I’ve heard time and again that turning a hobby into a career can be dangerous because it will make you lose passion for your hobby and your career. So in this article, I’m going to help you understand whether it’s a good idea to turn your hobby into a career. Personally, I’ve had many hobbies that have eventually turned into jobs. Some of them turned out well, and some of them did not.
In my mind, there are two key factors that determine whether it’s a good idea to turn a hobby into a career. The first is how close the hobby actually aligns with the career. And the second is whether your personality fits the working environment of that career. Both these variables can be in your blind spot because it’s so exciting to think of making money from your hobby.
How close is the hobby to the career?
Ask yourself, when you are doing the actual work that involves your hobby, how close will that work be to the actual hobby? I’ll give you two examples. As a kid, I loved programming, and in fact I still enjoy it. However, a few years ago I had a research job that involved a lot of programming. Basically, I was a programmer, but I had very little passion for the job. And the reason is that when pursuing programming for fun, I just liked to write small programs that did cool things.
The career version was nothing like that. Instead it was maintaining or updating boring, big programs. And, I didn’t get to write any programs that I found intellectually stimulating. Actually, the same thing was true of mathematics for me. I got my PhD in math because math was a fun hobby for me. However, my sort of math was pursuing mathematical problems because they were fun and held artistic beauty. But modern research involves building off other people’s ideas by proving useless generalizations, which is ugly.
In short, a career that sounds like it is a paid hobby really can be quite different that the hobby. It might involve a form of your hobby but in an almost unrecognizable state.
How does your personality match the career?
The second variable to consider is how closely your personality matches the career. What do I mean by this?
Well, let’s take programming again. I might like to write programs, but it’s not something I like to do for hours at a time. Nor do I like programming every day. It’s more of an indulgence like chocolate cake. Pretty soon, I want to do something else like math, photography, or music. But a programming job involves doing it every day and making sure everything is committed properly with version control. Boring. (Also, I hate Git.)
Or what about academic mathematics? Well, like I said, I love math, but my personality is not harmonious to many aspects of working as an academic mathematician. For one, I’m not a fan of begging for grant money, or constantly trying to justify research by making some vague statements on how it relates to the research of others.
Although I like teaching, I hate teaching the same classes again and again. Too much repetition, and most students recognize that they’re just there because our ridiculous global capitalistic society told them they need to learn to produce more useless consumerist junk. They don’t care about the beauty of math.
I’m not a fan of academic politics either, nor do I like large organizations with layers of administrative cruft. So you see, even though I love math (and I’m good at it too), the job of mathematician at a university is not suited to my style. No way.
So, your personality can clash with a career that closely matches your hobby in any number of ways, not all of them obvious. Maybe you don’t like working in teams all the time, or maybe you don’t like the frequency or style of work, or you don’t like how your work is being applied. Whatever it is, it’s important to make sure your personality and way of doing things won’t conflict with a potential career.
When to turn your hobby into a profession
I think there’s nothing wrong with turning a hobby into a profession, assuming that the profession is really close to the hobby and your personality works with it. For example, I turned photography into a career. Now I write about photography at Photography Life (an awesome photography website) and create content about it on YouTube and other places.
In this case, it’s really close to my actual hobby because I love talking about photography and of course, I love taking pictures. Moreover, the work I do is very close to my personality: I can work when I want and I get to work alone most of the time. When I do work with others, it’s with people I enjoy working with and who also have a similar sort of personality and style that I do.
Of course, it could have gone wrong if I wanted to do something like wedding photography. Some photographers find weddings energizing, but that would be harsh because I’d probably have to go to many events where I don’t know anyone and sometimes I’d have to be around drunk people, which is revolting to me.
So you see, it’s okay to turn your hobby into a profession — assuming you make sure you’ll still be working in a similar way to your actual hobby and your personality and style is kept alive.
Conclusion
If you’re thinking of turning your hobby into a proofession, make sure you carefully consider potential careers before getting excited about the possibility of doing your hobby for money. There are a lot more variables to consider than just having fun. But if you do find a way to do something you love for your survival, go for it!