I feel like recently (and when I say recently, I mean more like the past few years…) the phrase “side hustle” has become VERY popular. All the buzz.
But side hustling has never resonated all that much with me. To be honest, it’s mostly because of the word hustle. I, personally, just don’t subscribe. Since getting off the hamster wheel, my life goals have been about the opposite of hustle. I cherish slowing down and leaning in to the creative part of myself I never knew existed when I was living the grind. But many of the things I do on the side of my 9-5 in support of my newfound creativity get confused for side hustles. So what gives?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a side hustle is defined as “work performed for income supplementary to one’s primary job.”
I actually discovered my current career through side hustling, although I didn’t know the name for it at the time.
Back in 2016, when I realized my dream job wasn’t actually the dream job, I started to contemplate what else I could do for income. I began to perform freelance medical writing and editing work on the side of my traditional 9-5. My “side hustle.” I was making income supplementary to my primary job.
When I realized that I could actually completely support myself financially with that side hustle, I left the traditional job to pursue medical writing full time, which has led me to where I am now (in another traditional 9-5, but in another industry).
In the financial independence (FI) space, side hustles have seemed to be all the rage in the past year or two. Side hustles can provide additional incomes streams. They can help make ends meet if income from a primary job isn’t cutting it, or they can provide even more income to help you get to FI faster. You could even have many different side hustles that add up to a more full-time salary (some call this a portfolio career).
Even though a side hustle may start off as an income generator on the side of a traditional 9-5, some may have the goal of building up the side hustle to be able to replace the income made from said traditional 9-5. Then it goes from a side hustle to becoming your full-time gig (like what I did with medical writing).
Side hustles also provide the potential for making income from something you love, something you’d do even if you didn’t make money from it. But this is where it gets tricky for me.
Ever since I got off the hamster wheel back in 2016, I started to realize that I have all these passions that are separate from my job (what I do to make money). I began to have these desires to do other things with my time, whether that be writing, volunteering, trying out new hobbies, or increasing my church presence, to name a few.
The more I tell people in my life who are close to me about these passions and desires outside my traditional job, the more they tell me I should use them to build a side hustle.
This response always gives me the same, visceral reaction. My entire body resists. For me, the pressure of making money from something I have just discovered I am passionate about really turns me off.
Sure, I could make even more money if I started a side hustle. But I know what enough is for me. And financially, I feel that I already make enough. I’m happy with my savings rate. I make decent money that fuels my goals for financial independence, while also allowing me the time freedom to do some of these passion-related activities on the side. Said another way, it’s not worth it to me to force monetizing a passion just because I want more money/to reach financial independence faster.
I could also build a side hustle if I ultimately wanted to replace my income. This may be a great option for someone who hates their job, or for whom their job brings them no value, joy, or happiness. I am actually one of those people who like their job (at least most of the time). I enjoy what I do, and I have worked hard to find traditional work at traditional companies where I can set good boundaries and create good balance in my life. I’m able to make time for some of these passions/desires in order to fit them into my daily/weekly working routine.
All of this processing about myself and what I want when it comes to my job (how I make money) and my hobbies (what I do on the side) has led me to my current goal of downshifting to part-time work (the same work I do now) when I reach my financial goals, to allow for even more time to pursue these passions that I have discovered.
Maybe, when I have even more time to devote to them, these activities will lead to income. But maybe they won’t. What matters right now is that I know in my heart I want to explore these desires first, see where they take me (because who really knows what we like until we try it) without the pressure of feeling like I have to replace my income.
However, I feel as though the term “side hustle” has been used, especially recently, as an all-encompassing term for everything one chooses to spend their time pursuing, regardless of whether it brings in income. Lately, I’ve noticed many articles portraying a side hustle as more than the simple definition I included above.
I think this is one of the reasons why most people I talk to assume I want to make income from the side interests I talk about.
But that is not the case.
In my case, I prefer the phrase “passion project” and have started to use this more with friends and family when I describe my non-work pursuits.
In the way I use the phrase, a passion project is similar to a side hustle in that they both describe something that is done on the side of a traditional job, but one is purely for passion, and one for additional income.
One key difference is that a side hustle does not need to be a passion.
Although I think that many side hustles start as a passion project, that may not always be the case. If you’re miserable at work, you may start a side hustle because you want to replace your income by building a business on the side. You don’t necessarily need to be super passionate about this business, because your main goal is to make money. It may simply be something you’re good at, and you feel confident that this new business can replace your traditional salary.
When I started a side hustle as a freelance medical writer, it wasn’t because I was particularly passionate about medical writing. It was because I needed a way out of my traditional 9-5, and I picked something I thought I would be good at and that would pay well.
If you’re that person who has a side hustle where you make more than or equal to your traditional work income AND you are doing passion work, work that lights you up, congratulations! Some may peg you as lucky. And while I do think a little bit of luck is part of it, I simply think you have found the holy grail. Hold on to it tightly, and don’t let anyone else’s opinion trip you up!
