|
| As article's author showed being mediocre in market with a lot of
| competition probably won't get you all that much money, passion
| or not.
|
| Also, it is sometimes worth to leave the "business" part to
| someone else and just find a job. I absolutely hate anything
| _around_ a business so it is fine tradeoff for me to have someone
| else manage majority of it, find customers etc. rather than be
| whole one man shop.
| lynx23 wrote:
| This is why I never attempted to find a programming job. I am the
| typical nerdy polyglot, having dabbled in a two-digit amount of
| programming languages. But I somehow always knew, if I had to do
| this 8 hours a day, for projects I am likely not intrinsically
| motivated to work on, I'd likely hate it after a few weeks. I
| envy those which managed to make this passion into a paying job
| without loosing the love for it.
| asddubs wrote:
| So what do you do for a living?
| lynx23 wrote:
| sysadmin.
| ilyt wrote:
| So what's you work and do you enjoy it?
|
| For me the key is just having other hobbies. I do less of that
| (which is vaguely defined ops work + some programming) as hobby
| because I do it at work, but it's not like I lack other
| hobbies.
|
| I usually go back to it when the job takes me away from it (say
| we're speccing project for the client or other non-work that is
| required to get work later down the line).
|
| It's essentially sacrificing one hobby for another. Sure I no
| longer tinker with penguins all day but I can afford stuff for
| my other hobbies and still not hate my job.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, I loved programming when I was introduced to it in 6th
| grade or so. There was an after-school program where we could
| go to the high school and use their TRS-80 computers. I was
| instantly hooked.
|
| Fast forward through a career of doing it, and I am sick of it.
| When I retire I want to de-tech my life as much as I can. I'll
| probably keep a smartphone but I don't think I'll have a
| computer in the house.
| acheron wrote:
| pretty much. I sometimes vaguely remember when I used to like
| programming.
| pseudonym0us wrote:
| >the typical nerdy polyglot, having dabbled in a two-digit
| amount of programming languages
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
|
| > But I somehow always knew, if I had to do this 8 hours a day,
| for projects I am likely not intrinsically motivated to work
| on, I'd likely hate it after a few weeks
|
| You just play with programming languages on the surface.
| Programming is something different and chances are you won't
| like it.
|
| >I envy those which managed to make this passion into a paying
| job without loosing the love for it.
|
| Why envy? Just find activity you love.
| kaashif wrote:
| I find my job as a software engineer and programming for fun to
| be extremely different, to the point where my job hasn't
| damaged my passion for fun programming on whatever I want.
|
| It's like if you had a passion for painting and got a job that
| consisted of 50% deciding what solid colour to paint walls and
| 50% painting walls solid colours.
|
| This varies a lot. I could imagine a game dev whose hobby
| resembles their passion a lot more.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| This is exactly why I'm pursuing programming. I hate it with a
| passion. I'm an artist at heart, so programming is a great fit
| because, not only does it pay much more than art, it's
| completely artless, so it won't ruin my desire for making art
| at the end of the day.
| sgbeal wrote:
| > ... it's completely artless,
|
| Then you're obviously doing it wrong. Programming with
| passion, is an art unto itself.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Programming is certainly not artless.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Programming is used to make a lot of art, you could combine
| the two.
|
| I also think that programming well is an art as much as it is
| science/engineering/math
| robocat wrote:
| > programming is completely artless
|
| Strong disagree - although it depends on how you define art
|
| Is adding form to function artless? Is architecture artless?
|
| If you use a highly choreographed engineered process for
| creating a piece of art - does that make the outcome artless?
| One way I categorise artists I have met is engineer-type
| artists versus discovery-type artists:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31981875
|
| i also think art is defined by the perception of the viewer
| (and has far less to do with the creator than is usually
| presumed!)
| keiferski wrote:
| I wish more people would write about "subsidizing" your hobby
| business with a more reliable source of income. If you're a
| remote worker with some schedule flexibility, for example, you
| can probably run a low-contact business like a bookstore or art
| gallery without much interruption to your work day.
|
| Just set up a desk in your shop and take a break when the
| occasional person wanders in. Not having to worry about your
| hobby business being profitable enough to pay the bills
| immediately - or ever - seems like a nice way to maintain your
| interest in it.
| FabHK wrote:
| Advice from a friend: Never do your PhD in a subject you love,
| because afterwards you'll hate it.
| robocat wrote:
| I only did a Bachelors in Engineering - super passionate about
| electronics when I started! Had zero interest when I finished -
| something to do with academia (and I come from a very academic
| family background)
| huijzer wrote:
| How about "Never do a PhD, because afterwards you'll hate it"?
| pseudonym0us wrote:
| How about "Never do, because afterwards you'll hate it"?
| BizarreByte wrote:
| This is unfortunately true more often than not at least in
| my experience.
