The Remarkable Impact of Hobbies on Career

[Music]

i vividly remember being nine years old

and getting wrapped up for hours on my

bedroom floor hunkered down with my 21

pack of marker pens creating booklets of

imaginary creatures

or i’d be scribbling down another story

about one of the many adventures of

seymour the fish

or often my face would be buried in the

shiny pages of a kid’s encyclopedia

being blown away by how massive the sun

is compared to our tiny blue earth

i was what they called a well-rounded

kid and my teachers looked at this very

positively

that changes over time though doesn’t it

imagine if you walked into a job

interview for a computer programmer and

they asked you what are your strengths

and you said well i’m great at writing

code but i’m also great at bringing some

taekwondo and quilting to my work

as adults we have been taught that our

careers that one thing that we’re paid

to do

is the priority and if we want to keep

doing any of our other interests those

get categorized as hobby or leisure

activity that we do in our spare time

if we have the spare time

but what i have found firsthand over the

past 30 years is that our hobbies play a

much larger role than is acknowledged

i first saw the impact of hobbies back

in the 90s as a graduate student in

chemistry when most of my time was

supposed to be spent on my research

project i was kind of a night owl so i’d

often head over to campus in the evening

to set up an experiment

most of my work was done in a dark laser

lab up on the third floor of a 1960s

science building and i’d spend hours

shooting multiple laser beams at yellow

solutions trying to figure out what the

molecules were doing in microseconds

but that is only a partial snapshot of

how i’d spend the nights in my mid-20s

many other evenings i was making my way

up a stairwell to another 1960s building

this one off campus and felt more like a

cheap motel

it was our band practice space

a typical night looked like this i’d

swing the door open the hallway old beer

stench slaps me in the face i’m blasted

by heavy metal coming from room one

passed by rooms two’s indie rock and as

i came up on our practice space i’d hear

the familiar entry song being played

where’s karen

my bandmate’s favorite way to remind me

that

yes once again i was late

so i’d sheepishly slink in but pull out

my guitar and soon we were deep in it

running through our set writing new

songs or getting ready for our next gig

my life appeared to be a prime example

of someone maintaining that coveted work

life balance

from the outside it looked like i had a

budding career that had top priority

supported by a side hobby that we used

to blow off steam and spare time just

for fun

but that description was not how it felt

to me

yes absolutely i was studying to create

a lifelong career in science

but my band

it was my lifeblood

it felt just as important to me to play

a rock concert as it was to present at a

scientific conference

it was not easy though to maintain vigor

in both my science and my music

and not just because they’re both energy

intensive

but because i carried a heaviness

a guilt

a feeling that by playing in my band i

was doing something that i was not

supposed to be doing

i was supposed to be collecting data

analyzing results reading papers writing

a manuscript

i felt as if i had a finite amount of

dedication to give and if i didn’t put

it all towards my career

i was actively turning my back on it

i felt shame

so in my next two jobs i often

downplayed or even hid

my musical escapades

i was well on my way down a common path

where careers dominate and our hobbies

shrink and often die

away one excuse many of us use is lack

of time a recent study showed that even

though many people have specific hobbies

they want to engage in they said they

don’t have time for them

and this struggle also shows itself in

taking vacations

it was found that over half of employees

in the united states did not use up

their allotted vacation time

of those who did take a vacation

two-thirds of them continued working

during vacation

and 16 percent

take time off

to do more work

there are many theories as to why so

many of us behave this way but

regardless of why the evidence is clear

we don’t know how to stop ourselves from

working and it’s impacting our job

effectiveness as well as our health and

our happiness

i was able to avoid that trap

i kept my bands going despite the guilt

and ultimately what i have found over

the past couple decades

is that science is my marathon but rock

music is my cross training and without

my cross-training i can’t bring my

a-game to the race

it’s because of my hobby that i perform

well at work

what i discovered is that hobbies

are not just hobbies

they enhance your career

imagine that your hobby is the reason

you get the promotion or that your team

doubles its quarterly goal or that you

receive that award or that scholarship

unfortunately because of feelings of

guilt or that time crunch we drop our

hobbies from our lives and we use those

rationalizations such as i’ll pick it

back up after i get the promotion or

i’ll get back into it after the kids get

older and what happens as the years go

by

how do we feel

just last week i heard how it can make

us feel

i was in an online group conversation

with women around the world and i was

expressing how profoundly playing in

bands has helped me in my academic

position

one of the people in the room dr ikja

signee who is an assistant professor of

cyber security

freaked out

she said oh my god you have no idea how

important it is for me to hear this

message from you right now

she went on to describe how her guitar

was sitting in her office at that moment

staring at

her i could hear the heartbreak in her

voice as she told us about how giving up

guitar for all those years had made her

feel like she was slowly losing touch

with her spiritual side

but

i also heard her elation when in that

moment she felt inspired to bring it

back into her life

feeling like now she not only had the

permission to pick up the guitar

but she was about to feel whole again

every time we let one of our hobbies sit

dormant

we have rejected a part of ourselves

and not a trivial part

even it’s even if it’s something that

doesn’t provide a monetary income

its value is enormous

that’s one of the best reasons to keep

cultivating our hobbies without them we

aren’t functioning as our best whole

selves

when we instead prioritize them we are

able to approach our careers and other

parts of our life in full force

the scientific evidence for this

observation comes from a study published

in 2020 in the journal of vocational

behavior

the researchers were curious about

leisure activities and their effect on

people’s careers

their primary result

was this

above average time spent on leisure

activities

positively impacted people’s careers

now there is a caveat

they found this to be true specifically

for activities that were high in

seriousness

and different from a person’s career

in their studies they defined serious as

activities that had goals aspirations

and where there’s some kind of risk

involved such as engaging in

competitions or performances

and they discovered that by pulling from

varied parts of our lives that have

different skill sets or mindsets we gain

cross-pollination between our hobbies

and careers

this is great news

but what do we do with it

so many of us feel like we can’t or

shouldn’t engage time in our hobbies or

leisure activities but these exciting

results tell us that we can and we

should

after living with this conundrum for

many years living deeply in both worlds

of chemistry and punk rock

feeling that guilt

and even feeling tempted to stop playing

music a few years ago

here’s where i landed

i have three questions that we can use

as a litmus test to help us change our

attitudes towards our hobbies

first remember that the hobby needs to

be conventionally different from your

paid work like our computer programmer

who’s also a quilter

question one

does it help me become better at doing

something

am i developing a skill

two

does it entail a risk of some kind

and three

does it include aspirations and goals

and if your hobby brings you even just

one of those but especially if it’s yes

to all three

it’s a keeper

it’s poised to enhance your career

for me i saw the power of this

integration when i finally welcomed my

punk rock life into my chemistry

professor career

when i told my students about my band

they not only found it to be interesting

and cool

but it served a much deeper role that i

did not anticipate

i discovered its impact about 10 years

ago when i opened an envelope at work

in this modestly written letter from the

carnegie foundation

i was told i had received professor of

the year

honestly i was bewildered

how could i be receiving this award

knowing the amazing professors all

around me were just as deserving

but when i read the nomination letters

from students

i started to understand what had

happened

over and over again my chemistry

students were each saying the same thing

seeing me play punk rock with the same

fervor as my job as a professor

that gave them permission to be a

chemist and a writer

a pilot a dancer an olympic runner a

world traveler

a sculptor

make sure your hobbies

those pieces of yourself

aren’t sitting there silently for years

staring at you

waiting for you

but instead join me and engage in your

hobbies regularly and often

more than you think you should

and together we can build a culture that

inspires our best work

thank you