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Your hobbies, obsessions, and side projects aren't distractions from your professional identity β they are your professional identity. This lesson makes the case for including a dedicated 'extra stuff' section and shows how personal interests can be the deciding factor in getting hired.
You've spent years honing your craft. You've got the campaigns, the case studies, the polished executions. But here's something most people get completely wrong when building their portfolio: they leave out the most interesting thing about themselves.
Themselves.
The hobbies. The obsessions. The side projects that have nothing to do with client briefs. The weird, wonderful, deeply personal pursuits that happen when no one's paying you to be creative.
This lesson is about why that "extra stuff" isn't a distraction from your professional identity β it is your professional identity. And why leaving it out might be the single biggest mistake you're making.
Let's be honest about something. After a long day of reviewing portfolios, most creative directors and hiring managers start to blur together. The technically competent work. The solid campaigns. The well-structured case studies. After a while, they all look the same.
What they remember β what they talk about at the end of the day β is the person who surprised them.
I had a student whose hobby was recreating album covers in Play-Doh. Not digitally. Not as a commentary on pop culture. Just Play-Doh, painstakingly shaped into tiny versions of iconic record sleeves. It was strange. It was committed. It was completely his own thing.
He's now gainfully employed.
That Play-Doh section of his portfolio did something his campaign work alone couldn't do: it revealed a person. Someone with patience, humor, a genuine love of music, and the kind of obsessive attention to detail that makes a great creative. The work proved his skills. The Play-Doh proved his character.
Key Insight: Hiring managers aren't just buying your past work β they're buying your future potential. And your hobbies, obsessions, and side projects are often the clearest window into who you'll be as a colleague, collaborator, and creative thinker.
When a creative director sees that you run ultramarathons, they don't just think "oh, they like running." They think: this person doesn't quit. Endurance. Resilience. The ability to push through when everything hurts and the finish line feels impossibly far away. Those are exactly the qualities you need when a campaign is falling apart at 11pm the night before a pitch.
When they see that you collect snakes, they don't just think "unusual hobby." They think: this person isn't afraid of things other people avoid. Fearlessness. Curiosity. A willingness to go where others won't.
This is the hidden language of personal interests. Every unusual hobby, every committed side project, every passion pursued without a paycheck tells a story about who you are as a professional.
Consider what these interests might signal:
None of these things are irrelevant to your creative career. All of them add dimension to your professional identity.
Pro Tip: When writing about your personal interests in your portfolio, don't just list them β give them a sentence of context. Not "I run marathons" but "I've completed four ultramarathons, which has taught me more about persistence than any brief ever could." Let the interest do double duty: reveal the hobby and the character trait it represents.
There's a persistent myth in creative industries that specialization is everything. That you should be the best at one thing and ruthlessly cut everything else.
That might be true in some fields. It is not true in creative work.
A team full of one-dimensional specialists β people who are brilliant at their craft but have no life outside of it β produces predictable work. They reference the same things. They're inspired by the same sources. They solve problems the same way.
The rounded creative brings something different to the table. Their references are unexpected. Their solutions come from places no one else thought to look. The copywriter who also makes documentary films sees narrative differently. The art director who teaches salsa dancing understands rhythm and timing in a way that shows up in their work. The strategist who builds furniture understands structure and function in a way that makes their thinking more rigorous.
An agency filled with interesting, diverse, curious people makes interesting, diverse, curious work. That's not an accident β it's the direct result of hiring people who have lives outside of their job titles.
Key Insight: The "extra stuff" section of your portfolio isn't a nice-to-have. It's evidence that you are the kind of person who will make the work β and the team around you β more interesting.
Almost everything. If you're wondering whether something is worth including, the answer is almost certainly yes.
Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that absolutely belong in a dedicated section of your portfolio:
The only things that don't belong are the things that belong on a dating profile. Vacation photos that suggest you'd rather be somewhere else. Anything that reads as passive rather than active.
The distinction is simple: doing things signals creativity and commitment. Consuming things (watching Netflix, going to restaurants) doesn't tell a hiring manager anything useful about you.
Pro Tip: Create a dedicated "Extra Stuff" or "Beyond the Brief" section in your portfolio β don't just bury these interests in your About Me copy. Give them their own space, their own visual treatment, their own moment. This signals that you take your whole self seriously, not just the professional version.
The presentation matters almost as much as the content. Here's how to do it well:
Give it a proper section. Not a footnote in your bio. Not a bullet point at the bottom of your CV. A real, dedicated section with its own navigation button. This signals that you consider it important β and that signal matters.
Show, don't just tell. If you're a photographer, show the photographs. If you make pottery, show the pots. If you run a podcast, embed an episode or link to it. Visual evidence of a passion is always more compelling than a description of one.
Keep the tone consistent with the rest of your portfolio. Your extra stuff section should feel like an extension of your professional identity, not a jarring gear-change into a different personality. If your portfolio is clean and precise, your extra stuff section should be too.
Be specific, not generic. "I love travel" tells a hiring manager nothing. "I spent three months learning to cook traditional Mongolian cuisine from a family in Ulaanbaatar" tells them everything. Specificity is what makes an interest memorable.
Your portfolio has two jobs. The first is to prove you can do the work. The second β and this is the one most people neglect β is to prove you're someone worth working with.
The campaigns and case studies handle the first job. The extra stuff handles the second.
In a world where there are more talented people than there are opportunities, the thing that gets you hired is often the thing that makes you you. The Play-Doh album covers. The ultramarathons. The snake collection. The Wednesday evening flower arranging class.
Don't hide those things. Don't apologize for them. Don't leave them out because you think they're not "professional" enough.
Put them front and center. Let the hiring manager see the whole person. Because the whole person β curious, committed, rounded, alive with interests β is exactly what great creative teams are looking for.
That's exactly the point. Ross hired someone whose hobby was making Play-Doh versions of album covers. The hobby itself isn't the point β what it reveals about your creativity, curiosity, and character is. Almost any genuine interest can be framed as a signal of something valuable.
It should be a dedicated section, but not the dominant one. Think of it as a chapter that adds dimension to the story your work is already telling. A few well-chosen examples with brief context is all you need.