When I started on the path towards being a developer, I did not realize how many devs identified strongly with development being their singular passion. I met developers who would enjoy coding apps in their free time, who had few other hobbies outside (maybe) video games. I know I am not the only multi passionate developer out there, but I often feel like at work people shy away from talking about their other hobbies and interests.
I am a bit of an extreme example because I've done everything from making games to writing short stories to meditating to blogging to drawing to photography but I wonder how my fellow multi-passionate people handle the stress of keeping up with the constantly evolving word of development while also being able to explore and invest in their hobbies. Do you find ways of narrowing down your interests and just practising 1 or 2 of these hobbies? Do you look for ways to combine your hobbies with development? Do you think identify as multi-passionate but later look deeply inward and discover that the root of the problem was really indecision (I often wonder this myself)? I look forward to your responses, because I REALLY struggle with this!
Top comments (68)
I used to worry a lot about not keeping up with those who spend most of their free time outside of work coding and reading about development.
However, I've come to realize that my many other interests, from reading fiction to meditating to listening to podcasts and Great Courses that delve into the humanities, economics, history, and politics, constantly provide me with useful insights for my day job as a software engineer.
At the end of the day, we develop software for humans, and understanding how humans think and live within the socio-economic-historical context of our world helps me be a better engineer.
I'll never be a specialist because I get bored focusing on just one thing too deeply, but the world needs generalists who can connect the dots and see the bigger picture, too :)
Agreed, I wish this perspective was more prevalent among developers. I might not be savvy with every single front end framework but I also can see things from the perspective of clients more readily because I'm not stuck in techlandia 24/7
My story is exactly the same. I’m studying arts and humanities, which gives me insights I wouldn’t be able to come up with if I studied computer science or something. I put everything into broader context.
I studied computer science for one semester, but i felt unfulfilled and quickly gave up and switched to humanities. I wasn’t interested in becoming overspecialized in single field but otherwise undereducated. I still study and work as developer — and I think it’s the perfect match. In fact, it is only because i’m developer I have enough free time and resources to do so (greek scholé, after all, means free time)
I definitely have passions and interests outside of development, but I have had a hard time turning them into hobbies.
Even stuff related to my main hustle of web development like hardware would be awesome to pick up, but I haven't mustered up the energy. Maybe some day!
I really would like fitness to be an important hobby in my life: Trying hard to make that work.
About fitness: one thing that has helped me stay consistent with working out is to do it first thing in the morning.
Wake up -> drink water -> go to gym/run/home workout.
It really makes my day more fun and i am feeling more energetic at work. First few days were painful though.
Fitness can be really tough when we sit in front of screens all day and do more of the same at home. I am lucky that my work has a gym in the building so I go during my lunch break. I also have a plan to try out Beat Saber.. used to be a huge DDR nut back when that was all the rage but it got old after several years. What a great workout that was though...
I became a dev because I had a head for it and the money was good, but I do lots of other things. My education is in literature, and I write and read a great deal. I also have several research topics (some related to dev, many not), and I cook, bake, travel, and happily fail at playing guitar. I try to offer my dev skills to artists and writers, to provide them with functional web presences. And often when I'm learning a new language or framework, I'll build something related to my other interests as an exercise.
That's really awesome that you find ways to help other artists and writers! Back in college I had a lot more artists and writers in my personal network but now it's a bit harder to get those types of connections. Do you mind sharing some examples of how you have built something related to your other interests when learning a new language/framework?
Mostly it's consisted of designing/deploying websites, more often than not a WordPress instance. I also provide support/maintenance for a variety of arts/nonprofits websites (typically just minor stuff like upgrades, conflict resolution, security issues, etc). In grad school, I built a "thesis repository" system to allow fellow grad students to easily share their thesis projects, and comment on each other's projects. I've built lots of little "toys" for friends (and for myself), including mad libs-type apps, a silly virtual slot machine, that sort of thing. I was involved in a couple of projects I loved, but that died on the vine. The most interesting of them was an "aleatoric parser," a system that would index a lengthy manuscript to determine frequently occurring and/or unique words, then use that lexicon to populate mad libs-like poem templates. The templates themselves were to be generated from sentence fragments, using Markov chains to assemble the complete work. The intent was to create an application that could take your vocabulary and a machine-driven framework to generate the basics for new and surprising texts. It fell by the wayside because of time constraints, and the realization that others had done it better than we would have done it.
Wow, those are some awesome sounding projects! They sound like a ton of fun.
My background is in print design and marketing, and I initially decided to move towards tech as a way of escaping the yucky "must be passionate about representing our brand" ethos of recruiters in the marketing space. There's a pressure in parts of that world to be an almost Disney-fied version of a person, who functions primarily as an expression of their brand culture - they're not really hiring, they're casting.