| logicprog wrote:
| Never do, there is no try
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Did PhD in a topic. Still like the topic. My advice: people
| over generalize from their n=1 experience of doing a PhD. There
| are _so many_ differences between fields, universities,
| supervisors...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I actually enjoyed my PhD studies (in Algebra). "Love" would be
| a strong word, but discovering new interesting mathematical
| facts was a cool activity.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I still love the subject I did my PhD in.
|
| I did get thoroughly disenchanted with academia though.
| DFHippie wrote:
| This was my experience. My advisor said, "You can do that,
| but no one will hire you." I decided I'd finish my
| dissertation on a topic that interested me then become a
| programmer. And here we are.
| throwuwu wrote:
| The only way to avoid this is to make the business a hobby too.
| nottorp wrote:
| Basically if it's a hobby you can say "fuck it, i don't feel like
| it today" and if it's a business... nope.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I firmly believe that if you follow your passion and create
| something that solves a problem you're passionate about, that no
| one else has solved yet (i.e. with the features you care about,
| at a price you can afford), you'll find others with the same
| passion who want what you're selling.
|
| That's not the same as saying you can sell "anything", or that
| you can definitively strike it rich doing so.
|
| My simple math is this. There are 8 billion people on the planet.
| If you can create something that appeals to just 1 out of 800,000
| people (or 0.0000025% of the population), you should be able to
| attract 10,000 people who at least follow you online. It won't
| happen overnight, but if it's something you're passionate about,
| there are at least 10,000 other people who share that passion and
| are looking for what you're offering.
|
| If you can't find a way to monetize 10,000 followers, you're
| doing something wrong.
|
| But if you're not solving your own problems, and if you're not
| pursuing your own passion, there's no reason to assume others are
| passionate about the thing you're just doing for the money. Even
| if they are, they're likely to see through the facade.
| thealchemistdev wrote:
| Pretty much my driving force. And it's not about getting rich.
| I'm solving my problems and looking for people who feel the way
| I do about how it should be solved. Since "there is nothing new
| under the sun" and I'm not special, the odds are in my favor.
|
| Thank you. Today was the best day for the reminder.
| avinoth wrote:
| I used to do programming projects on the side for almost 10 years
| now. Programming has been my hobby, passion or time-pass whatever
| you could call it.
|
| At the beginning, these projects was my vent from the day job to
| learn new tools/tricks, try out random stuff, nothing specific.
| And I mostly don't finish it, I just move on, because I didn't
| have to complete those. Some were open source, many weren't.
|
| And then one of my project that I spent hardly few hours on got
| some 1000+ upvotes on ProductHunt. So many emails, new follows,
| it was exhilarating. It pegged me into submitting my next project
| to PH as well. Though it didn't get as much recognition, it was
| covered by few tech journals, then some more followed. Suddenly I
| had users who were using something that I've created and I
| started charging for it. When it started making money, albeit
| little (i think at the most it was $100/mo), it changed things.
|
| A thought arose, "I like building sideprojects, what if I get to
| do this full time!". It was exciting!
|
| After that, I could never go back to working on my projects for
| just "fun". It always had to have some business reason. Can it
| work? Is the idea worthwhile? What is the revenue potential and
| so on. Suddenly, I'm not just programming, but doing customer
| support, marketing, trying to promote the project, etc.
|
| Eventually, I wasn't doing the thing that I enjoyed and by
| pursuing it for commercial motives, it had become something else
| entirely.
|
| I think many of us fall into this pit either by chance or being
| egged from outside. In my case, what I enjoyed was just
| programming. I conflated it with building a business. Unless you
| are famous or successful, almost anything that are pursued by
| passion alone, had to morph into something if you want it to
| support your life.
|
| I just went full-time a month ago to try and build some
| profitable products. And I'm trying to get that "fun" part into
| the full-time thingy again. Can I truly work on things I enjoy,
| try new stuff and still make money out of it? Only time will
| tell. If the results don't come, so be it.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| This blog is like Selfawarewolves ...
|
| "if you don't have the big dolla's in your bank account, you are
| a failure."
|
| "fiction that sells is in ... mainstream genres"
|
| "one genre I love writing is comedy-horror .. books like these
| are not mainstream."
|
| "I never cracked the Amazon algorithm; I never got 10,000 fans on
| Facebook; I never got a huge email list of people"
|
| I mean, you can't make up this lack of self-awareness.
|
| If you're going to write offbeat fiction, set your goals
| appropriately! Oh wait, the author did!
|
| "I was still hoping to make some money, [not] more than a fancy
| night out each month."
|
| And then still wrote this blog!
| asimjalis wrote:
| Maybe instead of asking "how can I monetize this" ask "who else
| might be interested in this and how can I reach them?"
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| My hobby/passion became my day job. I'm no longer passionate
| about it, nor is it a hobby anymore. On the flipside - it's a
| great job, pays well, and I still find the work interesting (just
| not enough to spend my free time on it).
| majikandy wrote:
| Typo: "if you love someone" should be "if you love something". Am
| I allowed to point out a typo? If not I'll delete this.
|
| I liked the article, you're a good writer.
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