Why founders need hobbies
baremetrics.com
baremetrics.com
A true hobby is something that you don't do for money and that has no deadlines attached.
Once you start accepting payment to do something, someone else is setting expectations for your work. If you are a pretty good hobbyist photographer, one of the worst things you can do is shoot a wedding. Shooting a wedding, even for professional photographers, is one of the highest stress environments possible for photography.
If you have deadlines associated with your hobby, what happens if they "slip"? For example, if you set an artificial deadline to make your first ambitious Arduino project that will do something that will make your friends impressed and you get stuck somewhere, does it really matter?
Nothing needs to be said about the combination of paid work and deadlines. That is not hobbying, that is contracting. A long time ago, I did some subcontracting on iOS development. Beautiful weekend? Didn't matter. Monday deadline for client. Sucked.
I think that's a little too specific and doesn't fit a lot of hobbies. People do often make a little money from their hobbies: fixing up and reselling old cars, thrifting and selling on eBay, refinishing furniture, putting up videos on YouTube.
Also, many hobbies have time-critical components. Even all-American pastimes like sports require you to not miss the game.
I'd crystalize it like so: A hobby is something you sink time into where failure has no negative consequences.
Since people like to pick nits here, that probably needs a couple of qualifiers. The sunk time itself can be considered a negative consequence. And the failure may have negative consequences within the hobby — if you accidentally crush your ship in a bottle, you aren't gonna be happy.
But the negative consequences of failure don't bleed out into anything else in your life. You have no need to succeed. That encapsulation of failure is what I think makes hobbies safe and thus encourage fun and a sense of play.
The reason it's so often disastrous to turn your hobby into a job is exactly because of that reason: it means you are now adding real stakes to the game. If you failed frequently and safely when it was a hobby, that was fine and you might still love the hobby. Once those failures matter, it can upend the whole cost/benefit calculation.
Not saying you're wrong, just throwing a wrench into the works because it has been on my mind and I'm curious what the hive mind has to say.
The deadline part is a more onerous constraint but still I like his definition better than yours because of the hobbies that have negative consequences (like the mountaineering).
I think the best definition would be a modification of "A true hobby is something that you don't do for money and that has no deadlines attached." but instead of saying what it isn't (deadlines, money) say what it is:
A true hobby is a personal activity that has sentimental value.
The meaning of 'personal' here is that it would be detrimental for the activity to be attached to the world (through things like deadlines or money) and it has sentimental value i.e. it is not a chore but is actually enjoyable.
Another observation is that you sometimes want to share personal things with others but only if they belong to the group you trust with this particular secret. Hobbies can therefore have attachments but only to the world of that hobby (some niche community probably). This world can then become a gateway to the real world again since if you rise in the ranks of this community you become a part of the leadership that straddles the border between the community and the real world, the members of the community will often pay for this 'protection' - as an example, pro gamers legitimize the hobby of gaming since it becomes a possibility, however unlikely, to make a living playing games. This protection allows hobbyists to fully engage in their activity without concern for reality, hiding behind the delusion of one day becoming pro or in other cases staying relatively anonymous or legitimate due to the more extreme people taking the spotlight. For those who stand the vanguard it is a cutthroat life very much attached to the real world (deadlines, money, training, hard work) the hobby has therefore ceased to be a hobby and has become a job or lifestyle.
I also think specialization works against this idea. In the early 80s a computer game was a job of a single or few developers: they were moving a few pixels, using limited colors, and with very limited sound capabilities. Now it is very difficult to impress ourselves or others working in small groups. There are exceptions like computer security, demo scenes, etc but the participants are outliers and not the common denominator.
Additionally I think maintaining ownership and flexibility of schedule is good to a certain point, but having deadlines and external stakeholders (which you preferably choose and control) also helps for motivation. It's always more rewarding when you meet those than question your commitment to your hobby when you forget about it for a few months because "you were busy".
