
I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore; Every Hobby Is an Attempt to Make Money - _davebennett
https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/making-money-out-of-every-hobby/
======
nisa
I'm doing the opposite - doing unpaid work for a local hackspace like caring
about the local non-profit mesh network and doing it-stuff for a local
university group.

People just don't seem to grasp the concept at all: a lot ask why we run the
mesh network and how we finance it - if you explain them it's run for free and
there is no profit motive they think you are crazy. It's also surprisingly
popular to assume for free = useless - some declined running a node due to
this.

On the other hand working for free in uni context is basically self-slaverly -
lot's of work, lot's of stuff breaks constantly if you run your typical FOSS
stuff and nobody is seeing the work and most don't care or at worst you are
blamed and new people advocating their favorite commercial cloud services.

It's still fun and I can learn a lot, run some infrastructure for free where I
can test stuff but you really need to be careful to not foul yourself and
depending on the org you are in to not just work for free.

The saddest thing about the university thing is: If you advocate to pay that
position a lot of - I'm just blunt here: "rich kids" advocate against it
because you are at uni anyway and they tell you it's an honour to do this...
however if they don't get refund for partly insane travel costs for their
university pet project hell breaks loose...

~~~
agumonkey
Told that on Reddit few days ago. 70yo neighbor asked me to fix her laptop
antivirus[0]. The thing was sluggish. I came back the following day
(unsollicited) to show her a live linux so she can see her laptop full speed
(no hdd or os cruft). When i left she asked me how much i wanted.

Social tissue is an odd beast. Friendliness is fragile and people dont like
freebies. Also i suspect some Stockholm syndrom, since every aftersales ask a
lot, they assume anything must cost a ton.

[0] which she paid for when things were back in order.

~~~
hprotagonist
as long as it doesn’t spiral out of control into dependency, my normal
response to someone demanding to pay me for some kindness i’ve done them is
either a request for payment in kind (“you know, those pies you bake sometimes
always smell delicious from next door...”, “hey, you’re an IPA guy right?”,
etc.) or a request to pass it on and report back what they helped someone else
with.

I don’t need to take money from neighbors, but i known how itchy it is to feel
like you owe someone a debt, and there’s a barter/trade solution that works
nicely here and is somehow fundamentally more human.

~~~
asark
IIRC Graeber wrote quite a bit about how a kind of fuzzily-accounted, low-
level, shifting, mutual debt can be a big part of close human relationships
(relatives, friends) in his _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_. I recall in
particular his using the example of a child "paying off" all perceived debt to
a parent as a way of severing ties with them.

~~~
hprotagonist
There are parts of the world in which paying off everything you owe to, say, a
business partner, is a polite way of saying "i am about to cease doing
business with you".

------
pmlnr
Social pressure on this is also ridiculous. Every time you start doing things,
even if you actually stick to it as a hobby to make you happy, people, inc.
family, will go "but you could make money out of this".

Don't fall for it. Most of us will not be able to do money from art, from
photography, from aikido. Enjoy it, do it for your own sake, to balance your
life.

~~~
amrrs
Does it have to be mutually exclusive? I mean, Can a hobby that we enjoy to
have fun not also make money?

Here's the relationship is unidirectional - do something for fun and if it
makes money then it's well and good. Why to drop that just because it makes
money (which isn't the original motive).

~~~
TeMPOraL
The article highlights how trying to make money can quickly and thoroughly
poison your hobby. The golden quote:

> _“Hmm…I want to write a book. I would really love to write a sappy romance
> novel because I think they’re so fun to write. But I need to turn it into
> profit, so I should do market research and see what’s trending and build off
> that. Self-help is big, let’s try to focus on that, even though I personally
> hate self-help books.”_

Note the change. "I really want to write a romance novel. I did market
research. Self-help sells better. I'll write self-help then."

Following this thinking, you'll end up doing something you hate (and probably
produce a barely sellable garbage). Hobby is about a thing ("I want to write a
romance novel"). Making money is about money, and the thing is only means to
an end ("I'll write whatever sells best, and maybe I should reconsider whether
I can do something else than writing for even more money.").

I'd argue that even in professional life, this kind of thinking taken to the
extreme is poison, and part of what ruins our societies and the planet. That
is, companies which are really indifferent to what they're doing, and only
focused on whether they can make money on it.

(One could argue that this is how market economy is supposed to work - don't
think for yourself, don't feel for yourself, just do what the Market tells you
to. We can see both good and bad consequences of that thinking all around us.)

~~~
bluGill
Somebody needs to write self help books for the people who need them. That
somebody should do a lot of boring research (note that I said should: the
implication that they might not is intentional).

Society would fall apart without people who clean sewers, take the trash, and
many other tasks that are unpleasant. Maybe you are lucky enough to get paid
well to do what you love. Maybe you are not willing to do some unpleasant job
that would pay better than your own. Likely you are unable to do some jobs
(lack of training or lack of physical ability). No matter what you do, and no
matter what your abilities: there is some other job that you could do instead.
The market economy works because it provides motivation for people to not do a
job they would love and instead do something else.

