
Don’t pin the butterfly: not all hobbies need to become hustles - anthilemoon
https://nesslabs.com/hobbies-versus-hustles
======
ChuckMcM
Here is the point that stands out for me in this article -- _The lower your
self-complexity, the more fragile you are. Let’s say you’re a man who thinks
about his life mainly in terms of work and family. If your manager gives you
harsh feedback, that’s 50% of your sense of self taking a hit. But if your
self-complexity is higher—let’s say you have a couple of hobbies, personal
goals outside of work, and relationships outside of your family members—the
impact will be lessened._

People will often define themselves by what they do, this has been true since
the stone age when people named themselves after their profession. The more
things you do, the less impact there is on your opinion of yourself if someone
says that one of the things you do is substandard.

Having hobbies will help avoid the trap that people get into when they take a
job "because it pays well" and not because they are interested in it. The trap
is sprung because it is harder to work at a job you're not invested in, and
you don't generally do as well as people who are invested. So you can end up
taking time away from other fulfilling activities to get told your doing badly
at the thing you are spending all your time trying to do. That is a horrible
place to be mentally.

~~~
LiquidSky
>Having hobbies will help avoid the trap that people get into when they take a
job "because it pays well" and not because they are interested in it.

What? People take those jobs because they need money to live and that's their
only option (or at least they think it is). Unless your hobby pays, it has
absolutely nothing to do with it.

~~~
ChuckMcM
FWIW I have known Vice Presidents with this problem. Their entire notion of
self worth was wrapped up in their job performance and what people said of
them.

People internalize their value in different ways, some are more resilient than
others. Having something that you can be passionate about and good at outside
your job has been shown to help resiliency. That's a good thing for anyone's
mental health I suspect.

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spacemark
I started doing astrophotography ~5 years ago because I found the mysterious
beauty of the incomprehensibly large cosmos a rejuvenating, wondrous thing. In
the course of my fun I built a star tracking mount that people seemed to like,
so I refined the design, built 10 and sold them on Etsy to test the waters of
entrepreneurship. Today, I sell 20-30/mth via a dedicated store.

How often do I do astrophotography these days? Never. In fact my camera broke
and I haven't bothered to replace it. I don't have the time.

Has the entrepreneurship been worth it? Probably. But I do miss looking at the
stars.

~~~
jacobolus
Looks like a great product!

If you don’t mind my asking: Do you have another day job? Some external
investment? Are you expecting to grow to a much larger scale?

Selling 250–300 devices per year at $100 each doesn’t seem like it would pay
the bills even for one person, after materials and other business expenses.

~~~
spacemark
Thanks. :) This is a hobby for me, an experiment in entrepreneurship. I have a
day job that pays well enough that I'm free to quit the side business at any
time, which I may do soon.

The alternative I'm mulling over in my mind is to push the next rev that I've
been testing which will reduce material costs another 25%, and then actually
market the product to increase volume 3-5x (100% of current sales are from
organic traffic, mostly google searches). That kind of effort requires a lot
of upfront investment in time I currently don't have, though. And even then I
wouldn't be comfortable quitting my day job. So we'll see. My heart is telling
me to stop, but my brain is chanting, "student loan payoff."

------
ben7799
Good article, I get it.

I've had 3-4 different hobbies over the past 20 years that have stuck.
Bicycling/Motorcycling, Photography, and Music.

They all have semi-obvious side hustles that are pretty poor business
opportunities that suck people in and ruin the hobby.

Bicycling - Was on a team, sucked up a lot of time, racing was fun, team
members in charge of finance embezzled the team finances. We ran a weekly race
series so the amount of money was pretty shockingly large. Ruined it for a lot
of us. Racing is massive effort and was never that fulfilling. At no level do
the prizes start to make any sense.

Bicycling/Motorcycling - I would say less so for these hobbies but there are
some traps around making/producing accessories & trinkets.

Photography - The side hustle you see people get into is small time sales,
wedding/event photography, etc.. the problem being most of this stuff is a
really expensive way to not make much money and take almost all the artistic
fun out of it.

Music - people get into bands and try to get paid to play concerts, etc.. pay
is crap, it's hard work, gotta have a lot of equipment, etc..

~~~
wruza
Software development - Was on a team, sucked up a lot of time, programming was
fun, team members in charge of finance embezzled the team finances. We ran a
weekly sprint so the amount of money was pretty shockingly large. Ruined it
for a lot of us. Programming is massive effort and was never that fulfilling.
At no level do the prizes start to make any sense. I would say less so for ios
development but there are some traps around making/producing apps & widgets.
The side hustle you see people get into is small time sales, short projects,
freelance, etc.. the problem being most of this stuff is a really expensive
way to not make much money and take almost all the artistic fun out of it.
People get into bands and try to get paid to support in-house, etc.. pay is
crap, it's hard work, gotta have a lot of equipment, etc..

Sorry for abusing your comment :) but it seems that programming is a king of
all hobbies.

~~~
em-bee
if you do it that way on the side to a fulltime job then i agree with you.
both programming and biking as a side project are more fun and relaxing when
they are done without pressure.