Maybe that will be me one day.
But I’m not counting on it. Because I don’t know if I’ll be able to make money (or if I’ll even want to make money!) from things I’m passionate about. And for now, I don’t want to try. For now, I am sticking with my passion projects. Like this blog!
Which brings me to the major component that side hustles and passion projects have in common.
They should both start with an experiment.
Nicaila Matthews Okome, who hosts the podcast Side Hustle Pro, was on the Hello Monday podcast recently talking about side hustles.
She talked about the importance of experimentation in figuring out what a potential side hustle could be. And the same goes for passion projects.
My biggest passion project currently is this blog. And it all started with an experiment.
Before I started this blog, I had a whisper (I now call it a creativity whisper). That whisper was telling me to write. I ignored that whisper for a long time, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. So, I made it a goal one year to write. My goal was to write something (the length didn’t matter) once a day. That’s it. Simple and (hopefully) achievable. Who knew how that would go. But I decided to start small and give it a whirl.
It wasn’t until I started writing every day that I realized I wanted to start this blog. Sure, a blog had always been in the back of my mind, but it felt daunting. It felt like a pie-in-the-sky idea. I had no idea how to start a blog. Would anyone care what I had to say? But after 3 months of writing every day, when I reflected back, I found I had been writing blog posts without even knowing it. Almost every piece I had written I could craft, with minimal changes, into a blog post.
Both side hustles and passion projects start with experiments around playing with what brings you joy, what lights you up, what you’re good at, or what you could make money from.
Experiments also create a foundation. A steady ground to land on when taking a larger risk, whether it be with a side hustle or passion project. I’m currently reading Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans that contains a great story about someone who just decided one day to open a restaurant. They didn’t do any experimenting to find out what opening a restaurant would be like or if they’d like running a restaurant, they just jumped into the pool head first. Six months later, the restaurant closed. Surprise surprise, the person hated being a restaurant owner. This person hadn’t done enough experimenting.
What I love most about side hustles and passion projects is that they can both be experiments in and of themselves. But if building a restaurant is your side hustle of choice, you should probably at least start with an experiment. You could get a part-time job in a restaurant. You could have an informal coffee chat with a restaurant owner to ask some day-in-the-life questions.
When it comes to side hustles and passion projects, you also want to have confidence. And you should not be afraid of failing. Failing is just a necessary part of figuring out if you really want to do something. Maybe you fail and that makes you want to try even harder. That is great information! Or maybe failing shows you that this particular activity was not the side hustle/passion project for you.
I really thought I wanted to become a climate activist, so I decided to join the Executive Committee of my local chapter of the Sierra Club. I ended up learning that, although that work is incredibly important at a local and national level, it wasn’t the type of volunteer work that spoke to me, that motivated me, that lit me up. I was bummed when I first realized it wasn’t going to be a passion project, and I stayed probably longer than I should have trying to force it. I could have taken this as a failure, but instead I used it as motivation to pivot. I tried out other volunteer opportunities that whispered to me until I found one that I enjoyed, that sparked me, and that left me feeling energized instead of depleted.
Experiments can also help you decide if a hobby should become a side hustle, or may be better off staying as a passion project. You may find through experimentation that some activity that brings you so much joy isn’t as fabulous when you’re doing it for money. To stay on the cooking example, you may love cooking, but cooking for someone else on their timeline may suck all the joy right out of cooking for you.
Which leads me to…
Closing thoughts: to monetize, or not to monetize
There you have it, some of my thoughts around side hustles and passion projects. No matter where you land in this regard, and how you’re choosing to spend your time, I wanted to leave you with an important topic that was discussed on the Hello Monday podcast episode I referenced above.
They talked about the controversy around monetizing a passion project, how monetization gets a bad reputation. Something that Okome said really stood out to me. She said that if there’s something you like to do on the side, and you find yourself getting customers/inquiries about that work, you should absolutely start to charge for your work and your time. She talked about how there is a lot of guilt around monetizing, and how this relates to corporate work as well: asking for raises and what we deserve. She argues that asking for your worth, whether in a traditional 9-5 or by monetizing your passion project, is an exercise that we all need to do. Something we all need to learn.
It is my personal opinion that we don’t have to monetize our gifts, nor are we obligated to monetize our gifts. But if there’s any part of you that thinks you might want to, go for it! What do you have to lose? You’re already doing it “on the side.” Worse case scenario is that it doesn’t work out as a side hustle, and you go back to doing it just for the joy. If you fail, you learn from it. You adapt. Because that’s one thing humans are really good at: adapting.
Where do you land on this topic? Do you have a side hustle, a passion project, or something else? What do you think about the definitions I’ve used? I’d love to hear from you!