~~~
rabidrat
This conversation is about hobbies. No one is cleaning sewers as a hobby (they
wouldn't even let you!)

~~~
bluGill
That was my point: someone needs to clean sewers, and nobody would do it as a
first choice.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Then again, is using the same whip to drive people to cleaning sewers and
writing books an optimal solution?

------
LeonM
As you grow older your time becomes more valuable.

But I think the author should take a break from reading sites such as HN, IH,
etc. Because in this crowd, everybody seems to be obsessed with having a
successful side-business making hundreds or even thousands a month.

I take days off from work to work as a mechanic on race cars. I do it for free
and enjoy doing it. I have friends who are professional mechanics who think I
am crazy for doing their job for free. But it's not all about money, it's
about how you enjoy to spend your time.

~~~
bigred100
I would think it’s more valuable when you’re younger due to the compounding
effects of skills or knowledge gain

~~~
TravelAndFood
Interesting. But when you're older, you have less time. Scarcity usually
drives up value.

How to reconcile these two ideas?

~~~
brixon
Depends on what you mean by older. You have less time because you chose to
have less time. Let's ignore 40 hours for work and 56 hours for sleep, the
rest is based on choices you made along the way. Could be kids or commitments
or location demands or _____, but the scarcity of time does not change with
age, it changes with the accumulation of decisions that consume that time.

~~~
SomeHacker44
I wish there was only 40 hours for work. At my current place 45-50 is more
common. Add another 10-12 hours of commuting, at least 2-3 hours for personal
grooming (and my wife is probably double that), and exercise/stretching which
becomes increasingly important as you age. So, yes, there is little time for
hobbies after accounting for my kids, my wife, the dog, the housework, etc.

------
jefe_
I started embracing and justifying spending time on hobbies when I realized
they give me something to talk about with non-IT people, and that is valuable.
If your hobbies are IT work, and your work is IT work, there aren't many
aspects of your life to which people outside of that domain can relate, in
fact it can all seem quite boring and you end up with, "I'm doing well, work
is going well." But if you can mention you went hiking somewhere and took a
new lens for your camera, there are several things in there to which most
people can relate and then maintain an interesting conversation.

------
johnstorey
This is a common issue, but most do not recognize it. Fewer do anything about
it.

My feeling is that the author's definition of what is needed, and what is
normal, is out of whack. The author has apparently made an income that allows
for survival, but along the way has become conditioned to only work for
profit. When you feel profit is survival, this makes sense. In the United
States for example, you are given this message all day, every day.

But once you get past survival needs, and want to turn back to things that
give life meaning, you can find you are wired to only evaluate the profit
potential.

What helped me in the past when I was in this trap was volunteering for a 2
week "vacation" helping people much worse than me. I like to travel, so I
would volunteer for 2 weeks at someplace like La Joya orphanage in Mexico. The
founder needs help teaching and building sustainable homes for children that
can't even imagine the good life. Give some of yourself to them, and see how
fulfilling it can be.

When you get back suddenly just enjoying music, reading poetry, or doing
something else for personal satisfaction will seem much more worthwhile.

~~~
Nelson69
+++

You don't have to travel far to do this. Any medium sized city in the US will
have soup kitchens and organizations that try to help the homeless, volunteer
some time and energy and you'll get a radical perspective reset. And make no
mistake about it, it's hard. Do it until it feels comfortable.

It will help you in a lot more ways than you think. You might be able to
sustain a transactional relationship with a partner, but you won't have a
really great one if one or both of you is continuously keeping score; things
just get out of balance and there is nothing that can "fix" it if maintaining
that balance is a need. It's sort of obvious too when you're objective about
it, there is nothing you can ever do which is equivalent to growing a baby in
your wife's body for 9 months, no amount of "girl's nights" or whatever will
ever equal that out. I have no idea how you can be a good parent if there is
some sort of return you're expecting other than a smile and a hug; it's sort
of the ultimate in that you just give and give and then give some more.

------
jkingsbery
I would highly encourage everyone to watch Kent Beck's 2015 RubyConf talk
(which has nothing to do with Ruby):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aApmOZwdPqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aApmOZwdPqA)

In the talk, he discusses a few things, but one thing he discusses in the
importance in doing things periodically for which we are beginners. If you are
getting paid to do something, you're probably not a beginner. One way to
practice not making money is take up a hobby in which you are a beginner. I
don't mean like: I'm a programmer by day, and I YouTube about programming by
night (that's still about programming). Find something completely unrelated to
what you're doing.

~~~
0x445442
It must be nice for Kent to just trot off and investigate whether or not his
work "matters". For the rest of us, this is a non starter because that effort
can't be captured in a story or a task attached to a story on the Jira board.
Us mortals might be able to convince our boss that our investigation is worthy
of a spike but it'd be bounded to a couple of hours. For us dark matter
engineers we need to tell ourselves that, because we're paid, our work
"matters".

~~~
john-radio
What is a dark matter engineer?

~~~
JakeTheAndroid
people who work on things you'll never see.

------
veritas3241
I feel this too. It's perverse and it makes it feel like nothing is worthwhile
unless it scales and earns a profit. I get that it's all in my head, but it's
a real undercurrent in the west, particularly in tech. I'm not quite sure how
to free myself of it...

~~~
50
All that is weighing heavily on us is due to being attached to false
assumptions. There is, after all, no actual social reality by which to judge
ourselves. It’s all made up and seemingly supported by a deranged consensus
reality. We are free as we are before and beyond any false assumptions. There
is no need to be anything special and therefore, there are no serious moves to
make.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Yes! There are no serious moves. Nothing in life is really serious, not even
death.