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awillen
I definitely think this is a useful perspective, but if you're creating
something, it can be nice to turn your hobby into a hustle in order to
increase the amount that you can create.

If you're getting into glass blowing, you can only have so many vases (or
bongs, whatever) in your house, so selling them is a good way to cover the
cost of your materials while letting you continue to engage in your hobby. The
key is to remember the purpose of selling them - it's not to make a bunch of
money, it's just to enable you to blow more glass. Don't give refunds,
discounts, or anything else - just price your stuff so it sells and move on
after each sale.

~~~
ldeangelis
That's an intersting way of looking at it that I didn't think about, thanks
for sharing it.

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gwbas1c
I love building speakers, and I've been doing it off and on for almost 20
years.

Here's the thing: I can't build speakers very often, because it's expensive,
they take up space, and I really don't need multiple sets of speakers for
every room in my house.

Furthermore, if I built speakers for money, I'd have to charge thousands of
dollars for a set just to justify my time; or I'd have to figure out how to
grow volume to get anywhere near the low cost and high quality of factory-
built speakers. In both cases, that means spending a lot of time "hustling."

So, I just build a new set of speakers whenever I want a new set. I don't try
to turn it into a business.

(For the curious: This page is from 2003:
[https://andrewrondeau.com/Voight%20Pipes/index.html](https://andrewrondeau.com/Voight%20Pipes/index.html))

~~~
Talanes
You don't have to charge enough to justify your time if it's an activity you
enjoy doing for free. Could easily sell them on a commission basis, limiting
how many you offer to whatever you would enjoy, and then just charge materials
plus a small profit that you can put toward funding your own projects. Less
charging for your labor as securing funding for your hobby.

------
drmpeg
There's an old saying in the amateur radio hobby. If you want to make a small
fortune in ham radio, start out with a large fortune.

------
friendlybus
My highest self-complexity is in my work and main goals. Like composing an
orchestra there any many moving parts that need to come together. Hobbies and
sports are generally less complex and more simple.

I don't think dropshipping chinese tea counts as a passion or method of self-
expression for her and she's articulating that across the whole category.
She's clearly more interested in consuming and learning about Chinese tea than
expressing an inner desire to be a drop-shipping tycoon, that's cool.
Responding to money stress by forcing your hobby into a job is not a great
idea, I agree.

~~~
abruzzi
> My highest self-complexity is in my work and main goals. Like composing an
> orchestra there any many moving parts that need to come together. Hobbies
> and sports are generally less complex and more simple.

I think that depends a lot on the hobby and the individuals dedication (and
ability to devote time) to the hobby. For example, one of my hobbies is I'm
working on writing an opera. So that is literally writing for a full
orchestra, but with the additional complexity of writing a story and libretto.
In truth most of my hobbies can easily get as complex as my job, if I want to
take it that far. However, for many people (sometime myself included) the fact
that they are hobbies means we are limited in how much depth we have the time
to commit.

~~~
friendlybus
Do you think there's any overlapping benefit from increasing your hobby
complexity to the same level as your work complexity?

I wonder if high performance individuals commit to a lifestyle that has high
performance across the board and reap a certain kind of structure or skills
increase from doing so.

~~~
JohnFen
That's a really interesting question.

When I look over my hobbies, they are all pretty much as complex and demanding
as my job as a software dev. But from a very young age, I always preferred
complex activities (I suspect that's a big part of why I was drawn to software
engineering).

------
nkrisc
As I once read here on HN:

Don't ruin a perfectly good hobby by making it a job.

~~~
anthilemoon
Great way to put it.

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JohnFen
I agree with this. The problem with monetizing your hobby is that it turns
your hobby into a business. That eliminates a whole lot of the benefit and joy
of having the hobby.

------
tartoran
I wholly agree. I’ve been programming for about 20 years professionally and
I’ve always been juggling too many hobbies to count until I stumbled on one to
two that stayed. About 10 years ago I started to paint and draw and that gave
me so much satisfaction and filled a whole in my life that to this day I
continue to do this almost daily. I’ve had epiphanies, realizations or simply
enjoyed quietly how drawings unravelled in front of me. I have learned and
perfected the craft over the years and even though the ‘stream of creativity’
continues to this day I am happy this is just a hobby. I would not like to
deal with the art world in any way. I think that if I went to art school I’d
be quietly pursue computer science or computers or something like that.
Hobbies have the potential to be something in which you have complete freedom
and don’t need to justify to anyone or compete with anyone.

------
robocat
There is a corollary to this as well, where people say they are starting a
business, where actually they are trying to start a hobby.

A business exists to make money, and usually is not particularly enjoyable
(with some exceptions of course).

Whenever someone tells me about their business idea I internally rank it on a
hobby<->business scale, although I usually try to hold my judgements to
myself.

------
samlevine
It's great advice, but if I'm not sometimes tempted to skip a day for a hobby
(hello running) it doesn't feel as fulfilling to me.

I'm under no illusions that I will ever be a great runner, for example, but
pushing my boundaries is really important to me.