As I've explored the tech culture of Silicon Valley, I've been disappointed to find many companies have a strong bias toward this same "always on" mentality. "Sure, you can do your job" they seem to say, "but if you're really serious, you'll also be attending meetups, conferences and trainings, giving talks, creating personal projects and learning a new language every weekend."
To me this flows from managers and leaders in the industry, and I find that really insidious. By selectively hiring & keeping only the most active developers, they're indirectly requiring a 7-day workweek. It's great for their bottom line in the short term - if you spend every waking hour thinking about code, of course you'll encounter and apply many more solutions than someone who's only wired-in from 9-5. But it selects for people who measure themselves in one dimension, which encourages competition over collaboration. It also ignores the burnout that's rampant in the industry, which leads to high turnover, which in turn pushes salaries higher and higher. It's very shortsighted and ends up costing everybody much more than money.
When I try to build my network, I focus first on my other interests. I meet other developers at metal shows and design expos, and steer clear of "tech networking" nights. This helps me find people - and hopefully eventual employers - who can respect a more balanced lifestyle.
I know exactly what you mean. Some companies like Netflix have alarming bullet points in their culture guides (yes, culture guides are a thing now apparently) like "you put Netflix's needs before your own" -- also how can a tech company ever hope to understand their customers if they want their developers to basically be coding robots?
100% this. A lot of tech culture (and by extension, the culture of the modern "professional" world) these days has a pretty culty vibe and it really bums me out.
We are people, we are not brands. We have depth and breadth and we are messy and complicated, but the prevailing ethos these days seems to be that unless you can jam yourself into some slick package with catch phrases there's no place for you in the modern economy.
I scrolled down the comments to see if anyone would mention the multipotentialite thing! With me I used to feel guilty when I picked up a new hobby and I would try hard to make it "fit" with all my other hobbies.
I've found that for me code is the glue that ties all my hobbies together. This is the video where I first learned about multipotentialites and how it can be a great thing
This is awesome, have definitely joined the waitlist for Puttytribe. Thanks for sharing!!
I've had trouble mixing some of my non-tech related hobbies into my dev practise and life.
The few that I was able to mix in where related to either my podcasts or productivity and automation.
I'd love to find a way to reinforce my love of Japanese history, or playing bass guitar with my dev work. But I've yet to come up with a way that I can do that.
I also love Japanese culture and history, and in high school I made a website that was a research project of sorts about Japan. It's not the most exciting way to combine the two but I recommend doing some googling and see what sorts of things you might find that other people are doing. It might inspire you!
Yeah, I guess you're right.
In fact, I'm giving a talk tomorrow on Blazor and need a new demo. If I have any time beforehand, I'll create a timeline of Japanese history using it.
I would add, long walks, hiking or just hanging out in nature. It allows you to disconnect from everything, just for a while, and really recharge your batteries. It makes you happier, more productive, more creative, an allows you to introspect and figure out what you really want to do in life. Also you can combine hobbies like, reading a book or righting short stories while you are doing your nature visit. At least, this is what works from me. You should give it a try
Agreed, I definetely used to go hiking a lot more growing up because my father was a super avid hiker, but without him around to pressure me and with my husband being more of a runner, now I find the only real exercuse I get is a high intensity interval with jogging/walking at the gym for 20 minutes a day-ish. When its habit its so natural but now that I am out of the habit its so much harder.
I feel you. I live in Panama, so I'm used to going to places where nature and the jungle is intense and beautiful. When I lived in Boston, I tried to replace my nature walks with running and high intenisty workouts, but it's not the same.
Nature has this thing that is healing, it really works your body and mind at a celullar level. There are so many interesting studies out there. Have your heard of grounding? It can even help cancer patients. Basically it means just walking barefoot so you get in contact with earth surface electrons which have a positive impact in our bodies.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3...
I used to struggle with this as well. I get distracted/excited by new passions pretty easily. Once I realized that I can really only focus on one thing passionately at a time (besides my primary daily work for $$), things got easier.
Some passions, like fitness and music, have sort of simmered down (but not abandoned!), but sometimes I'll make a push and focus on learning some new material or revamping my workout plans.
It was tough for me to admit that I only have a limited amount of time, energy, and focus available, but once I did I think it helped me to avoid putting too much on my plate and prioritize what 'passion' I should keep my focus on. It also helped me realize that switching 'passions' too often spreads me too thin and I don't accomplish anything but buying a bunch of tools I won't use and learning a bunch about subjects I won't really accomplish anything in...
Good luck!
This is really helpful, I'm curious, were there any apps or exercises you tried that helped you to prioritize your passions? I hope I can prioritize mine as well and reach a better equilibrium.
The transition to self-employment for me was a big change and facilitated a lot of introspection and time-management focus. Writing out goals and trying to really decide how I want to spend my time and live my life in a long-term and sustainable sense led me to taking a long hard look at how I can embrace a passion while having it be rewarding and even profitable in the long-term. I really enjoy coding, and once I realized what realms I liked working in the best and started keeping my focus narrower things got clearer. I also realized that passions that are detrimental to other aspects of my life can be really toxic, even if they're fun. I definitely avoid certain types of addictive video games and other hobbies I can get too sucked into at the expense of my health and success. Hope you figure it out!