But I feel like I need to reach some impossible state of ego integrity or ego
death or something to actually live by that line of thinking.

So instead, I'm moved by fear and contrived seriousness. I want to be
successful, or at least successful enough that one day I can spend my 80s
seriously and nostalgically navel-gazing to bewildered viewers outside of my
social reality, convinced that I am extremely special. [0]

:3

0: [https://youtu.be/mmfjM-SGlGs](https://youtu.be/mmfjM-SGlGs)

------
EvilGrin
I brew mead. There's no way I could make money from it. However I can make
enough to get myself and everyone around me blind drunk. Free mead quickly
stops a lot of arguments.

~~~
cuntfucker
What resources did you use to learn? I am planning on making some this summer.

~~~
EvilGrin
Well, you'll be pleased to know its very easy.

My first stab at it was simply following a youtube tutorial on how to make it
based on what you can buy at the supermarket (bread yeast, mineral water,
honey and some raisins). You mix it all up and leave it to ferment in the
water bottle. This turned out rather well.

I then bought a basic 'kit' off amazon, and a couple of books. The recommended
reading is 'The Compleat Meadmaker' by Ken Schramm and 'The Complete Guide to
Making Mead' by Steve Piatz. Start off with simple meads. Then experiment. :)

Making friends with the local beekeeping association and LARP group is also
recommended. :)

There is tons of info on the Internet as you would expect.

~~~
Kaius
Whats the difference between Mead and the more typical Ale home brewing people
do?

------
huffmsa
As I oft remind my friends and family, money is merely the means to acquire
things you want.

Money for money's sake isn't worth anything (unless you get your jollies
seeing a big bank statement).

So, does having money in your pocket make you happy?

~~~
grecy
> _money is merely the means to acquire things you want_

I agree with this, and enjoy the though experiment of taking it a step
further.

"Spending time to earn money means you can't spend time doing what you want to
do. What would you rather be doing?"

~~~
huffmsa
Unless you enjoy what you're doing to earn said money.

Or rephrased: _do what you love_

I wrote what I considered a great paper (my professor thought it was average)
a few years back modeling people's abilities for generating social, financial
and familial utility. People who have a preference for something they don't
have an equal ability for creating often are often unhappy and dissonant.

Eg a "wannabe celebrity". They crave social utility, but often aren't good at
producing it, and so have to sacrifice social and financial gains for social
ones. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

~~~
badpun
> I wrote what I considered a great paper (my professor thought it was
> average) a few years back modeling people's abilities for generating social,
> financial and familial utility. People who have a preference for something
> they don't have an equal ability for creating often are often unhappy and
> dissonant.

I thought about it as well - there are certainly people whose interest and
temperament don't match their abilities and limitations - for example, someone
who sees himself as an adventurer, but gets sick easily and thus is miserable
through most of his "adventures". It seems like the wise thing to do is to
just accept one's limitations, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

------
nasmorn
OPs friend Kevin has it right. Make a hobby out of something that you cannot
even fathom how to make money out of. Sports is ideal since you will obviously
be super bad compared to the worst guy that makes money of it. My old coach is
now World Champion in the Duathlon. The money she makes off that would not
make my cut for a new dev project.

Duathlon is thus a very safe choice for a hobby uncontaminated by monetary
concerns. But for most of us the triathlon or running is safe. The risk of
becoming world champion are overstated.

~~~
cableshaft
For me it's board game design. It would be nice to make serious money off of
it, and it is possible, but most people I know, even with successful games,
aren't making enough to quit their day jobs (that pay a lot less than software
dev).

Hell, one guy I know had a game you could buy at Barnes and Noble he worked on
in his spare time for two years, and the publisher considered to be one of
their more successful titles, earn only $10k in royalties (which he split
50/50 with a codesigner), so he only got $5k out of it.

I could take a simple dev job and make that in a week of work.

And it's a very collaborative field, so I get to meet a lot of people in the
industry just by going to conventions and offering to playtest their games or
help publishers demo their games to potential customers.

~~~
rabidrat
Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan) still works as an engineer.

------
Insanity
For me, as soon as I think of monetizing something I just lose my interest in
it straight away.

I don't know why it happens. I love programming, and I just put it all up on
GH for free. I've actually got a few 'side-projects' which actively burn money
instead of making money.

I do them purely for fun and learning, and every time I think of making money
from it, it turns into a job and obligations. Now if people don't like
something I build - I feel no obligation to fix it. :)

------
dpcan
I've been doing this for about 20 years myself. Everything I do, that I enjoy,
I think to myself "I love this. I want to do this all the time. So now I have
to make a business of it?"

It was just in the last 3-4 months that I realized - if I love something, keep
doing it in such a way that I can enjoy it, but let WORK be WORK, don't let
the things I enjoy become my work.

Every "fun" thing I've tried to turn into the business has made me eventually
hate that thing.

I created video games. Had financial success. But eventually hated the game-
dev world. It turned out that creating interesting new games was only a small
part of that business. Marketing, bug fixing, customer service, taxes, etc,
became my life. Then having my hard work get pirated, stolen, and even re-sold
by scammers without my permission ended up ruining that business and I
couldn't keep it financially afloat.

