Career

Monetizing Fun

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

After writing about how we destroy fun and how we sometimes monetize fun inappropriately, I’d like to address this question:

Is it Healthy to Make Money At What You Enjoy?

It would seem that this question is obviously “yes”, but it’s an uncomfortable one. I’m sure many of us have known people that turned fun into a job, many of us have done it ourselves, and it’s not an easy situation. Forget if you can make enough money, the stress the loss of joy, etc. can be enough of a pain.

It’s an uncomfortable question – could the idea of enjoying our job, of profiting from fun, be a bad one?

Let’s sit with that one for a moment. Go ahead, think it over.

Now that you did that, my answer is “yes, it’s OK to make money at what you like, but as long as you stay aware of your situation”

When you realize you can monetize fun, I’m bang along side it as long as you’re aware of the situation and pay attention. Check in with yourself when you start down this path, and check in reguarly and review where you are. I do this every month to every few months, often when I feel like my fun/work balance has gotten out of balance.

Here’s the checks you want to make:

AM I DOING THIS FOR A GOOD REASON?

Are you trying to monetize fun for a good reason? Will it advance your life and that of others? Will it make you happier? Will it, logically, make you enough cash to be worth it (if you care about it)?

Check in with yourself reguarly if you’re doing this fun-for-money thing for the right reasons, it can change. I’ve found cases where I was doing certain projects out of habit – not for any good reason.

DO I KNOW THE VALUE OF WHAT I’M DOING?

There’s two questions to ask when it comes to the value of fun:

  • Do I know how much value my fun-for-money brings me or can bring me? That helps me understand if its worth it financially (and for the sacrifice of making fun more of a job).
  • Do I know the value of my fun without the pressure to monetize it? That helps me decide if its worth monetizing or I just want to hang out and have fun.

Know the value of what you’re doing both in money and personal fulfillment. Check in reguarly, because it can change . . .

CAN I SWITCH IN OR OUT OF MONETIZING MY FUN?

Can you turn your “hobby-job” back to just a hobby? Can you, when you want, turn that “profiting from fun” switch back on? Can you just take a break?

Keeping this fluidity is important. It lowers the chance you’ll trap yourself, and helps remind yourself you have options – so you don’t feel trapped. Sometimes, after all, the worst trap is just thinking you are.

Personally, this question helped me realize I just like to write. I’d be doing it no matter what.

DO I HAVE AN ENDGAME?

If you’re going to monetize your hobby, you’ll want to ask what the endgame is – when would you decide to not do it or decide you fulfilled your goals. Could it be “funning” your way to a new job? Being a paid author? Publishing so many books? Doing it until you die as you like it?

Have an idea of your long-term goals, even if your long-term goal is “just see if I still wanna do this.” When you have an idea of an endgame it lets you evaluate your progress towards it and prepare for transitions that may come when you reach that end state.

However, having an endgame also lets you know when to stop. Maybe the endgame won’t work and you change it. Maybe it’s not worth it anymore. Know what you want if only to know when it’s no longer a good idea.

ITS OK TO MAKE MONEY AT FUN – IF YOU CHECK IN

So, go ahead, make money at your hobbies. Just make sure you have checkins to on these subjects to see how you’re doing on your goals, motivations, status, and so on. Be ready to make changes depending on your finding, and give yourself the freedom to do so.

This way you’re able to adapt and change and be happy – be it from making money, having fun, or a balance between the two.

Steven Savage

Sometimes The Best Ambition Is Less Ambition

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Lately, a lot of my friends have been going through “job issues.”  Losing them, not happy with them, being pressured to trade up, and so on.  Listening to them I realized that there’s something important to say:

It’s OK to not have ambitions for a “better” job.

Yes, that’s right it’s me, Mister Geek Job Guru telling you maybe you’d be happier staying where you are, or getting a lower paying job or whatever.  Radical? Unexpected? Extremely un-Steve like?  No, it’s about things more important than getting a “better” job.

