In 2021, I left my traditional career track in finance to go all in on writing and creative work.

This seemingly giant leap of faith wasn't entirely out of the blue. I'd been writing in every spare minute on my calendar for the better part of a year.

When pandemic lockdowns had slowed life to a standstill in early 2020, writing became a new obsession.

It started on X (then Twitter), where I wrote finance and money explainer threads. Then, it expanded into this newsletter, which became a conduit for exploring life concepts in a level of depth impossible to find on social media.

When I made the decision to go all in, I assumed that it would only accelerate my ability to create valuable, impactful writing. My logic was basically: More time inputs would mean more, and better, outputs.

I was wrong.

I quickly noticed that the writing, once a highlight of my day, a place of flow and energy, had taken on the feel of a job. Effortful. Even forced. I was avoiding topics I was excited about because they didn't seem to generate the same engagement as others. I was checking metrics on every post and email within seconds. Refreshing constantly. I found it harder and harder to write authentically.

The passion had become work.

If you spend any amount of time online, you can't go a day without coming across a piece of content saying some version of the following:

Monetize your passion! Turn that passion into a side hustle! Because when you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

Well, I loved what I did. And it became work anyway.

As it turns out, this common advice can be dangerous. And there's real science that helps explain why.

In 1973, psychologists Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett conducted a ​field study​ at Stanford's Bing Nursery School.

The researchers spent a few days observing the children (ages 3-5) during their free play periods, identifying a group who had a high baseline intrinsic interest in drawing.

The selected children were randomly split into three experiment groups:

1. The Expected Reward Group: The researchers told these children that if they drew a picture, they would win a special "Good Player Award" for their drawings. They agreed to the deal, drew, and received the award.
2. The Unexpected Reward Group: The researchers simply told these children to draw as normal, with no mention made of an award for their drawings. After they finished drawing, the researchers surprised them with the "Good Player Award" for their drawings.
3. The No Reward Group: The researchers simply told these children to draw as normal, with no mention made of an award, and no award given for their drawings.

One to two weeks later, the researchers returned and offered the same markers and paper to the children.

They had hidden observers track how much time the children spent drawing in their free time, in the absence of any incentives or external motivation.

The results were fascinating:

The Expected Reward Group chose to draw roughly half as much as their pre-experiment baseline. The Unexpected Reward Group and No Reward Group both chose to draw at the same pre-experiment baseline levels.

Both the Expected Reward Group and Unexpected Reward Group had received the same reward. But only the group who knew it was coming had seen the drop.

The reward itself didn't do the damage. The expectation of the reward did.

The researchers' explanation was that the promise of a reward had changed the children's perception of the activity.

Where they previously had an internal narrative of something like, "I'm drawing because I love to draw," the promise of a reward had shifted it to something more like, "I'm drawing to get that special award."

The experiment provided evidence for the so-called Overjustification Effect:

It's a psychological phenomenon that occurs when an expected external incentive, such as money, status, or a prize, decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to engage in an activity they already enjoy.

For the children at the nursery school, the "Good Player Award" over-justified the act of drawing, converting what was a spontaneous, enjoyable activity into a transaction.

This was no different than what I was experiencing in real time in 2021:

• My writing to get engagement was equivalent to the kids drawing to get the Good Player Award.
• My avoidance of topics that may not get engagement was equivalent to the kids choosing not to draw as much.

The spontaneous, enjoyable activity had become a transaction.

I'm willing to bet everyone has experienced some version of this. Whether or not you've ever been pushed to monetize a passion or hobby, you probably have attached your own version of a Good Player Award to one and seen your intrinsic enjoyment for it slowly diminish.

The books you used to love become the books you read for the annual book count. The hike you used to look forward to becomes the hike for the Instagram post at the lookout. The craftwork you used to relish becomes the craftwork to maintain the online side hustle. The run you used to love becomes the run to share the Strava splits.

The thing you loved doing for no reason at all becomes the thing you do for a specific reason. Even if it's a reason you brush to the side to avoid the hard conversation with yourself.

And somewhere along the way, that intrinsic pull you felt for the thing starts to erode.

This isn't an argument against reward.

After all, I'm still here, five years later, absolutely loving every opportunity I have to write and share with all of you. In books, in this newsletter, on social media, and everywhere in between.

I didn't give up the reward. This is still my job. I still have my own versions of the Good Player Award, whether in the form of engagement metrics or the New York Times Bestseller tag.

But I stopped focusing on the expectation of that reward as a driver of my inputs. I stopped letting it be the reason I sat down to write.

I became the Unexpected Reward Group child. Drawing because I love drawing, blissfully unaware of the coming ribbon.

How exactly? I created boundaries that separated me from the weight of the expectation.

• I started writing for myself. I decided that my best writing was always written when I could place myself as the reader on the other end and get value from the piece. I made that the North Star of everything I did.
• I stopped checking engagement metrics, instead allowing a team member to gather and summarize as part of broader recaps.
• I stopped managing the business end of the creative work. I hired people to handle the business, which allows me to focus on the creative act itself.

I created these boundaries before it made sense. To me, they weren't a luxury of having a big enough business to justify them, but a necessity to get there in the first place.

And paradoxically, when I stopped focusing on the reward, the rewards kept coming. They just stopped being the point.

There's one more detail from the study worth mentioning. The Expected Reward Group's drawings were rated lower in quality than those of the other two groups.

When you do something for the sake of doing it, because of a real pull of energy into that thing, the work gets better.

More importantly, it feels like yours again.

With whatever passion or hobby pulls at your energy, consider how you might create boundaries to protect it:

• Do it for an audience of one. Make it a "selfish" pursuit.
• Don't track every single trackable metric associated with it. No splits. No streaks. No counts.
• Create a layer of separation that distances the act from the outcome. Time works. Or, if it's a business, it could be a hire.

More than anything else, I offer this:

Become a beginner again. Join a run club. Learn the piano. Take up painting. Try woodworking. Plant a garden. Teach yourself to cook. Whatever.

You don't have to get good at every single thing you do. You don't need to attach metrics to every pursuit. You don't have to level up or win the game. Not everything has to become something.

It’s a small rebellion in a world that wants you to do everything with some purpose in mind.

Some things can just be.