I class myself as taking "decent snapshots", have a good DSLR and a fair bit of experience. I've shot three weddings for family & friends, all of them were under duress. None of the couples were going to pay for a photographer so I was pretty much the only alternative to them asking people for whatever pictures they happened to take and share.
On the day it was a balance between taking part in the wedding and getting decent pictures, including the formal shots. I was pretty nervous and didn't like the directing part, I prefer to be anonymous in the background. Not everything turned out well but compared to the alternative they were all very happy and I did get good coverage of the days events. I did sort of enjoy it and was well prepared with kit & plans for the day plus it was certainly an experience but have said to myself never again.......
I began charging a small fee for my time a few years ago (I justified that I should make at least half my freelance dev rate) but even that small price totally ruined the experience for me. Once it became a job it wasn't fun. Now I'm back to doing pro-bono events mainly for non profits and it's fun again.
If you don’t finish your costume in time for a con, you miss it. No big deal.
If you miss delivering a costume for client for a con, very big deal.
Becoming a guild master ruined WoW for me. A successfull guild is ran like a business. People get upset if you take a raid night off.
Being a guild leader was fun for a little bit, but it eventually killed my love for the game
Yet both examples of employees with hobbies are people who code outside of work. I'm certainly guilty of this, but I would suggest that unless you're 100% devoted to a single goal during the day, you can use your job as a means to tinker with code-related stuff you're interested in.
For instance, the people doing ML and AI degrees should be doing it on company time, especially if it's benefiting the business. Ask your boss and you'd be surprised what benefits you can squeeze out.
I'd strongly recommend getting into something more creative or totally orthogonal to your career. For example I've done a bit of pottery and learned some basic woodworking - both of which I'd like to improve on. Music or languages are two other hobbies which are generally accessible.
You can sometimes find odd passions via work. I've done some projects in smart agriculture and it got me into gardening in a nerdy way. The science behind commercial horticulture is fascinating - it's half cutting edge research and half "old guy" expertise. My tomato crop was a lot better for it.
If you want to really nail the hipster, rounded, programmer stereotype, get down to the climbing wall and start brewing beer. No surprises why climbing is popular with programmers. It's a lot of thinking, works just fine as a solo (or group) sport and tends to attract people who didn't enjoy "conventional" sports at school.
About six months ago, I started baking artisan bread as an offset to writing code.
Now, while I work fewer hours, I get more done, and I feel healthier.
I bake two loaves at a time and give one to neighbors. They absolutely love it, and I have to say, the bread is very good.
To me hobbies are as important, if not more important, than your day job. Before you down-vote me, please understand that I'm someone who learned about 95% of my technical knowledge from fun and hobbies. Although I'm full-force into computer vision, machine learning, and robotics in the company I'm co-founding, I wouldn't know any of that stuff if I weren't building robots to chase cats and deliver toilet paper, training algorithms to classify free food e-mails, and toying with neural net ideas 10 years ago when I was an physics undergrad (no, I didn't major in CS -- that was my hobby).
And I wouldn't have been a physics undergrad if I hadn't spent hours at night back in high school studying physics and differential equations secretly while my parents thought I had gone to bed already.
Likewise, what I do 10 years from now will depend heavily on the things I learn and ponder on nights and weekends today. It would effectively be the end of my life and career if I didn't have, and insist on having, that time to myself now.
I'll also add as very much an introvert I absolutely must have sufficient disconnected / off-the-grid / "me" time to recuperate. Like food and water, that's largely non-negotiable beyond occasional stretches of a day or two. I'd probably go into clinical depression if I was forced to be in front of people all day for extended periods of time.
I literally have to turn my chair around 180 degrees to go from my PC & laptop to a rack of guitars and amps. Makes it easy during those long compile cycles or waiting for an up/download to just reach back and grab a guitar and noodle away for a bit.
And to actually get out of the house every now and then for a brain refresh, I recently took up Kendo as a sport as well.
For a decently established startup with well-secured funding, this article is spot-on.
Many founders find missing their friends and hobbies makes them less productive, so, for some, it's far better for the startup to spend a little less time on it. It takes a very self-aware founder to actually do it though.
