You sit down to do the thing you used to love, and it feels like one more item on the list. Why did my hobby stop being fun? Often because a reason from outside, such as money, praise or a goal, has crept in and changed why you do it.
In the early 1970s, researchers found children who loved to draw. Then they told one group that they would get a reward for drawing. A second group got the same reward as a surprise afterwards, and a third group got nothing.
Later, the children were left alone with the drawing materials. The ones who had drawn for a promised reward chose to draw less than the other two groups did (Lepper and others, 1973). Nobody took the drawing away from them. The reward just changed what drawing was for.
If you have ever felt that "everything turned into a side hustle," this may be what happened to your hobby. Four findings explain how that happens. The last one is the way back in, because "I used to love this" turns out to be something you can undo.
Can a reward turn play into a job?
The children in that study did not get less able to draw. Their reason for drawing changed. Before the reward, the reason was the drawing itself. After it, the drawing had become a way to get something else.
Psychologists call this the overjustification effect. It means that when an outside reason is added to something you already enjoy, your mind can quietly swap the old reason for the new one. Then, when the reward goes, the reason goes with it.
This effect has been tested far beyond one study. A review of 128 experiments found that expected rewards, taken together, lowered people's free-choice interest in the task (Deci and others, 1999). Rewards given just for doing the task, or for finishing it, had the same effect. Praise went the other way. Positive feedback raised both how much people kept doing the task and how much they said they liked it.
Now think about the first time someone said "you should sell these." It sounded like a compliment, and it was. It may also have been the moment your hobby gained a second reason to exist.
That finding has limits. Other researchers have argued about how large the effect is, and reviews of the evidence have reached different conclusions. Tangible rewards also tended to hurt more for children than for college students. So treat it as a pull, not a law.
But money is only one way to add a second reason. The next one needs no payment at all.
Counting your hobby can make it feel like work
You might think a hobby is safe as long as nobody pays you. The next finding says otherwise.
In six experiments, Etkin (2016) found that measuring an activity, such as steps walked or pages read, made people do more of it. It also made them enjoy it less. The reason was the same shape as the drawing study. Measuring draws attention to output, and that makes an enjoyable activity feel more like work.
No money changed hands. A number on a screen was enough to turn the activity into something you do for the score.
Think of every hobby app with a streak, a leaderboard or a "weekly total." Each one may be useful. Each one also asks the same quiet question, which is how much did you get done? A hobby that asks that question starts to look like a job.
So a reward is not the only thing that can swap your reason. Being watched can do it as well, and that is the next finding.
The audience you are thinking about changes the experience itself
The third finding is about photos, and it comes with a correction in your favour.
Barasch, Zauberman and Diehl (2018) ran two field studies and three lab studies on photo-taking. When people took photos with the intention to share them publicly, they enjoyed the experience less than people who took photos for themselves. The authors point to self-presentation, which means thinking about how you will look to other people. They found it lowered enjoyment directly and also lowered how engaged people were with the experience.
The same researchers had earlier found that taking photos usually increased enjoyment of positive experiences, because it made people look at things more closely (Diehl and others, 2016). That effect was weaker when the experience was already absorbing, or when taking photos got in its way.
So the camera is not the problem. The audience in your head is. I call it the invisible audience. It is the imagined viewer you start to carry around the moment you think "I could share this."
I wrote about this in my own words in my book, Progredi. "Paint for the sake of painting. Take pictures for the sake of taking pictures." The research gives the reason. A photo taken for yourself keeps your attention on the thing in front of you. A photo taken for the feed keeps part of your attention on the people who will look at it.
If the audience steals your attention, the next question is what a hobby is supposed to give it back to.
Flow comes from the match, not from being unpaid
Csikszentmihalyi, who named flow, defined it as a state of high challenge met by high skill. It is the "lose track of time" feeling that people say a hobby should give them.
Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989) followed 78 adult workers for a week, using random check-ins on what they were doing and feeling. Most flow experiences happened at work, not in leisure. Their main result was that most measures of how good an experience felt depended more on being in flow than on whether it was work or leisure.
That is a small study of one group, and it does not say work is better than hobbies. It does suggest something useful for our question. A hobby does not give you flow because it is unpaid. It gives you flow when the challenge fits your skill, and when your attention stays on the task. If you have no hobby to protect in the first place, what to do on a flat Tuesday when no passion shows up is a better place to start.
The reward, the counter and the invisible audience all hit that second part. They pull attention off the task and onto the result. That is my reading of how the findings fit together, and none of these studies tested it as one chain.
Now read "everything turned into a side hustle" again. It may not mean your hobby got worse. It may mean it moved your attention from the task to the result.
What to try
You do not have to quit sharing or quit selling. You are only trying to give one activity its original reason back.
1. Pick one thing and make it private. Choose a single hobby and decide that nobody will see it. Not a story, not a draft, not a photo to a friend. The photo research found that the intention to share changed the experience, so the intention is what you remove.
2. Take photos for yourself. If you like taking photos, keep going. Just decide before you press the button that the photo is for you. Then look at what you are shooting for a few seconds longer than you normally would, because looking is where the extra enjoyment came from.
3. Turn off the counter. Switch off streaks, totals and weekly goals for that one hobby. If you want to know how much you did, check once a month, not once a day.
4. Match the challenge to your skill. Pick a task that is a little harder than what you do easily and a little easier than what scares you. That is the zone where time goes missing.
5. Keep one money-free corner. If you do sell or share some of your work, keep one project that is not for sale. This is not a rule from the studies. It is a way to keep one place where the only reason is the doing.
How far to trust all this
The drawing study was done with children, and the size of the overjustification effect is still argued over. The photo and counting findings come from experiments on particular tasks, not from whole lives. None of them tested a grown adult turning a lifelong hobby into a business.
What they share is a direction. When the reason for an activity moves from the activity to the result, the fun tends to go down. If the fun went out of everything and not just one hobby, why the pull to do things can fade while the pleasure stays is worth reading.
One check, and it is only a check. If the loss of fun comes with low mood or feeling numb on most days for two weeks or more, talk to a doctor. You can also try the honest check-in to see where you stand. I studied clinical psychology, but I am not your therapist, and this article is no diagnosis.
If you're thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency services now.
If you are still wondering why other people's lives seem to be full of things worth sharing, why the scoreboard in your head is rigged is a good next read.
The hobby you thought you had lost is still there. It just has an audience it never asked for, and you are the only person who can send them home.
Sources
Barasch, A., Zauberman, G., & Diehl, K. (2018). How the intention to share can undermine enjoyment: Photo-taking goals and evaluation of experiences. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(6), 1220-1237. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx112
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & LeFevre, J. (1989). Optimal experience in work and leisure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(5), 815-822. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.5.815
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627
Diehl, K., Zauberman, G., & Barasch, A. (2016). How taking photos increases enjoyment of experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(2), 119-140. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000055
Etkin, J. (2016). The hidden cost of personal quantification. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 967-984. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucv095
Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129-137. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035519
Lepper, M. R., Henderlong, J., & Gingras, I. (1999). Understanding the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation: Uses and abuses of meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 669-676. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.669