Same thing happened with my escape room business. The escape room business
turned into a customer service, marketing, taxes, insurance, safety, and human
resources business. Dealing with employees for part time, kind-of on-call,
customer service work was nearly impossible. Finding them, training them,
firing them, trying to keep them hired, dealing with their problems, dealing
with them calling in sick. It took all my time. I ended up trying to do it all
myself and that didn't work at all. Then the costs involved crushed me because
I didn't realize how expensive it would be.

I also love board games. I tried turning that into a business, but have
stopped short as I realize it will become the same damn thing.

Anyway, I am just going to play escape rooms, video games, and board games
now. I'm going to enjoy them. If I create something, it won't have to be for
profit, but for family and friends to try. We'll enjoy a Saturday afternoon,
I'll have an outlet for my creativity, then Monday I'll get back to my web dev
job and make money. I'm not going to love sitting here coding, but that's my
job, and if I focus on this job, I'll make good money - enough money to be
able to thoroughly enjoy gaming, and even create some fun personal stuff along
the way.

------
kaptain
I was going to suggest that raising children was something enjoyable that
resisted monetization. But upon further reflection, I would be wrong.

~~~
Waterluvian
Wrong in what way? I would wholly agree. I have two kids and it's the most
fulfilling endeavour in my life by far. In my 20s I had a drive to become some
expert well-known programmer. That all suddenly felt silly when my first was
born.

I think one of the greatest boons of parenthood, for me at least, is the
complete and total conviction and faith that I'm doing something meaningful
with my life. Before kids, I always had doubts that I was using my time here
well. Before kids, I really didn't know what unwaivering faith felt like. It's
really quite reassuring. It allows me to enjoy my career because my career is
no longer the focus and the thing that I _must_ get right. Life is fleeting.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _That all suddenly felt silly when my first was born. (...) I think one of
> the greatest boons of parenthood, for me at least, is the complete and total
> conviction and faith that I 'm doing something meaningful with my life._

As a soon-to-be parent, I really worry that I start thinking like this. I
mean, there must be something more to life than just growing to adulthood and
having children, who'll then grow to adulthood and have children, ad
infinitum.

~~~
sevensor
As a parent myself, I think you'll get out of it what you bring to it. If you
see computers and programming as just a job, or if your desire is to be
regarded by others as famous and respected in the field, having children will
make all that seem shallow and pointless. And this is good: your children will
have brought perspective. But if you turn to computing the way an iron filing
turns to a magnet, if you take fathomless delight in contemplation, then
having children will focus and purify that force. You'll learn to keep a
problem turning round in the back of your head. You'll bring it out in the
dark, in the dead of night when you're rocking a baby to sleep. You'll bring
it out when you're folding laundry (so much laundry). You'll bring it out when
you're driving the family somewhere, and the car is silent because you're
hoping the children will nap. You'll compute without computers.

~~~
Waterluvian
So eloquent. Yes! This weekend I designed a ROS library during all those
moments. Then Monday morning I wrote it all down once at my work computer.
There's something so satisfying about learning how to design all in my head.

------
xhrpost
I've noticed a similar trend for myself but a bit broader. It's more that
anything I do, I have to somehow see as an achievement or purposeful. I've
been considering new hobbies as of late, but my mental model dismisses them
quickly if I can't answer "what would this accomplish?" Unless it's a baseline
activity requiring no mental energy (think food, drink, tv, socializing) it's
hard for me to consider it without the previous question answered. Example,
for the longest time I never read any fiction as I couldn't see the point.
Reading some HN comments over the years and hearing reasons like "you read
fiction in order to tell better stories", led me to see the
"value/accomplishment" in reading fiction. So now, I read a little fiction in
addition to all my self-development books, not because I enjoy it but because
it's supposedly good for me. I then wonder why all my "hobbies" seem to be
draining and not rejuvenating.

~~~
MattSayar
"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted." But if you can't even enjoy wasting
that time that sounds rough.

------
thedanbob
One of my hobbies is fixing broken phones / tablets. Many times people have
told me I could make decent money if I charged more for my services. That’s
probably true, but I don’t _want_ to. I ask cost of parts + $5-10 to afford
new tools. That plus the fact it’s fun and I’m helping out a friend is plenty.
I don’t want the headaches of turning it into a business.

------
robodale
I write software, both professionally and as a "side gig". I spend a decent
amount of time behind my house doing yard work and general maintenance. I
don't really look forward to those (non-IT?) activities, but when I am doing
them I have realized how nice it is to be doing something other than staring
at a screen and be able to look back at a physical object (new plant, fixed
deck railing, etc) and say "I did that". It's an unintentional hobby, but it
does serve the purpose of taking a break from the keyboard.

------
raintrees
What I found missing in my life was the routine part of money management. I
now wish I had studied money management first, then found my first "job."

I now have a life plan that I oversee that takes extra income (earned,
investment, gift, etc.) and saves it up until it reaches another lump sum
amount to continue acquiring cash-flowing assets (I settled on real estate,
specifically multi-family rentals).

As my semi-passive income increases, it supplants the required earned income
to keep the whole system going.

And for me that means more time researching things "because I'd like to know
how they work."

