I think you have it reversed, a lot of fun things suck when they make you money.
That has not been my experience...they become more fun.
“I can’t believe what people are willing to pay for this” can be either a positive or negative statement depening on what you value.
There is a difference between knitting a scarf for a Christmas gift and making enough scarves, all the time, so that you can afford the roof over your head. And even more so if you have clients anxious about timelines.
I think it's unusual though. Hobbyists in general seem to be intrinsically motivated by their interest in the hobby itself. I know I personally am not motivated by money at all, seeing it as a necessary evil to survive in this competitive society. My goal is to earn enough money to have a stable and secure lifestyle, with enough free time to pursue my hobbies.
https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv
> The authors synthesized the results from 128 controlled experiments. The results highlighted consistent negative effects of incentives — from marshmallows to dollars — on intrinsic motivation. These effects were particularly strong when the tasks were interesting or enjoyable rather than boring or meaningless.
If Bezos wrote me a large enough check to never participate in specific hobbies again, I would take him up on it. I would be happier than before I took the offer. But I would clearly be even happier with a check that wasn't tied to ruining a hobby.
That being said, I'm a software engineer, and that's a really fortunate occupation to be passionate above due to the breadth of its applicability (e.g. allowing one to work more closely on my topic of interest) and salary potential.
Ok, so they found that people who are top earners are no more satisfied with their jobs than bottom earners.
Might this be because top earners tend to be the types who neglect other aspects of their lives? Or who are hypercompeitive and are unlikely to be satisfied at any level, otherwise they would have stayed where they were?
Or maybe the higher the pay goes, the higher the concentration of high self discipline people willing to endure things they don't like for money. Etc.
And we are supposed to wave away all of these confounders because of controlled marshmellow experiments done on random students?
I'm sure Harvard meta studies do the best job possible distilling insight from these studies. The problem is how insightful these types of studies are in the first place.
That particular example was a meta study of over 100 other studies
But sure, I'm sure your expertise in study design and statistics is enough to invalidate their work and the work of hundreds of other researchers simply because you don't agree with the conclusion.
"A lot of fun things end up sucking when you expect them to also make you money."
I play a musical instrument for a long long time, nowhere as good as a very good players, but sometimes I get a small paid gig and it is actually a fun thing to do. My life doesn't depend on the income from playing so I just enjoy opportunities when they come and go.
It turns out the freedom to practice the hobby how/when/where you want, isn't just a nice to have, but an essential part of why you enjoyed the hobby in the first place.
You might enjoy being with your wife, but if she controlled every aspect of how you were allowed to, or must, engage with her, on pain of starvation and homelessness, you probably wouldn't enjoy her anymore. You'd resent her as a slave resents his master, even if she is a relatively good master.
Agency is essential to enjoyment of literally anything.