An auspicious convergence

Most people have hobbies and interests of various kinds – as well they should: this makes them happier, better-rounded persons. Used to be that you’d do your work at work during the day, and your hobbies at home evenings and weekends. This model is disappearing fast as work and home become inextricably mixed up. Instead, one must resort to practicing one’s hobby as part of one’s job.

In this post I want to make the following point: that it is quite valuable when people’s hobbies and their work come together, with the blessing of their employer; and the benefits are shared by the employer and the employee, a classic Win/Win!

From Slide rule to Pentium 4 exhibit

A case in point

To illustrate, I can share my own experience, in three phases of my long career:

• During my first job as a forensic scientist (yep, CSI!) my main hobby was amateur radio, with a focus on designing and building my own electronic gear. This hobby inspired me to develop and realize a variety of innovative electronic gadgets to enhance the analytical equipment in our lab, notably the Scanning Electron Microscope we were using to identify gunshot residue particles. I enjoyed it tremendously – it was, after all, my passion – and I benefited the lab by enabling significant improvements in productivity.
• During my career at Intel I developed my present interest in the History of Computing. I used my growing knowledge in this area to develop lectures and teaching aids that demonstrated Intel’s place in the historical context of 20^th century technology trends; this was put to good use by “Intel University”. Subsequently I used a “Sabbatical” (2-month vacation) to build an exhibit, based on my personal collection, called “From Slide rule to Pentium 4”, which showed the development of semiconductor and computer technology; this traveled to Intel sites around the world, to their employees’ enjoyment. You can see it in the photo. I also volunteered to help build Intel-sponsored exhibits in Science museums outside the company.
• In my present self-employed job things got even better – although my main thrust is in organizational consulting, I was hired by a number of Science museums to advise or even curate technology exhibitions, the largest being the CAPTCHA exhibition in Jerusalem that marked Alan Turing year; this led me to learn a lot more about Turing’s work and philosophy, and resulted in new lectures I’ve developed for delivery to more customers, joining my lectures on Innovation in the history of Computing. Most recently, I was made a research affiliate at the Coller Institute of Venture at Tel Aviv University, where I work in a group studying the history of innovation – also a direct result of my hobby.

So, for three decades now I’ve been mixing work and play – and getting paid to apply the latter to the former. And I love it!

Other ways to integrate work and hobby

Of course, you don’t have to collect slide rules to do all this. There are many ways your leisure passions can bring value at work:

• You can use your hobby in your company’s community involvement programs. You might teach or coach schoolchildren in the community whatever your hobby makes you an expert at – from baseball to building robots. The kids benefit and enjoy, and your company scores community credit.
• You can use your expertise to enlighten other employees, by founding and leading fun activities within the workplace; serious companies have a variety of employee clubs and interest groups.
• You can – as I have – find ways to make your hobby skills serve the job itself.

Why this is a Good Thing

An interesting research report shows us that having a creative hobby outside of work correlates to better work results: it found that employees who engaged in a creative outlet after hours were more likely to be better problem-solvers during the day, and scored as much as 30% higher on performance rankings. This is not surprising: the proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” goes back centuries; and “dull boys” make poor employees. Admittedly, in previous centuries this proverb meant taking time off from work; but today, with Work/Life Balance slowly becoming an oxymoron, the way to avoid that dullness is exactly what I’m discussing here.

Having employees bring their hobby into their work has a number of advantages:

• It is fun – integrating a personal passion adds zest to the job and makes for happy employees It benefits the organization in a variety of ways (beyond the “happy employees” effect). Serious hobbyists are an invaluable asset, bringing with them new know-how. I remember times that I had to bring tools from my home lab to work, because they were better than what I had at work…
• It lets the employees hone their skills that they also use at work. Take my hobby web site at http://www.nzeldes.com/possiblyinteresting.htm, which I’d developed – all homemade, of course – in 2005. I’ve been using the skills that went into creating it on the job ever since then.
• The benefits go both ways: building those exhibitions for Intel actually guided my development as a collector by giving me a context (and deadlines!) to work to, and forcing me to do research that added to my expertise.

What managers can do about this

As a manager you can hardly force your workers to have hobbies, much less tell them which ones; but you can certainly encourage it, and you should.

You can:

• Actively encourage your subordinates to bring their hobbies into the workplace: you can even implement a short “hobby time” session now and then, to make it formal.
• Encourage employees to share their hobbies with the group – as in “show and tell” during group meetings and activities.
• Encourage exhibitions of employees’ creations, whether in Art, DIY, musical performance, etc.
• Encourage employees to open classes for coworkers in their area of passion.
• Allow employees to borrow equipment from work to use at home for their hobbies after hours (well, that would depend on what equipment is involved, but most businesses may have stuff sitting idle that could help an employee finish a project at home).

There are no doubt other things you can think of (or are already doing) – if you have a good one, do share it here!