The benefits are worth it.  One friend of mine had some health issues, and their job has great benefits, so they’re not planning to move on or up at least for the time being.  This is fine.  If a job gives you benefits like great health, training, etc. it’s perfectly OK not to change.  A job that has good benefits may be worth staying at even if it’s not as high paying or lacks prestige or whatever.

It’s lower stress.  Look moving up is all fine and good, but maybe a job is going to have less chance of killing you.  Fine, worth staying with as opposed to getting a job that will put you in a grave quicker.

It lets you do other things.  Your job or future job may give you more time to socialize, build that art career, take care of kids, whatever.  Perhaps it’s less work or a shorter commute – that’s great.  No need to change.

It’s cheaper to do.  A job you’re at may cost less to commute at, require you to spend less on things like businesswear, and so on.  That’s fine.  Sometimes the money you save beats any pay raise you may have.

It works into your life plans.  You don’t have to go get the biggest title or highest paycheck if the job fits your life goals.  Maybe the job will let you retire quicker but isn’t as prestigious.  Perhaps your current position means you get to stay in a place you like.  That’s fine.

You’re tired of career stuff.  Maybe your current job is a placeholder intentionally, and that’s also fine.  Maybe you got laid off, or are changing careers or just moved.  Good, enjoy your placeholder, maybe set a time to re-review your priorities, and chill out.

It’s a placeholder.  Maybe you’re moving or going back to school or something and the job is there so you can earn money.  Great, don’t worry.

There are many reasons not to look for the better job, the best job, the highest-up job or whatever.  That’s totally fine because your career goals have to serve your life goals.

If you aren’t sure about this, let me remind you that you have permission from me, the guy who writes all sorts of career books to not think about the biggest paycheck or coolest title and just do whatever.

-Steven Savage

False Work and False Leisure

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I was reading this depressingly brilliant Cracked article on BS inspirational stories. Short form many of them are about people in horrible circumstances managing to survive (ignoring many who dont), or they’re people of means who we’ll never be. Somewhere in the article it also mentioned how we’ve idealized work and working ourselves to death.

I write on careers and jobs and all that. I am a careerist in that I like what I do and its part of me. But I don’t believe in idealizing work.

Why? Work is a neutral thing. Amount of work, hours put in, and so on – is no measure of value.

Why? People need to relax. You can’t work all the time.

Why? Because we have to goddamn stop expecting people to work all the time in America.

At the same time all this workaholism in America is paired with a weird kind of hedonism. We’re supposed to have the right clothes, eat the right food, take vacations, and keep up with the Kardashians. We’re supposed to work all the time and also relax, we’re supposed to be Inspirational Poor People pulling themselves up and also Beautiful Rich People.

This hedonism thing bullshit as well.

Why? Buying something doesn’t mean its good for you or what you want; sometimes someone is selling you something.

Why? A lot of what gets sold to us is to make up for a void in our life or show other people – we’re not really enjoining it.

Why? Because a lot of this is not about what we really want – which is probably to work goddamn less.

We’re Calvinist Hedonists. Sounds like an oxymoron? That’s the point.

Work, leisure, and everything else is highly messed up in our culture. But down deep I think they come from the same problem; a lack of meaning and larger context.

We don’t build a sustainable society, but a stratified one of haves and have-nots (read Twilight Of The Elites). It’s a society that’s meaningless, grubbing for money, trying to tweak that next tax bracket. It’s one where work means nothing except trying to scrape by or trying to show up the next person with a bunch of money.

We build a society on selling people B.S., things they don’t need. Ask yourself how much of our economy is really just a bunch of bullshit anyway. how many things don’t mean anything, aren’t practical or aren’t fun. But if we slow down our hedonism, we might realize how pointless our work is and how much our society abandons its members.

Look I write on work. I love doing it. I also write on cool stuff. But I write on what has meaning to me and to people.

Maybe we need to slow down and ask what’s important. Or maybe we’re scared because we’ll realize how much we’ve done wrong.

– Steve