How to Choose the Right Hobby
Sometimes we stumble into the hobbies that make us happy, and other times we select them carefully from a pool of hobbies that we know we could be interested in. Hobbies are our downtime. They’re the escape from the rigors of responsibility in adulthood, and they’re the escape from the walls that close in around us and we have to go to work. Choosing the right hobby is not actually the easiest thing to do.
You may think that it’s simple in that you just choose something you know that you’ll enjoy, but it doesn’t always work that way. Some hobbies aren’t very practical and some hobbies are very expensive. For example, you could really enjoy snowboarding, but that doesn’t mean you can fly to the mountains and snowboard every weekend unless you’re extremely privileged. Understanding what you are looking for in the perfect hobby is definitely an exercise in self reflection.
You could fall in love with crafting purely because you enjoy crochet bag DIY. You could fall in love with knitting because touching all of the different yarns in the supermarket really makes you happy. Finding a hobby that speaks to you and makes you feel good about yourself is the key. So let’s take a look at the tips that you need to find the right hobby in the first place.
- What does it cost? Hobbies can either generate money, cost you money, or really not have any financial impact at all. For example, you may not consider it to cost a lot of money to spend $10 a week on different yarns or wool to do knitting or crocheting, because that $10 a week would be normally spent on Uber Eats. For others, their hobbies can be very expensive because they need to buy equipment. So if you like to go fishing or as we earlier mentioned, snowboarding, you might have to lay out a lot of cash to be able to afford to even start that hobby, never mind keep it going. Think about what your annual expenditures are and look at your budget sheet. What could you spare per week or per month on a hobby that’s just for you? Sometimes you can build good hobby ideas based on what your available cash would be.
- How much time will it take? Realistically, there is a time investment when it comes to hobbies. Hobbies like crochet or knitting are something that you can pick up and do while your brain is focused on the TV and you’re watching your favorite show. The better you get at it, the more you can make scarves or gloves just while you’re watching your favorite shows. There are other hobbies that can consume over 5 hours a week, such as golf or fishing. Do you have those five hours to spare? Consider your family. If you have a partner at home and children, then the realistic answer is that no, you do not have five hours of leisure time per week to spend on golf because you’d have to make sure that your partner has equitable hobby time themselves. That may not be easy for you to wrangle. So be realistic in what time you can give your hobbies so that you’re not selfish to those in your life.
- When could you do it? If you’re working full time, or you’re studying over the weekends, or if you’ve got kids at home, trying to find the time to fit in a hobby may feel a bit impossible. Like we said earlier, you could crochet while you’re watching TV because technically you’re doing two things at once. And if you’re already sitting to watch TV, then you can keep your hands busy. If you want to go to a golf tournament or you want to go fishing, then you could book time once a month for your hobby and discuss it with your family to make sure that you can carve out that time that’s just for you. If you can’t carve out that time, then you might find it difficult to keep up with it.
- Does it give you any social relief? If your job is demanding, then spending time with family and friends is your social relief. It’s the time where you can relax, let go and be yourself. Some hobbies allow you to do that at the same time and it can give you that enriching feeling that you are not alone. You may choose a hobby where you can make friends, such as team sports. Within this though, you may have a preference for whether the hobby will involve interaction with other people online or in person, such as gaming or going to a karate class. Either way is fine, but you have to determine what your preferences would be.
- Who do you want to interact with? This is actually something that surprises most people because when they consider a hobby, they don’t think about other people involved. But if your workplace is a conservative one and you want to have more contact with creative and bright people, then you may want to join an art class or a yoga group. If you are somebody who enjoys time alone because your job is already full of people and you want to have some downtime from that, then maybe knitting or crafting could work for you. Understanding the types of people that you want to interact with can really help you to figure out which hobbies would suit your personality the best.
- Are you looking to express yourself? Interpretive dance, choir, singing, church, crafts – all of these hobbies have one thing in common. You are able to express yourself. If you like hobbies that involve getting together with others and letting loose by dancing, then joining a dance class could be the perfect hobby for you. You may want to have an outlet for other skills that you can’t necessarily use in the workplace, so you need to think about whether you want to choose a hobby that’s related to creativity, being physical, or community building.
- Will it challenge you? Sometimes people look for a hobby that will make them feel challenged and excited by life. Bungee jumping, for example, is quite a big challenge, but it may be a little bit beyond your remit if you’re not a big fan of heights or dying. People sometimes want a hobby that challenges them physically or intellectually, so finding a hobby that could challenge you can make you feel that rush of adrenaline.
- Making sure that you’re interested. You have to be interested in the hobby itself and not just the equipment that you need to buy for it. For example, if you have fallen in love with new snowboarding shoes? Then you may consider snowboarding as something you want to do, but realistically it may be too physical. So physical, that you won’t be able to do it regularly enough. You don’t need to fall into the trap of thinking you’re going to like a hobby because you like researching or shopping for equipment associated with it. You might like camping gear more than you like camping or yarn more than you like knitting, but you need to make sure that you are interested in the hobby that you choose.
Hobbies make us feel relevant and alive, so don’t forget to choose something that speaks to your soul and makes you feel happy.