Sometimes I research something and test/play around with it, until I suddenly
realize (I am not always that quick, so my sudden takes awhile) that some of
my solutions are valuable to others - Then I consider how to spin out that
specific service or product to others for their benefit, and the financial (or
other - I have been paid in fresh eggs, animal products, vegetables, tools,
etc.) reward covers the costs and any extra financial reward adds to the
aforementioned savings goals.

Rinse and repeat.

It lets my mind wander onto new topics that I find interesting first, the
possible remuneration comes second, if at all.

And until I am completely independently wealthy, I keep a service business
going that provides the safety net of making sure all my expenses are paid
for.

This also frees up my time to work with experts (attorneys, CPAs) to figure
out how to treat the US tax code (I am a US citizen) like a game - If I do
something (I want to do it anyway) in THIS fashion, I get an incentive/break
from my government...

This has removed the "I have to make a profit!" stress I was feeling
previously.

And if this works for me, it seems like it would probably work for others...

------
kbutler
I have a friend who is a skilled woodworker. I asked if she ever thought about
selling her work, and she replied, "Then it would be a job." Wise words...

On the other hand, my wife was volunteering, and the organization offered to
pay her for a day or so a week. It let her be more involved in the functioning
of the organization, so the (nominal) pay let her contribute more effectively.
They'd like her to move toward full-time, but as with my friend, "Then it
would be a job."

------
rsp1984
Unless money is needed for bare survival, it's almost always a proxy / an
abstraction for social/peer recognition.

There are fields where you can get plenty of social recognition directly
without making money. For example arts and performances or anything where you
express yourself in a way that is accessible to others (for me personally it's
making and playing music).

Software / Hardware unfortunately isn't one of these fields because chances
are that either your new project is so niche that only very few people get it
or because the people who _do_ get it are not the types you are seeking
recognition from.

So there's nothing wrong with looking for monetization strategies for new side
projects. It's just a way to know if others appreciate what you've built,
especially in fields where social recognition outside of monetization is a
difficult affair.

------
rchaud
The post sums up why so much of the "early Internet" seems to have
disappeared, and why the content on so many websites feels like it's designed
for lead gen only.

>"I should do market research and see what’s trending and build off that.
Self-help is big, let’s try to focus on that, even though I personally hate
self-help books."

This type of keyword and topic research is why the front page of your search
results are nearly always some throwaway blog post from some company trying to
sell you something. These results just barely resemble what you're looking
for, among a sea of similar "close enough" results.

------
cableshaft
For me, I'm not necessarily thinking about monetization, but about finding an
audience. I would like for as many people to enjoy my work as possible. But
finding an audience basically requires you to have a successful product
(unless you're doing it for free), so the mindset it nearly the same, I'm
thinking of how I can get as many people as possible to check out my art,
which means I might sand off some edges here or there, or think about
marketing or whatever, and then I'm not just doing the thing and enjoying it
anyway, much like the person who's trying to sell it.

I used to just make stuff and throw it out there in the earlier days of the
internet, and it somehow found a decent audience. It seems like it's actually
harder to do that now, though, as so many more people are doing the same
thing, so it's much harder to stick out from the pack. Also, less and less
people check personal websites or blogs, and pretty much only look at
instagrams and twitters and facebooks, so if you're not spending serious time
on putting yourself out there on social media, you're just not going to get
that visibility you're wanting. Which kinda sucks, because I'm kinda bad at
the social media part, and doing that feels a lot like a job.

------
theodorton
DIVYA And you invented something in high school, right?

MARK An app for an MP3 player that recognizes your taste in music.

DIVYA Anybody try to buy it?

MARK Microsoft.

DIVYA How much?

MARK I didn’t sell it. I uploaded it for free.

DIVYA For free?

MARK Yeah.

DIVYA Why?

------
hycaria
Have a hobby that is notoriously a money sinkhole, so that there's no excuse
for not making money, and no one will ever ask about it.

~~~
vidanay
Having a wife or girlfriend that is into horses takes care of that.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
You know you can have a crazy wife/girlfriend without the horses?

~~~
pluma
You can also be crazy into horses without being someone's wife or girlfriend.
I know a guy like that, though he's married.

------
scotty79
I had a mindset that everything I do should bring in money and if it doesn't
it's not worth doing.

It ended when after years of freelancing and occasionally working at/for small
companies I got hired by a corporation.

Suddenly I was being paid more than I could hope for, for doing barely
anything. I felt so relaxed and I never again considered my hobbies to be
potential money makers.

------
character0
Ezra Klein recently interviewed Anne Helen Petersen (Buzzfeed) and Derek
Thompson (The Atlantic) about this topic. I think they hit on a lot of the
things I've been feeling and some of the struggles I have trying to think
through a fix — we need to shift both structural and personal thinking on this
topic.

