I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating something with polish is expecting to make money (and fame) from it. Yet notice all the things in the blog post are creations that are exposed to the internet (photography blogging, releasing a program online, making a website), rather than private, non-published hobbies which literally have no audience.
Some prefer to make things polished/more complete as they want others to enjoy something more and polish makes it more accessible/usable/meaningful, or because it's a reflection on them (whether using an IRL identity or even a pseudonymous one) and part of their enjoyment of the process.
Since we all know the audience is whoever will come across it, once something is released in the wild. Might be an audience of one, or many. Which isn't to say people need to care about the output of hobby but I disagree that money/fame is the only motivation in improving something.
“Maybe I should start journaling” turns into “How can I be a thought leader on bleeping journaling?” And it ruins everything.
I’ve done this multiple times and regret it. I’ve only recently adopted the mindset that this author is attempting to convey, which is simple: identify what you enjoy and why, and just do it - don’t try to exploit it and monetize it (which the author has strangely conflated to “being famous” I think)
So I like the article. It’s a nice reminder. As to the other commenters railing against its “LinkedIn-ness” or it being a platitude, sure - but it’s upvoted and it is what it is now.
Further more, building for others is great for building out areas you’re weak or inexperienced in. Like, I was poor on the accessibility front until I found the thing I created resonated with the visually impaired folk.
Other takeaways that stuck with me were:
— Finding enjoyment in the process of learning and improving your own skills is crucial.
— Setting personal goals can help fuel growth.
— Sharing your work with others is a way to receive feedback and learn from other perspectives, but don't let pursuit, perfection or seeking monetisation overshadow the joy of the activity itself.
— Intrinsic rewards of your hobby or pursuit trump validation or financial gain.
In the end, you need to find something you enjoy doing, and do it because you ENJOY it.
Because when you read about creators during say, the Renaissance, you don’t really have this much of a dichotomy. Da Vinci worked on a paid portrait project, and then did unpaid experiments on his own which ended up being useful for his paid projects. It was a very loop-like thing and I think he would find the explicit framing of “I’m doing this to make money” and “I’m doing this purely to create something I want to create” as alien. Ditto for most forms of art in most parts of the world, prior to the late 19th century.
The solution, I think, might be to focus primarily on the craft and not on the end product. You see this a lot with early 20th century fiction writers that moved in and out of journalism, with the idea that they were becoming better at the craft of writing, not at creating a final product or “being a good fiction writer.”
“Advice for myself around leisure activities”
Personally I am no perfectionist at all, but I don’t see the fun in making stuff myself that I could otherwise buy. I took up sewing, not because I want to sew the perfect shirt, but because men’s fashion sucks. That said, I sew stuff I can wear. So it needs to look at least as good as what I could buy. I don’t think that it’s “acting like being famous”. Similarly, I am writing a screenplay, because I have a lot of experience reading bad screenplay that were actually made into movies, and I think I can write one that is at least as good as the worst ones I read. I don’t paint or take photographs because I know mine will look terrible.
Maybe that would be my advice in taking up hobbies: aim to be better than the worst people who do it professionally.
However, I disagree with the personal style part of things, or trying to make things look good. These things don't have to be about impressing an audience. It can be just as much about enjoying the process.
There are hobbies we do out of pure enjoyment. E.g. for me personally this is (choir-)singing. I know so many people who are better singers than I am (or ever will be) yet I couldn't care less. I am 100% happy with my skill level. If anyone else comes to the conclusion that somebody else is a better singer than I, they're probably right!
Then there are hobbies we do b/c we like the skill itself or b/c we want to have what comes with it. E.g. when I do a SW or HW side-project I really do want to create the best product (as niche-y as it might be) and yes, I do care a great deal about whether others like it or not. Put simply I want to be the best b/c I can be the best. I couldn't imagine doing this just for fun. TBH the whole idea of just-for-fun side projects sounds absurd to me.
By that time I stop enjoying doing whatever the thing is. Not fun anymore.
People will sincerely praise me and it will feel empty because I know there are millions of better painters, my laptimes are a full second off the ultimate pace, my guitar skills only good enough for playing alone in my office, my leisure programming projects all pointless and abandoned.
I envy two kinds of people: those that have found some thing they are very good at and keep enjoying it forever, but also those that can enjoy something for years even if they are realistically mediocre at it and never improve.
And the money making part is also true for me. I took up miniature painting and quite soon was at the level where people will pay you decent money to paint their miniatures for them. I started getting offers and accepted one, not for the money, probably just out of pride. It was complete hell, I hated the result and every minute I spent painting it. The client was happy, me, I guess I learned my lesson: never again.
