Do something you love and you will never work a day in your life.
This is a message you may have heard at least once. Growing up, kids are encouraged to look for a job they love instead of working a dead-end nine to five. It should come as no surprise that when a child discovers a hobby they are good at, it becomes a way to pay the bills, and the hobby becomes a job.
If a kid grows up loving musicals, they may become an actor. If they have a knack for building robots, they may be designing rocket ships ten years down the road. It’s great to see people living their lives the way they’ve always dreamed of, but that initial excitement eventually dies. What was once a hobby may now give them a churning feeling in their stomach.
So, is that it? Is your hobby suddenly gone forever? Not exactly. Hobbies should be separated from careers, but there are ways to avoid the stressful days alongside having both.
Having your hobby and career align is not a bad thing. It can be great to line up your passion with your job to make it a more enjoyable experience — but some risks tend to follow that.
When a hobby becomes a lifestyle, it no longer becomes a way to unwind. That hobby becomes a reminder of work. When your brain does something over and over again, it will likely get sick of it from the burn out. That task will become a significant challenge since you don’t want to do it anymore. Your work can significantly drop in quality. Any personal project you are devoting time to can drop in quality too.
A hobby does not have to make you get up and move around, and it can possibly help your career more.
While out on a hike, a computer programmer might be given the quiet headspace to think about a line of code they can’t seem to get right. That teacher watching Netflix may find a theme within the show that they want to implement into their next class. A hobby can both relax you and make you better at your job.
Keep your hobbies and career interests separate from one another so you don’t burn out too quickly. Find a way to make your hobby different enough from your job so that it doesn’t feel like you are doing work off the clock. At the end of the day, a hobby is something you should enjoy doing.