[https://megaphone.link/VMP7590220227](https://megaphone.link/VMP7590220227)

These are the two articles these authors are known for:

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/mille...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-
burnout-generation-debt-work)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-
workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/)

~~~
frob
That was a fantastic podcast and I came here to say the same thing. The thing
I found most interesting was when they discussed curating social media as
effectively work, making it so some people feel like they need to post that
picture of the birthday/garden/pet/hairdo/etc or it didn't happen and the task
isn't completed until you post.

It really made me think about how work isn't just cutting into our pleasure
and relaxation times, but it is turning things that were initially created to
be pleasurable into work.

------
pluma
If this is a new idea to you, I'd suggest diving into the more left-wing parts
of YouTube, e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKeqMJGnVyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKeqMJGnVyQ)

Basically the problem with capitalism is that it assigns financial values to
everything. This becomes readily apparent if you become self-employed as a
freelancer or entrepreneur, especially if you follow the advice to "do what
you know best" (which often means turning a hobby into a job).

Are you reading that article because you enjoy it or are you learning to
become better at your job? Are you showing off or are you maintaining your
personal brand? Is this a holiday trip or are you staking out new business
opportunities? Are you mindlessly immersing yourself in art and entertainment
or are you looking for inspiration to fuel your job as a creative? Is that
chat with an old friend leisure time or are you networking? You've already
been watching Game of Thrones for two hours -- you're actively losing money
because you could be charging people for that time if you did something work-
related instead.

Everything becomes a financial tradeoff, everything is assigned a monetary
value until all remaining intrinsic motivation is lost.

And unless you're lucky enough to be born into massive wealth or lucked out by
being in the right place at the right time with the right skills and identity,
you have no other choice than to constantly worry about financial values
because your life literally depends on it. Even if you consider yourself
somewhat safe and financially stable it doesn't take much to throw you right
back into this grind.

------
PeanutNore
I build guitar amps and effects pedals as a hobby, and trying to monetize it
sucked all the joy out of it so badly that I ended up leaving it completely
for about 18 months. I've only just gotten back into it and I'm starting over
by just building what I want to build for myself and not worrying about
whether anyone else would want to buy it. If I end up with a couple extra
pedals or PCBs I can put up on my Reverb store, that's fine. If someone buys
them, great! But I'm not putting any more energy into trying to sell them.

------
nathan_f77
I've had the same attitude for a long time, and I've filed away lots of fun
project ideas because I didn't see any way to monetize them. My goal has been
to get back to those fun projects and hobbies once I have enough income from
SaaS apps or investments. If go back to a full-time job, then I would probably
start working on them during the evenings and weekends.

I've also been tempted to try making a career out of those fun projects, with
YouTube, Twitch, Patreon, etc. I'm a huge fan of Colin Furze, Simone Giertz,
Abhishek Singh, and Mark Rober, to name a few. Sometimes you can also leverage
your following into a successful Kickstarter campaign. I think it would be
possible, but I don't really have the right personality for it, and it's also
really hard to make a decent income from YouTube.

If I didn't have to worry about money, I'd probably do it anyway and upload
some videos. But only when inspiration strikes, and I would ignore any
pressure to keep making videos if I didn't feel like it.

I should also mention that it's awesome when people are willing to pay for
some software that solves a real problem. Sometimes you can get more meaning
and satisfaction from serving customers and solving a pain point (and earning
real money), instead of making a silly project that entertains people for a
few minutes. So I'm actually not feeling a strong desire to go back to these
silly project ideas, and I find it very interesting and rewarding to build
monetized SaaS apps.

------
DoofusOfDeath
It might be worth a few sessions with a professional counselor just to figure
out where this fixation is coming from, and what other people have found
successful for breaking out of it.

~~~
rchaud
Look at the headlines we're bombarded with everyday:

\- "Startup X secures Y million in funding for a food delivery app"

\- "8 year old makes $22 million reviewing toys on Youtube"

\- "Makeup tutorial person on Youtube signs distribution deal with Lancome"

There is a never-ending supply of tales of people "making it" doing seemingly
mundane everyday tasks. So we start trying to monetize the boring BS we have
going on, because you never know.

------
donretag
Call me jaded, but this article is pure click bait.

