Is it a hobby or potential career?
How do you tell the difference between a hobby and a potential career path? Here are some tips to help you work it out. By Jacqui Ooi.
If you’ve been reconnecting with some of your favourite pastimes over the summer, you might be wondering whether that hobby you love has potential as a fulfilling career.
Whether it’s writing or photography or cooking or travel, finding a way to make that your paid job would surely be a great idea, right? Well, not always.
While it sounds ideal, turning your hobbies into a career can feel very different, which is why it’s important to test your ideas first. I’ll give you an example from my early career.
Travel writing took the fun out of travel for me
I love to travel and I love to write, so back in my 20s, I thought being a travel writer would be my dream job. I already worked in magazines so it wasn’t a stretch to land a role that saw me jetsetting to places like Hawaii and New York.
But I soon discovered it wasn’t my dream job after all. In fact, I found it to be a bit stressful and not very fun – because rather than just enjoying the adventure, I was having to make sure I squeezed in enough activities to write about, line up interviews with different people and source information such as web addresses, prices and photos. So it very much became about the needs of my editors and people reading the story, and that was a very different experience.
A handful of my travel stories written back in the day!
I realised travel, for me, is purely a personal pleasure – writing about my experiences for other people wasn’t a key driver. On the other hand, I’ve interviewed other travel writers who feel a strong sense of purpose in their work and love inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.
For example, Nina Karnikowski uses her travel experiences and her writing to influence other people to travel more sustainably. And Evie Farrell shares her travel adventures to give other women the confidence to travel, particularly solo mums travelling with their kids.
In short, that combination of pleasure and purpose makes it a fulfilling career for them. (For me, travel remains a glorious hobby!)
To be clear, it’s not a failure for something to be a hobby and not a career – hobbies can be a great way to satisfy your interests and explore different parts of yourself. But it’s good to understand the difference between the two, particularly when you’re going through the process of making a career change.
Here are some questions to help you decide if that hobby could be a fulfilling career.
1. Purpose vs pleasure
Do you enjoy the activity purely because it’s pleasurable or do you derive a sense of purpose from it too? One way to work this out is whether you feel compelled to share it with other people or use it to make a difference in some way.
If it’s more for you and something you find personally satisfying, then you’ll likely enjoy it more as a hobby than a career.
Hetty McKinnon turned her love of cooking into a flourishing career after becoming a mum, finding purpose in sharing recipes and food stories that celebrate family, culture and identity.
2. Strengths and talents
Another question to ask is, are you actually good at your hobby? Does it use your strengths? Then perhaps it could be a fulfilling career. However, if it’s more about enjoyment than talent, then it’s probably a hobby.
Of course, you could practise and get better at it, but you need to be realistic about your level of proficiency and your natural attributes to turn your hobby into a successful career.
Tania Blanchard turned her writing hobby into a full-time career in her 40s, becoming a best-selling author after enrolling in a commercial fiction masterclass and pitching her novel to a publisher.
3. Income potential
The third point to consider is, can you generate an income from your hobby? Will someone employ you or pay you to do it? Talking to other people already working in the field or developing a business plan will help you work this out.
That’s not to say it has to provide your full income. If it won’t pay enough on its own, then you could look at diversifying your income streams to cover your needs.
Podcaster and former primary school teacher Claire Tonti turned her love of singing into a professional music career, releasing her first album at age 37 and touring Australia and overseas.
It’s not always clear-cut, but I find these three questions are a great starting point to help you understand your interests and where they fit into your life and career. It’s a first step to testing your career ideas so you can feel confident you’re making the right decision.
Jacqui Ooi is the founder of What She Did Next and creator of the Career Change Kickstarter course, teaching proven strategies to help women navigate change and build careers they love.
