Here are some tips on how to pick a hobby because hobbies are great for relieving stress and promoting happiness.
Hobbies. Many people think that hobbies are just for children or grown immature adults who wear silly hats as they play with trains.
But these activities have a lot of positive benefits for adults.
It relieves stress, promotes happiness, and provides a social outlet, to name a few.
However, having a hobby can also give you something that drives you to master (yes, there is mastery in building train sets); it gives you an activity that you want to constantly improve at.
And this is important because it gives you purpose. And it’s really fun.
Yes, you could have a fulfilling career and a family that you love.
But what happens when you are retired and your family no longer needs you to support them? What are you going to do?
Are you going to sit around and watch 90’s sitcoms?
No, you need to do something productive. And your hobby can be that activity as it will be something that forces you to solve problems and try to get good at.
Take, for example, my mom.
When she was still working, she worked hard.
She rarely took vacations and pretty much devoted her life to work and taking care of her family. But when she retired, she didn’t have any activities that excited her or that she really wanted to do.
She had no hobbies.
So she would spend the majority of her time watching TV. And as time went by, her ability to think critically decreased.
She also got lazier.
But I believe that if she had a hobby that she was passionate about, that she always wants to do, she wouldn’t have become the couch potato that she is today.
The reason being is that she would have a productive activity that she wants to do regularly.
Also, the hobby would have required her to solve problems and this would have forced her to exercise her brain.
So, How Do You Pick A Hobby?
First, you have to decide what you are passionate about and what your abilities are.
Take approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour and make a list of 10 things you like and skills you can do.
This is just a brain dump so try to write it in point form and don’t worry about organization.
Once that is finished, put it aside for a couple of days and try not to think about it.
After a couple days have passed, look over your list and find 3 topics/skills that interest you the most.
Make sure it’s something you like and you think you can become great at.
Now, out of the 3 items, pick the one that intrigues you the most.
Go read some articles on it and watch some videos, too.
If these resources excite you, then this is the hobby you should pick. If the articles and videos bore you, then learn about your second option and so on.
Where Can You Learn This Hobby?
Now that you have selected your hobby, where can you learn how to do it and how to improve at it?
There are many resources out there for you to use.
You can read books and how-to articles, you can watch online videos (or DVDs but who uses those things anymore), or you can take free classes at places like the library.
Or you can pay to take classes at a community centre like the YMCA. You can also take online classes from websites like Udemy or Skillshare.
When I started blogging, I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t know anything about SEO and anything about running a blog.
Heck, I didn’t even know how to write that well.
So, in an attempt to improve my blogging, I started to compare my blog to those of people I looked up to.
This helped me a little bit, as it showed me how to format my articles and my blog, but it didn’t show me everything that I wanted to know.
So I bought books on writing and blogging (I nerded out on this because I really wanted to improve) and consistently wrote on a daily basis; I practiced it for at least an hour a day and also watched videos on how to write better too.
I was passionate about this activity and wanted to master it.
This is what you should look for when picking your hobby.
You should look for something that you want to nerd out about because this passion is what will drive you to continually want to learn and practice it for years to come, even though it won’t give you any monetary gain.
So once you start your hobby be sure to always make time to work on it.
Try to schedule it into your daily routine so that you can continually and consistently improve (but if it’s something that you really enjoy doing, it shouldn’t be that hard to make time for it).
Conclusion
Are you going to start a hobby? Share what activity you want to master in the comments below.