Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Burnout of Passion Projects That Dont Restore You
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about something that I think is a really sneaky form of burnout — one that often flies under the radar because, on the surface, it looks like the opposite of burnout. Luna: I am intrigued. What is it? Lucas: It's the burnout from your passion project. The side hustle, the creative outlet, the thing you do 'for fun' that somehow becomes a second job. I've got a specific case in mind. Luna: Okay, lay it on me. Lucas: A graphic designer I know — let's call him Mark. Mark works a full-time in-house design job at a mid-size tech company. He's good at it, but it's corporate work. A lot of product mockups, brand guidelines, internal decks. So a couple of years ago, he started a side project: he designed and sold posters of obscure jazz album covers. His own art. He loved it. Luna: And I'm guessing the love didn't last. Lucas: It lasted until it became a business. He opened an Etsy shop. Then he got on Instagram. Then he started taking custom commissions. Suddenly, his evenings and weekends were filled with client emails, shipping logistics, and the pressure to post consistently. He told me, 'My hobby now has deadlines. I hate it.' Luna: I've heard this story so many times. The thing is, we're told to 'do what you love' and 'turn your passion into profit.' But there's a real cost to that. Lucas: Exactly. The phrase 'passion project' implies it's a source of energy. But when it starts demanding output, deadlines, and external validation — it stops being restorative. It becomes just more work. Luna: Yeah. And the irony is, you often turn to your passion project to recover from your day job. But if it's structured the same way — with goals, to-do lists, and performance metrics — you never actually recover. Lucas: Right. And there's research on this. Psychologists talk about something called 'attentional recovery.' True recovery requires that your brain shift into a different mode — what's called 'involuntary attention.' You're not directing your focus; you're letting it be captured by something engaging but undemanding. Luna: So like, taking a walk in nature. Or listening to music. Or just doodling without a goal. Lucas: Exactly. But a passion project with deadlines uses 'directed attention' — the same cognitive muscle your day job uses. So you're not recovering; you're just switching which task is draining you. Luna: And that's exhausting in a way that's hard to name, because you're supposed to enjoy it. You feel guilty for not loving it. Lucas: That's the real trap. Guilt on top of fatigue. You think, 'I should be grateful I have this creative outlet.' And that thought itself consumes energy. Luna: So what's the solution? Do we just abandon passion projects? Lucas: No. But I think we need to draw a much sharper line between 'restorative leisure' and 'productive leisure.' And we need to be honest with ourselves about which one we're actually doing. Luna: That's a helpful distinction. Can you define them a bit more? Lucas: Productive leisure is activity with an output goal — a finished product, a milestone, a metric. Restorative leisure is activity where the value is in the process itself. No deliverable. No external judge. You could stop anytime and it wouldn't feel like a loss. Luna: And the same activity can be either, depending on your mindset. Writing a poem for yourself is restorative. Writing a poem for a submission deadline is productive. Lucas: Exactly. So for someone like Mark, the question isn't 'should I stop designing posters?' It's 'can I keep one part of this process completely free of outcome pressure?' Maybe he still designs one poster a month, purely for himself, no posting. That's the restorative part. Luna: That's a nice reframe. But I wonder — is it possible that some people just aren't wired for restorative leisure? Like, they feel anxious if they're not being productive. Lucas: That's a really good point. And it's actually a symptom of burnout itself. When you're depleted, your brain craves a sense of accomplishment. So even your 'rest' becomes task-oriented. It's a vicious cycle. Luna: Right. And that's where I think we need to get more structural. Not just individual habits, but the culture that glorifies the hustle. Lucas: Sure. And that's actually a good moment to mention something about this show. We deliberately don't run ads. No sponsors, no commercial breaks. It's a choice we made because we want these conversations to feel unpressured — not like a product pitch disguised as advice. Luna: Yeah. And that's only possible because of listeners who support that choice. If this show has helped you think through a career move or a boundary you needed to set, and you want to keep it ad-free, there's a link: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: It's a small way to keep this space independent. And we're grateful for everyone who's chipped in. Okay, back to passion projects. Luna: So, let's talk about what a healthy passion project actually looks like. Do you have any examples? Lucas: I do. I have a friend who's a lawyer. She started baking sourdough during the pandemic. She gives loaves to neighbors. She never sells them. She has no Instagram. She experiments with different flours purely out of curiosity. She says it's the only time her brain goes quiet. Luna: That sounds restorative. No audience, no metric, no deadline. Lucas: Exactly. And she guards it fiercely. She's turned down requests to sell at farmers markets. She knows that once money enters the picture, the dynamic shifts. Luna: So one strategy is to keep your passion project completely separate from any form of monetization or public accountability. But I think some people genuinely want to monetize — and that's okay. They just need to be prepared for the trade-off. Lucas: Right. And if you do monetize, you need to build in structural boundaries. Maybe you only take commissions for three months of the year. Maybe you set a hard cap on the number of orders. You treat it like a part-time job with defined hours, not an always-on side identity. Luna: That's smart. It's about designing the container so the passion doesn't leak into every crack of your life. Lucas: Exactly. And I think we also need to question the cultural narrative that says your hobby should make money. Not everything needs to be a side hustle. Some things can just be joy. Luna: Yeah. And that's actually a hard thing for a lot of people to accept, especially in careers where you're constantly told to 'build your brand' or 'be an entrepreneur.' There's this pressure to optimize even your leisure. Lucas: So the takeaway for today might be: before you start a passion project, ask yourself — is this going to restore me or drain me? And be brutally honest. Because if it's draining you, it's not a passion project anymore. It's just another job. And you already have one of those. Luna: And if you've already fallen into that trap, it's okay to pull back. You don't have to quit entirely. You just have to carve out a space that's yours, with no audience. Lucas: Right. Protect the joy. Because without that, you're just running on a treadmill that never stops.