What you lose when you don’t work for FREE…
A Tiny Life Moment on Hobbies
The Moment
I called a friend to share a job opening that’s a perfect fit for him.
He’s been job hunting for awhile
I wanted to know how he’s been keeping busy while he waited for job.
“So what do you do now?” I asked
“I work for in an IT firm”
“Nice, what does your job entail?” I queried
“ Helping customers with their routers. When they have a problem and i can’t help them through the phone, I go to their house on behalf of the company”
Wow!!! This is one of the biggest internet companies in Nigeria so of course I’m amazed.
“paid?”
“Yes” He replied
“Congratulations Man. You’ve been doing this thing for FREE for too longg and now you’re getting paid for it — that’s awesome”
The Reflection
That phone conversation was with friend from my Msc days.
We did a profesianal course together for our Msc’s — Geographic Information Systems.
The job situation means that very few people with certificates in any field practice in that field. You could have a certificate in English and work in a Bank.
When you read a professional course like we did, the odds improve.
3 months after graduation, we got a job to work in a GIS firm. One year into the job he got laid off.
It was hard for him to get a similar job in our industry but he continued doing what he did for fun while we were both in school
Helping people fix computers, providing the latest internets hacks, sometimes, He’d leave his house and come all the way to my house or another friend — to see what went wrong and help you get it fixed.
He’d hardly take monetary compensation and when he did, less than it would cost you if you went to meet an engineer.
He became our “go to” guy in tech matters even though he’s great at the GIS side of things too.
He’d watch youtube videos and do new things for fun
When he lost his job, he started to monetise his cooking a little and continued fixing computer systems and helping people with solutions for free
And now, all those “free hours” turned out to be unintentional practice
Practice makes Mastery
Mastery is why he is being paid now.
Nowadays, it’s hard for people especially when it comes to learning a skill to want to do anything for free.
Especially creatives — I’ve been a victim of this.
You come online and want to start monetising a service you’re not good at yet
You want to be appreciated now. You want your flowers now. You want to get paid your worth
We forget that mastery takes time and you only get good with practice
and practice is giving out most of what you think is your best work for free.
This is why any high income skill should be a hobby. Something you can do for FUN
You’d have to “enjoy” hours of practice but if it’s fun, it’s not practice
Who knows — one day, it can be what makes you the money you are working hard for
I can draw a parrarel with his love for internet with my love for writing
You could draw a parrarel with every famous actor, sportman, athlete… who pursued thier hobbies and made a life out of it
Something you do for fun without validation can someday put you in the spotlight
I have notes, diaries filled with words i’ve written over and over again. SOme of what i have written have been lost from changing gadgets, moving, but the time spent practicing is never lost
Now, I am paid to write and it still gives me joy to sit and just type away
Now, when I sit to write. I’m happpy Iget to do this.
Life Lessons
- Everyone needs a hobby, and your hobby should be for fun. It should also help you help people
- When you want to learn a high income skill, tie it to something you already enjoy doing e.g if you love to read personal development topics, when you want to start writing, don’t start with topics on subjects you hate like artificial intelligence
- Look back and think of one thing you did for fun and see if you can create time in your busy schedule to pick it up again