Everything is an attempt to make money for the other, including writing click
bait content. (monetized by increased brand exposure)

~~~
allenu
Perhaps to some extent, but it was certainly less overt than other articles
that end with a plug for a product or for the author.

------
dmitryminkovsky
Wow didn’t expect to see other people struggling with this line of thought.
I’m still capable of having fun, but what’s disturbed me is the question of
whether I’ll ever be able to just lay around and relax again like I could when
I was a child. On one had we need to be purpose driven, but 100% all the time?
Definitely not. And I find it hard to shake that.

------
tripzilch
Near the very end of the blogpost:

> I should mention that I am a software engineer who makes a decent salary, so
> it’s not like I absolutely need extra money.

If he had started with that I probably wouldn't have read any further. It kind
of makes a rather large difference as to what their personal journal post is
actually about.

In this case, a luxury problem.

Listen up, recognize the problem (check), then .. just try to _not_ do it.
You'll find out whether it's an obsessive compulsive disorder, or just a lack
of perspective. The latter, having recognized the problem (again, check), ...
is easier to correct than changing a habit (like fitness, or meditating, etc).
Truly. If your mind still keeps running back to money if you don't need it,
that's an obsession. If you find you just don't like it, take up a new thing
that doesn't make money. Since you're not doing it for the money, it's fine to
drop it, too.

------
grgaln
This is literally me. I am slowly breaking free from this feeling by just
doing the things that I put off because I think they won't make me money.

I didn't think up the idea and have an urge to do the thing because I
initially thought it would make me money, it was because I knew I would find
it fun.

------
blago
Try helping someone else. You could discover joy in that. I have a developer
friend who is acting as a CTO to a disabled person - taking care of hands-free
communication, smart home stuff, etc. It doesn't seem to take a lot of his
time and he always seems happy when we ask him.

------
yboris
My coding side-project _Video Hub App_ (MIT open source) is for sale for $3.50
but $3.50 of every sale goes to my favorite charity:
[https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App](https://github.com/whyboris/Video-
Hub-App)

If you look at
[http://www.globalrichlist.com/](http://www.globalrichlist.com/) you'll
discover that earning even $30k/year places you in the richest 1% of world's
income earners. I think it's very much worth to give back in cost-effective
ways -- at least 10% if you ask me:
[https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/)

------
binarymax
This is the downside of extreme levels of capitalism. We've been trained to
seek one goal - and while that goal served well as a proxy for progress, it
now does us a disservice. Knowledge, advancement, health, safety, longevity
... these are the goals we should be incentivized for. Compounding those into
a single abstract makes it easy to get lost from what is truly valuable in
this world, and a side effect is that it's destroying our planet. We are the
paper clip machines.

------
JohnFen
If your doing something intending to make money, then it's not a hobby.

I learned a long time ago that (for me, anyway) the idea that you should make
your recreational activity into something that earns money is a horribly
flawed one. All doing that does is to turn your recreational activity into a
job. Part of the joys of a hobby are things like not having to engage in it if
you don't feel like it, the lack of deadline pressures, etc. All that goes
away when you want it to make money for you.

This is why I have a number of "side projects", but I clearly delineate
between the ones I do for fun -- which I intentionally avoid deriving an
income stream from -- and those that are intended to provide supplemental
income.

------
stpe
I was very much like that. Then by coincidence, I got into RC-car racing. Not
only is it fun, a community, and a way to see yourself improve - it is my
first non-programming-hobby-activity since being a teenager, and most
importantly a money sinkhole - I love it!

~~~
cr0sh
If you ever wanted to turn your RC-car racing hobby into a programming-hobby-
activity, you can try to start your own Sparkfun-style AVC:

[https://avc.sparkfun.com/](https://avc.sparkfun.com/)

...or, compete in other similar races:

[https://diyrobocars.com/](https://diyrobocars.com/)

------
flr03
I'm surprised so many people in the comments actually recognise themselves
here. Is it a cultural thing, is it american ? Most of my European friends,
including myself, just use hobbies to relax from work, the point is not to
monetize anything.

~~~
andbberger
Maybe it's just american... things are getting pretty dire over here...

------
dybber
Try to find other ways to justify spending time on it. I often justify
spending time on stuff because I know I will learn a new skill. Or spend time
on stuff where there is a social aspect, where others depend on you.

~~~
laumars
What about "because it's fun"?

There used to be a typical response hackers would use when asked why they
built something nerdy but ultimately pointless which went "because I can."

That equally applies here. Some people build model railways, others like to
solve crosswords or sudokus. I like my railways to be computing infra and
puzzles to be software problems. It's the same kind of enjoyment but playing
with different toys.

------
packetpirate
I've spent the past two years remaking my first game from 2013. I know that
even though it has come a LONG way since the original, it probably won't sell,
but I do it anyway simply because the original was a pile of hot garbage with
a terrible engine and I wanted to do better.

Sure, bringing in some extra cash would be nice, but at the end of the day, I
get precious few hours to myself at night and on the weekends, so if I didn't
take some joy in my hobbies, I'm not sure how I'd stay sane.

------
bashwizard
Find a hobby that is highly unlikely for you to make any significant amount of
money from and it will eventually make you change your mindset.

I'm never going to become the next Avicii but I like to produce music and DJ
and while I do make some money from it, it's far from enough to live on and
there is no way for me to to go full time on it.

So I stick to it as a hobby because it's fun and a therapeutic way to cope
with everyday life, stress etc.

~~~
dbmikus
Like writing books...

I laughed when I read that example.

------
kissgyorgy
I think there is a sweet spot to that kind of thinking; start projects for
fun, but keep profit in mind and relax the strict rules of starting a project,
so making money becomes a nice bonus, but you can do it anyway. So something
like this: start something if it MIGTH make money, work on it until you get
bored or turns out it cannot. Move on to the next project. This way you can
have fun AND profit ^.^

------
undershirt
I don’t know how to articulate this well, but “money is god” is not hyperbole.
When there is anomie, goodness becomes the pretext for wealth.

------
itchyjunk
I seem to not enjoy any activity period, at this point. This does remind me of
the youtube channel `frankieonpc1080p`. He has/had over a million subscriber
and he used to make dayz stuff for fun. But he decided never to go full time
on it because he knew it would burn him out and he would start hating it. I
used to think that was silly but have since changed my mind.

------
bitL
Heh, I am on a completely different orbit - I pay others so that I can do my
hobbies, e.g. studying electronic music production (with an M.A. from a US
university), paying AirBnB hosts and airlines to travel around the world,
making drone/hyperlapse/documentary movies; paying make-up artists, stylists
and models to do fashion photography etc.

------
gvkv
I don't have anything to add to many of the comments already posted but I'm
reminded of Cyanide and Happiness very poignantly making a similar point:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAKQ7ouQqgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAKQ7ouQqgA).

------
netrap
Quite sad honestly. I understand what the author is feeling. I too have
thoughts about how to make money from X hobby I enjoy doing. I'm trying to
fight those thoughts. What I am doing with my free time doesn't have to be
worth anything!!

------
CarVac
I carefully avoid getting paid for things I enjoy, in case that takes the fun
out of them.

Programming open-source software? Strictly for fun. (Programming is not my day
job.)

Volunteer trail building? For fun. (and for the workout)

Photography? For me. If someone offers to hire me, I turn them down.

------
namelosw
My favorite hobby is playing video games. And programming could be 2~5th
position on the hobbies list.

Every time I think about this, I would be so glad I chose to be a programmer,
instead of a pro gamer.

Now I can imagine how I would literally hate my life if I chose another path.