I have played thought about taking the plunge into self employment myself, there are quite a few things about it that appeal to me. So would you say being self employed has helped you to figure out what your major passions were and help you be able to juggle them without burning out or being too scatterbrained?
I'd say it more forced me to, lol. Lots of people suggest a transition to self-employment rather than jumping of a ledge, and I fully agree there. I was already doing freelance work part time before I quit my day job, and it was still a tough transition in a lot of ways. When no one is looking over my shoulder, the willpower cost of 'getting stuff done' seems to go up, so it's even more important for my work to be something I enjoy doing as much as possible. For me, doing software development is nice because I can really get into what some people call 'flow' and I don't feel like I'm working at all, just fully into the task at hand. I definitely didn't have that as often doing various sysadmin stuff.
I used to be very reactive in my approach to coding - I only learned what I needed to know to get a project done. I spent all my free time studying what I am passionate about: theology. I recently didn't qualify for a much better job because of that... I have been working hard this year righting that wrong and making time for being proactive and learning new web-based technology and have fallen in love with coding again. It can be rough especially having a wife and two special-needs kids... I rarely even get to play video games anymore. 😉
I have a Msc in Architecture and I switched to software engineering after two years of working as an architect because I simply 1) love programming and 2) do not like working as an architect.
Meanwhile I also started running, hiking, doing yoga and short meditations, as well as cooking at home and voloneering for homeless people in a civic initiative. I also learned french and italian language and learned how to knit and crochet. And just recently I joined the bookfairies comunity in books hiding and spreading the magic of book reading :)
In my opinion (and experience) you can have as many interests and hobbies as you want, but you have to be aware that time is limited and sometimes you have to pause/delay one activity to commit to other.. And if you really need/want to excell at one of them, maybe it is better to invest a significant portion of your time in it.
I can totally sympathize. I have so many projects on the back burner or only in sketch form in a notebook. Video production and photography is a passion of mine, but I’m also really into making art with electronics and making fine art installations. Developing for the web full time can zap your enthusiasm for sure. There can be a balance though. Time box activities. For instance I give myself at least 1 hour photography time a week and if I get a shot worth editing ensure I fit in another hour for that. Make sure you get enough time to explore your other activities but at the same time don’t force creativity. It’s important to be flexible as well and follow your creative urges, sometimes at the expense of other work or leisure activities.
It is so important to make sure you can take a time out from everything. Go on a trip, live without a computer for a little while. Experience something new to keep life interesting.
It can be hard to give some things up. I recently sold my PS4 for instance so I would have enough time to persue writing and speaking. It’s up to you to prioritize what matters most.
I totally understand, I am also a huge fan of photography and used to take my Canon 60D with me everywhere. It's been harder the past few years because I feel like everyone else just uses their phones and I haven't been travelling as much so I feel like my photos aren't as interesting as they used to be. Now I've sort of meandered away from photography more towards making games and writing, but making games is a huge undertaking and hard to balance with other stuff, and I also got a bit burnt out after a few frustrating projects. Now I look back at all these random things I've done and I'm like.. where to go from here?
For me development and music go hand in hand. Started playing guitar at 7 started programming at 10. Failed at being a musician but never stopped writing and playing. I find the creative act of songwriting and especially exploring songwriting in different genres is an excellent balance to my dev job. I love that it flexes different aspects of my creativity and allows me to exercise the other side of my brain. More than once I’ve solved a particularly thorny dev problem by grabbing a guitar or banging away on a music keyboard. Drums can also be a tremendously therapeutic workout as well.
Very cool, that definitely makes sense. I think being able to express ourselves creatively is so crucial. It makes a big difference in my daily life as well, and is super therapeutic.
Absolutely! I love maps, bikes, and mountains. I find combining them with software development helps me remember why I enjoy software development. Some example of that overlap are TrailStash(a sample map: try.trailsta.sh), bikehero and more artistic endeavors like creating art with code:
Oh I am totally into this. I used to play around a lot with Processing.js and recently got into figuring out how to transfer an art style onto a photograph with machine learning. Creating art with code is so much fun, will totally check out those projects!
Where I work, there are a lot of devs that are multipassionate. As for myself like many other dev, I love coding on my free time, but my biggest hobbies involve a camera and Adobe software. I love photography, cinematography, photo/video editing and tinkering with motion design and normal 2D animations.
It's very hard to narrow down a human being to a single thing. I don't think there's anybody who does NOTHING except his main profession. I consider the case to be quite the opposite. I would say that most people do too many things that they find it hard to identify what they regularly do.
As for me, I do a lot things. But I don't have a "go to" hobby, except probably reading comics. I really love my job, and I gladly pursue it in my leisure time.