Hobby Mode

Not all the time I dedicate to work, I spend working. Sometimes, I’m in hobby mode.

For example:

• I polish a presentation deck more than the attendance will care.

• I spend hours researching a topic that’s only tangentially related to my work.

• I get nerd-sniped and spend one hour developing a script that will save me thirty minutes.

In all three cases, I do something work-related, but for the benefit of my pure enjoyment and not of my customers. There's nothing inherently wrong with this – as long as we correctly categorize it as hobby time and not work time.

The importance of categorizing Hobby Mode as such

I am not alone in this tendency to spend part of my work hours in hobby mode. For example, I work with an entrepreneur who has the tendency to get nerd-sniped and spends a significant portion of his work hours developing tools for his team, even though it’s not the best use of his time. We solved this by acknowledging that the time he spends doing that should be categorized as “hobby time” and boxed into some specific slot of his schedule (say, “Friday afternoons are for hobby model.”) That allows him to spend the rest of his week fully focused on supporting his team.

If one truly cared about maximizing effectiveness, they would minimize hobby mode. However, life is about more than just effectiveness. Hence, it’s okay to spend some time in hobby mode. The key is to label that correctly and to be deliberate about it.

Recognizing Hobby Mode

So, how do you recognize hobby mode? It’s tricky because it looks like work and arguably has at least some work-related value. (Here, by “hobby mode,” I do not mean time spent in hobbies unrelated to work – say, gardening – but time spent doing work-related tasks that feel like hobbies.)

The defining characteristic of hobby mode is a high opportunity cost. Your time is doing something of value, but it would create much more value if you spent it doing something else – or if you did that task more efficiently, only doing the necessary and avoiding the superfluous.

Again, I’m not saying by any means that you should maximize work mode. However, you probably need to spend at least some of your time in work mode (depending on your desired lifestyle and other ambitions), hence the need to correctly label hobby mode as such and be deliberate about how long you spend in it.

Hobby Mode and Innovation

A common counterpoint is that hobby mode helps with innovation. This is true, but that’s a good reason not to fully avoid hobby mode – not to engage with it without bounds. Again, the key is to be deliberate about the balance between work mode and hobby mode.

It’s a bit like the difference between eating and overeating. The former is healthy and enjoyable, whereas the latter is unhealthy and, frankly, not that enjoyable either. The key is not to avoid eating, obviously, but to be deliberate about it.