~~~
cr0sh
Just don't go down the path of game programming - that can easily lead to
"monetization thoughts".

Also - making a game today as a single person is difficult, with the exception
of a few niche areas. Mainly because everything most people play are 3D FPS,
which take a huge amount of resources and skills to implement, and I don't
think there is any single person out there with all the skills to
singlehandedly implement a 3D FPS.

Even smaller niche games will require certain skills that many software
engineers lack - heck, just coming up with a decent storyline or such can be a
challenge. Never mind the graphics, music, etc - even for a basic pixel-art
style game.

Probably most difficult is creating a decent work of interactive fiction (IF);
that requires little in the way of artistic talent, but to be decent you need
to have the skills of an author (and then some).

So...pursue such a thing...even as a hobby...at one's own risk I guess.

------
asadkn
I didn't really believe the post was truthful but then I saw "Adsense" ads at
end of the post.

On a serious note, there's social pressure in monetizing everything you do -
the common assumption is you either have ulterior motives or are a fool

------
albertkoz
I think it's quite ironic that even below that short note I can see an ad.

~~~
Fuzzwah
That isn't irony, that's proof of what the author is saying...

------
jaimex2
Ditto, it's great. It makes me do things with extra polish and put thought on
delivery.

It's by no means no longer fun, in facts its more so. It's like playing a
tycoon sim. The project has to finance itself or die.

~~~
hopler
That seems the reverse. In business, there is rarely polish because it's not
profitable to do anything but the core feature, unless you are in a highly
competitive market with price insensitive consumers (luxury cars and Apple),
but people motivated by the drive to create do polish.

~~~
jaimex2
Hmm, depends on project size I guess. Polish for me means simplify and make
prettier.

------
hartator
> I developed this hostile view of activities where everything is a calculated
> risk of how much time I need to put in versus what I am getting in return.

There is nothing wrong with providing value to society.

~~~
rorykoehler
This is the old capitalism trope that everything that is valuable to society
is profitable. It doesn't add up. Lots of things are terrible for society but
profitable because they externalise all their costs (like collecting rubbish
for a fee and dumping it into the sea). The opposite also applies.

------
cabaalis
This is because you have an entrepreneurial spirit, or at the very minimum you
have a dollar value that you place on your time/effort. I've been there, It's
a curse in many ways.

------
exabrial
Give your time away... volunteer at a shelter, a church, or a charity.

~~~
pmlnr
Instead of coaching for money? Teaching at short courses? This is insane! /s

------
eightturn
I find it sorta funny that the article ends with an ad : )

------
redmattred
It's worth reading up a little on self determination theory and how they think
about intrinsic VS extrinsic motivation if you've never heard of it

------
pleasecalllater
I have the same thing. However, it turned out that almost none of the things
is a financial success, so I went back to just having fun.

------
werber
I just ask myself if something will make me happy, maybe I need to grow up and
monetize that.

------
m463
I think most everything checked into github refutes this argument.

------
quantguy11959
It could be worse, imagine the inverse: You can’t do anything to make money;
Every hobby is an attempt to have fun.

------
jarym
I sympathise, so much of today’s world caters solely to consumers and there
seems a definite lack of things that cater to those who want to produce (in
the economic or monetary value sense).

I don’t know what the solution is - but for me personally I try to focus on
creating things that people will either enjoy using or need.

Peak capitalism might be about running out of ways to produce value (in the
economic sense)

------
qwerty456127
Do you need this much money? Can't making money be experienced as a game?

------
jshowa3
Ahhh. The glory of capitalism. The reason you ask yourself how much I can make
off of X thing is because society tells itself that having X billions of
dollars = success.

~~~
rorykoehler
I just want to have creative freedom. Money is a major problem that needs to
be solved in the majority of peoples lives.

------
bhnmmhmd
This has happened to me. I was learning Haskell until finally the pressure of
"how will this help me pay bills" persuaded me to stop and learn Python
instead. Even with Python there's the pressure of "I can't make an online
sideproject by it" which has tempted me at times to switch to JS, but I've
resisted that so far.

~~~
onli
Good thing you resisted. You absolutely can do an online project with Python
:)

------
kadendogthing
Internalized capitalism.

~~~
povertyworld
I think it predates capitalism. Seems like Calvinist work ethic, but in a
secular age.

------
imtringued
Is this some kind of joke? As soon as your workday ends everything becomes
leisure. If you think that humans shouldn't do anything without economic value
then why don't you just work a 120 hour week? Watching Netflix is just as much
of a leisure activity as creating art, restorating vintage machines or making
free software.

