Advice

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

Better Or Blockers

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

At a recent Agile Leadership Conference I encountered the work of Ken Rubin, an Agile coach and business expert. I can pretty much say if you’re a Project Manager or Scrum Master, read his stuff.

However, out of the many things he talked about – many things – was about how people can get improvement wrong. See, sometimes trying to improve is the wrong thing.

Which of course, sounds weird for a guy who talks about improvement, but hang in there.

See he brought up an example that if you’ve got a plan but 90% if blocked, hung up, waiting for information, then you don’t want to improve. No amount of better processes or practices will make a big difference because your problem is not how you’re doing it, it’s how you’ve got things messing you up.

Think of it this way, if there’s all sorts of things screwing up your plans, why try to be better at how you do things? Instead, start tackling the things screwing you up – the blockers.

Maybe you are doing things right. Maybe all your processes and plans really are good. It’s just you have to find what’s blocking you from being your best.

So next time you’re trying to get your book, or home, or life, or job in order, take inventory of what’s hanging you up. It might be you’re fine, just a little unaware.

Steven Savage



An Exercise: Facing Past Choices

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

A while ago I caught myself reflecting on my life choices, and my wish to have done things differently. Sure we all do that, but I found myself going over what could be, and it was distracting. There’s a point where done is done, and going over things yields no useful lessons and wastes time.

I also wanted to get this non-productive overthinking out of my system, both to stop doing it but also to see what I could learn. I quickly came up with an exercise that I want to recommend to people – because I’m sure many of you go into “what if” phases as I did.

Set aside at least an hour of your time and go to some place where you can have a nice non-distracted walk or sit (a park, a large mall, etc.). Take your phone, but during your time there don’t use it – it can be a distraction.

Now while you walk (or sit) do the following:

  • Take your most recent “life choice you may have done differently” and ask what would have happened if you had really made another choice. Keep it to two or three possibilities like “if I’d done X then probably Y and Z,” and make sure the answer “feels” right to you.
  • Once you finish with that item, move to the next, earliest “choice point” in your history and do the same, working through your life backward.
  • It’s OK to say the answer to any of your questions is “I don’t know.” That’s fine and healthy.
  • Go back as far as you need to, though I found for we older folks 18 is more than enough.
  • Don’t rush this, just don’t dwell on anything so deeply that you go down a mental rabbit hole.
  • When done take a break.

I found this an incredibly cleansing exercise. It got me over some things I kept obsessing over. It gave me an excellent retrospective. It definitely shortened this phase of “what if I had done things differently.”

I guess it got a lot out of my system.

I also had a few insights I want to share that may help you make sense of your own choices if you do this exercise:

  • Saying “if I did X then I don’t know” was liberating – as was the effort to see if I really could guess at what changes my choices would bring.
  • I found some interesting divergence points in my life where I could have become radically different in ways I could visualize. I didn’t always like those mes.
  • I was able to recognize people and groups and occurrences that helped keep me grounded in my life, and that may explain some of my behavior and what things keep my attention.
  • Significant trends in my career became apparent – as in there are three locations I kept thinking of moving career-wise to since my teens to 30’s. I live in one of those locations now.
  • A lot of my childhood interests are still part of my life. I wanted to work in tech, in science, and be a writer. I’m more or less doing those things, just in different ways.
  • I had a much better sense of what I wanted mattered to me.

Feeling reflective to the level it’s like being in a hall of mirrors? Try this exercise and see what you find.

Steven Savage