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Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

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Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#81

Post by BaseballPhysics »

Timpy wrote: post #73

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 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.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#82

Post by uncertainrhymes »

noelwelsh wrote: post #12

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…

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.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#83

Post by pessimizer »

Timpy wrote: post #73

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.…

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.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#84

Post by Robotbeat »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #60
gymbeaux wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it reversed, a lot of fun things suck when they make you money.

How about this formulation: "A lot of fun things end up sucking when you expect them to also make you money."

"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.”

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#85

Post by kthejoker2 »

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!

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#86

Post by thealchemistdev »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #77

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.…

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.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#87

Post by satellite2 »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78
JimtheCoder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a lot of fun things suck when they make you money" That has not been my experience...they become more fun.

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 in…

Yes but no. It's always with disappointing rewards tgat those studies are done. Pay people considerable amount and then compare.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#88

Post by Robotbeat »

gumby wrote: post #72

> 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.

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.

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#89

Post by badpun »

climatologist wrote: post #76
cvoss wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 t…

> The technology currently exists to do away with all wealth disparities and achieve a true meritocracy

Can you name that technology?

Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it

#90

Post by robocat »

FabHK wrote: post #4

Advice from a friend: Never do your PhD in a subject you love, because afterwards you'll hate it.

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)
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