When I take photographs of my friends, it is incredibly important to me that they be in focus, sharp, with a good depth of field bokeh that brings out their face and presents an attractive image. I take a huge amount of pride when a photo I shot ends up as a profile picture or widely shared. That's a large part of why I take them, to share with others.
Got my current job because of my public code and the quality of articles I have written on subjects relevant to the employer. When I interviewed they largely skipped the technical parts and focused on cultural fit and the kinds of projects I wanted to be involved with, because my publicly demonstrated track record left no question about the quality of my work.
It is fine to have some activities you enjoy without perfectionism, but there is a world of advantages that can come from a focus on quality.
A figure I saw once was based on "do they have a Wikipedia page" as counting as famous. And the ratio was something like 50,000:1 relative to the population.
Would you bet your lives actions on a 50,000 to 1 chance? And even then do you think it would be possitive? Sometimes fame is the worst thing that can happen to someone. Being anonymous can be a blessing in disguise.
Well... I do as the only user of what I create. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I also don't like clunky interfaces. So even though it isn't the process I enjoy doing most all the time I still put in the effort.
The artists and innovators I respect the most are people who have gone way out a limb to put effort into a expression or endeavor, knowing full well that it might not appeal to anyone else. It takes a lot of effort, self belief, and perseverance to do this, and there's no guarantee of success. In fact, success is unlikely.
But a world where everyone follows the author's advice feels mediocre to me.
0. Do less things
1. Do things at a natural pace
2. Obsess over quality
3. Don’t obsess over quality, eff the haters!
4. Do more things
;)
You might not become famous by developing your own style but you'll definitely not be you if you don't.
What if I enjoy optimizing for a non-existent audience?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(mythology)
Postulating intellectual artifacts somehow bring contentment also can become unhealthy. As some folks spend their entire lives solving a civilizations perceived problems, and only later conclude most of the planet just isn't worth saving... if one becomes hapless as a consequence.
One may disagree, but that is an indulgence youthful idealism often prescribes. In conclusion, goldfish crackers are awesome... =3
For photo example: If creating a style on Instagram for more presence and likes etc. does NOT negatively impact your photographic process and decisions, but solely build on top of the hobby that you already enjoy without social media, then go ahead.
But apart from finding a close community like this (who just happen to be online), I agree that engagement-driven or profit-driven creativity is generally an inspiration killer. It’s one of the main reasons why I chose to keep art as a hobby rather than a career. If I lost the passion for it, I wouldn’t know what to do with my life.
I suffered from this a lot because I love coding. There's a point when you may want to adjust your priorities. Beyond a certain point, it becomes defeatist to always do what you want.
I get though that the industry can feel like a giant psyop though so maybe it is better to be defeatist... Not sure.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. It implies several things that aren't true:
* That a hobby done for profit that can't also be done for fun.
* That a hobby for profit can't start as a profit-making venture, but turn into a passion.
* That work should be the only route to wealth.
* That optimizing for wealth can't go hand-in-hand with fun.
I despise the adage that a hobby is only a hobby if you aren't making money from it. I'm passionate about fantasy/sci-fi miniature building/painting, terrain modelling, and prop making. I love the expression of taking a universe that exists within the realms of novels and movies, and bringing it to the real world - to scale or in miniature. I design STLs/CAD models for 3D printing, scratch together terrain boards for people to play games on, paint miniatures any hour I get free, machine parts for various outfits and armaments, and spend hours fantasising about what universe I'm going to delve into next.
None of that would be possible if I didn't monetise the process. Most of what I build, I sell. If I didn't, I would neither be able to afford the hobby nor store the stuff I make. It would end up in a landfill. Parts of the hobby I took up explicitly because they demand higher prices when I sell it, but now they're some of the things I'm most passionate about.
Realistically, I'd love to do it as a full-time venture, but the semiconductor industry pays well and I'm not a famous maker so couldn't make it work - as the article states well enough. To suggest that hobbies can't both be fun and profitable though is a philosophy I think should be quashed.
I've learned a similar thing over my years, so I'll share:
The pressure to do something amazing or uniquely is very very real. This can lead you to avoiding a lot of hobbies (sports, crafts, etc.) that would nonetheless very very personally fulfilling.
Understand that having a beginner's mentality can be fun in many pursuits. (This is an idea from zen.) For a few things we have mastery, most things we will enjoy as beginners.
Additionally, if you cannot do something with the desired results, the key thing is to find a variation of the activity that you find satisfying. For example: 1) I think I'm bad at sports. Wait, actually, I just hate sports that don't completely immerse me. Hence, I figured out way late in life that I enjoy surfing and squash. 2) I want to take photographs. I hate my photographs. Wait, actually I hate digital photography. Analog point and shoot gives me satisfying results. (Or, using a 90s Nikon coolpix if you're gen z, apparently.)