In a perfect world I would probably only socialize once a week, with a good friend each time.
I really should make that a higher priority, even if some travel is required.
There's really no substitute for a real friend.
DHH not only open sourced Rails while he built 37 Signals / Basecamp he also won Le Mans racing trophies and wrote a couple books on entrepreneurship.
Sometimes there are situations where it truly is a matter of hyper growth and full bore competition, but I think there are plenty of opportunities to build a sub-billion dollar business and still have an interesting life outside of work.
And for the past 2 months, I am also taking tennis lessons, and they've had unexpected positive influences on my life. I am waking early everyday to play, I've improved my stamina, and I get a solid sleep at the end of the day because physical activity tires out over the day and you easily sleep.
10/10 would recommend hobbies to all.
I'm trying to learn guitar and although I mostly enjoy it, I can't say I look forward to my 30 minutes of practice each day (although once I'm going I usually go long).
It's unsustainable to focus 100% on your business. Our brains aren't optimized this way. We need hobbies, recreation, and diversions to be healthy.
Elon Musk doesn't appear to be motivated by profit and therefore he doesn't need a hobby. Besides, what cooler hobby could there be than building rockets.
When you say he's in it for power, that sounds like you think of power as meaning power over other people, but why can't he be primarily motivated by seeking power over nature - which living on Mars might amount to the ultimate example of?
And I am not conviced having side projects as a fronted developer makes you a better developer unless you push yourself really hard.
What is more likely to make you better developer in any job is working with people who have a lot of experience and are willing to share it. So not necessarily a hobby, or you have to spend a lot of time yourself to discover and think about a lot of concepts, at which point is not really a hobby, more like college.
And i would argue also about hiking being a hobby, i never go hiking, but i love walking around the city like a maniac, is that a hoby? oh well maybe, but i’d say it would be more correct to say that you need to relax and gain strength for next working day, how exactly to do it you have to findout for yourself cos not everyone is the same...
I give a lot of lee-way to people when it comes to learning lessons, but this idea that your mind should be on your business 24/7 and nothing else, and that that is somehow healthy... I mean, I don't even know how it's controversial for Josh to say people need to do stuff outside of work.
I am a huge believer that we, as founders, should apply the same standards to ourselves as we do to employees. Enforce personal time and vacations, that sort of thing. If it's healthy for an employee, it's healthy for you, and your business doesn't need one of its founders to burn out.
The artificial "must do everything now right now" rush comes from "Funding will run out!" and "We must be first to market!". Those things will happen either way if you lose one of your founders to burnout along the way. Or even if you don't lose them, your productivity will sink like a horse in wet toilet paper if you don't give yourself limits. Furthermore, "funding will run out if I don't rush" is usually a sign you've taken on funding too early. Give yourself enough time early on.
I'm particularly sensible to all this because I've seen how the games industry has abused employees in the past (and this keeps happening, although less), the same way a lot of founders abuse themselves today. Ridiculous deadlines, trading employee health for "code crunch" as if there's just a lot of ones and zeroes to type until you're done.
Don't pull regular all-nighters, don't order KFC every day because you "don't have time to cook", don't stop reading/gaming/watching TV (that business meeting email can wait until tomorrow). And for god sake, don't neglect your personal life to the point of losing your boyfriend/girlfriend/SO, there's nothing like losing your partner to precipitate burnout.
I've even seen some founders rave about things like the Mythical Man-Month and then stay up 36 hours to "work more on their business", as if sleep wouldn't catch up on them anyway. Dumb, toxic culture.
If you want to create a successful company, there's no room not to do those things. At best you'll burn out. If somehow your company survives, you probably won't like the culture you created.
To be clear: I'm not saying "don't work hard". I'm saying that if you think you can make it by cutting out all personal time, you don't have the stamina you think you do. Almost nobody does, you're not the exception, and even if you are, you're gambling your company with your own life which, in startup lingo, is what we call a "dumb move".
All work and no play makes something something.