The Importance of Passion Projects

And PS, it doesn’t need to be a side hustle.

You are not your job. You can love your job, take tremendous pride from your work, and even — if you want it and it meshes with your version of work/life balance — spend a ton of time on your work… But it shouldn’t be everything.

For me, this very Substack is a passion project. I’m not charging for it (yet? Who knows?), and it’s not my day job, but it’s a project I’m enjoying. And sometimes — and I’ve written about this mindset before — it’s a stressor, too: I haven’t written a post in a couple days! I need to put something out there!

Writing here isn’t my only passion project. I also perform with a local improv group in New Jersey. (Shout out to ComedySportz Jersey Shore.) And I recently started working on a web project related to improv. And I love making music with my son.

And not all my passion projects are creative ones. I also love watching great television. It’s not just okay if you’re not making money from all your hobbies. Not everything has to be a side hustle. Not everything has to be work. Some things can just be for joy, and to make your life even more well-rounded. It’s good to have passion projects, even if they’re not lucrative money markers.

I’m sharing all this because I think it’s important to remember that you are more than your work. Well-roundedness is a key quality. The more life you experience, the better you can be as an employee, creator, and human.

Work is like a gas; it will fill up all the available space if you let it. And we can sometimes let work become all-consuming, because we do feel so much pride in scoring big wins. (We might even have a financial upside to company success, too!)

I recognize that this isn’t some brilliant insight from me here, that you shouldn’t focus only on work. But I think we all need reminders sometimes. The best you is the well-rounded you.