Rejig the Passion: Work the Business Of, Not the Doing Of
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
A recovery model for people who already turned a hobby into a job and burned out. The host loved exercise, went hardcore into personal training hour after hour, and ended up hating the thing she loved most — so she quit the field entirely for years. The insight on returning was that her mistake was assuming that loving to work out meant she should work out with people all day. The fix was to stay inside the same industry but change the role: she moved from performing the activity to building businesses within fitness, health, and wellness. The passion is preserved because the daily grind is no longer the passion itself, and the work now sits where she naturally gravitated anyway.
Origin
Extracted from Habits & Hustle
How to run it
- 1
Recognise the burnout signal
Notice when the activity you loved most has become something you're 'over.' The host's marker was going from loving exercise, fitness, and movement more than anything to not wanting to work out at all because it was her job.
Watch out Pushing through this stage risks losing the pleasure permanently, not just temporarily.
- 2
Step fully away for a while
The host left fitness for a number of years and went into media training instead. Distance is what let her come back to health and fitness later rather than abandoning it for good.
- 3
Separate the activity from the industry
Diagnose which part burned you out. Her error was conflating 'I love to work out' with 'I should work out with people for a living.' The love was for the domain; the exhaustion came from the specific daily task.
Pro tip Write the two apart explicitly — the thing you love doing vs. the market it sits in.
- 4
Find the adjacent role you gravitate to
Re-enter the same field in a different function. She discovered she loved the business of fitness, and built businesses within the confines of fitness, health, and wellness rather than delivering the daily workout.
Pro tip Pick the adjacency you already drift toward unprompted — that's the effort signal again.
Watch out Re-entering in the identical role will reproduce the same burnout.
- 5
Reintroduce the activity as a hobby
Put the original love back into your life in a different way — as personal practice rather than as the product. The pleasure is restored precisely because it's no longer the deliverable.
In the wild
The host went hardcore into the fitness business, quitting other career paths to do personal training hour after hour. Burnout followed: she stopped liking the one thing she loved most in life, and left the field for several years to do media training instead. When she came back to health and fitness, she deliberately didn't resume the same role. She took the original idea and, in her words, rejigged it — leaning into the business of fitness and finding ways to work within the confines of fitness, health, and wellness. She built businesses in the space rather than running the daily workout sessions, which is where she says she naturally gravitated anyway.
→ Stayed in the industry she loved by changing role from practitioner to business builder, and recovered the personal enjoyment of exercise.
Common mistakes
Assuming loving X means doing X all day
The host's stated error: because she loved to work out, she concluded she should work out with people professionally. Loving a domain says nothing about which role inside it suits you.
Quitting the industry instead of the role
Burnout reads as 'this field is wrong for me,' but the transcript's diagnosis is narrower — it was the daily task, not the sector. Leaving entirely discards years of accumulated advantage.
From the transcript
“I got burnt out and I ended up not liking it anymore because I I made my passion and my hobby my actual career and…”
“but really I took that idea and I rejigged it and I loved the business of fitness and figure out a way to work within…”
From the episode
Episode 574: Why Passion Won't Lead to Success