So for the people who are like: "Yeah, but you can't SUCK at your activity", my response is: "Right, but you also shouldn't give up on the activity wholesale because you're not a natural prodigy, and there's probably a non-obvious variation where you don't feel like you suck as much, perhaps because the variation is harder to critique." in the real magic here.
And, again, there's something special about trying something new. The people that tend to plateau in a pursuit are the ones who start out "good" because they are addicted to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Being bad with potential, those are the non-lucky people that end up mastering their field.
This is an important point. The quickest way to make something unfun, is to get paid for it! That's because the second you get paid for something is the second you start doing it for someone else, creating value for someone else. you get paid to create value for others, not yourself. Play is creating value for yourself, not others that's why you don't get paid to play.
For whatever reason I manage to re-sign in to LinkedIn or Twitter once in a while, and boy do I hate the tone of people who act like they're some sort of business guru. Beyond the point of the article, there's a pretentious tone that I think one should avoid.
But stuff like:
> Blogging is fun and therapeutic. Grammar and editing aren’t
I have to disagree with. I like the craft portion of any activity. It's the type 2 sort of fun, where it's not necessarily fun when you do it, but the result makes you proud and happy, so it's worth it.
I think a better advice might be to do things for yourself rather than trying to please others?
Similar to parent, I find tremendous value in making myself my target audience.
> Design is for an audience and you don’t have one.
It's wrong to generalize like this. Good design drives your work forward, and if you enjoy doing it, then by all means focus on that first.
Not appeasing an audience even when you have one is also a good idea. Art is an expression of the artist, and it dies once it starts being created for an audience.
> Advice for myself around leisure activities.
Which I think is worth restating here.
It’s one thing to, say, buy Azure AD Premium so you can obtain auth logs and put them someplace/analyze them for your startup. That’s just taking your work seriously.
But unless you’re learning or practicing, or perhaps building out demo or educational content, you might want to consider whether your personal AAD tenant needs that at home.
(I’m not staking a claim on that. Just an illustrative example.)
Of course, earning money from that never crossed my mind – in that respect, I fully agree.
Happy to know I will never be famous but through my writings I will outlive my short time on this earth.
People will even ask you about this.
Even if a small percentage of them, say 5%, decide to emulate the famous people they follow we will have too many people who believe they are important.
Screw that. If someone wants a pristine phone they can buy a new one like I did. It's bonkers.
I do this but mostly from trauma of having to kill things due to hosting costs (happened before), as long as its cheap/self sufficient enough the fun part dominates.
It's a decent blog post but smells like rich person (compared to majority of the world) privilege. Always easier to talk from above.
It comes across as typical anti-individual ("anti-millennial") drivel by a person paralyzed by society out of fear, who now wants to share that paralysis with others.
This kind of paralysis (and writing style) comes from failure - either too much or not enough.
This author should have made a song, a documentary, an app, a painting, a company, documented making a dish from an ancient recipe, recorded themselves doing their first kickflip, made a pixel-art game engine in C, traveled to the Richat Structure to prove that it is/isn't Atlantis, etc. but instead of all that much cooler stuff that would further enlighten themselves and the world, they wrote this projection of insecurity.
"Don't try."
Nobody says this louder than people who either give up too easily or are afraid of challenges. Maybe they've never experienced the fruits of labor when it comes to a personal venture - economic or otherwise.
You really can sell software, get brand deals on a YouTube channel, get sponsored doing action sports, perform on stage in front of thousands, gain fans by living and documenting an incredible life on social media. It's not only possible, but it's a lot more fun than living as a copy/paste bubble jacket drone who has to go to work, who never does or says anything interesting.
The author's choice to not use CSS is not effortless minimalism by the way, it's the same thing as his moody black and white photo example - it's a conscious decision to appear a certain way to an audience.
This article is what a crab in a bucket looks like in the wild. The author is trying hard - they're just putting more effort in keeping contemporaries down than pulling themselves up. A sad state of our youth.
Let me counter this with an age old adage that is simply true: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
He said make your art for yourself, make it like it is a diary entry.
TFA (later): well, we made it to the front page of HN
I won’t change my ways as I have enough money, but I would be quite… not happy starting out in these times and having to pose and fake until I make etc.
It does not help someone create the greatest thing ever in silence when nobody will ever know about it.
These two verses come to my mind often and have formed the basis of how I approach nearly everything in life both work and hobby. I feel the pursuit of excellence is a thing both for work and life in general.
On the Internet, everything is my work. I do not have some benefactor job outside of what I do.
For my hobbies and sports, I approach everything with diligence and care.
I hope to raise my children to do likewise.