The Easy Way to Find New Hobbies

Source: Paula Pant episode “How to make the most out of mini-retirement”

There is an easy way to find new hobbies and integrate them in our lives. It is worthwhile to try, especially since most of us experience a sense of only developing more interests but never fully pursuing them.

The Typical Path to Finding Hobbies

As we go through life, and browse the internet, we all see activities or hobbies that we would like to have for ourselves. Maybe it is learning how to scuba dive so you can see the Great Barrier Reef, learning to paint landscapes, or maybe you’ve always wanted to get up there on open mic night.

Yet, life gets in the ways of learning these skills or even dabbling in these hobbies.

Even if you can carve out the time to investigate, it gets intimidating seeing an open ended list of potential hobbies. Do I start with learning to paint or learning to write comedy?

There is so much societal pressure on picking one thing and being good at it, or even having a life passion. While I do believe in finding meaningful work to fill your days with your day job, it does take time to figure out what hobbies or activities interest you.

How to Find Hobbies if You Have Time Off

Paula Pant, on her Podcast Afford Anything has a great idea on how to tackle passion investigation. One of her listeners is taking a twelve-month sabbatical, and she asks Paula how to effectively use the time to investigate interests. Paula advises to pick 6-10 things and block out time in the first six months to investigate them one by one.

Spending two weeks solely looking into one. Over that time, you will find you naturally will gravitate towards two or three activities over the others. Then spend the rest of the six months further investigating those interests, spending a month or two on each of the hobbies that more interests you.

How to Investigate Hobbies while Still Working

I found Paula’s activity a great exercise because it forces you to pick the initial ten, and then after investigating each one, you will have only three or four left from that.

Since I am not on a twelve-month sabbatical, I took my own approach using this same idea. Each month, I pick one new thing to investigate as a potential new hobby. Spending a month on each topic allows me the time to get a good grasp of the interest without feeling overwhelmed to investigate every part of it. Then next year, I will deeper dive into the hobbies I like more. So far, my hobbies list investigation has been:

Joe’s Hobby Investigation

January: Chess 

February: Art History

March: Planted Tanks 

April: Magic

May & June: Song Writing

July: Coffee

August: Comedy Writing

September: Making a Planted Tank

October: Inktober

November & December: Game Design

Lessons Learned

So far what I’ve learned is every hobby can be a deep rabbit hole, with many different and interesting niches in the larger category. For example, in planted aquariums, there are seven different styles of making a planted tank, and each one uses different design principles!  Or that songwriting is all about finding a scale and just using the seven notes in that scale.

I find one to two hours a week is even enough to grasp some of what the hobbies are about. May was an extremely busy month for me, so I didn’t give song-writing the attention it deserved, so I pushed it to June as well. Similar with game design at the end of the year.

That is okay, investigating hobbies is supposed to be fun, and work with your schedule. It should be something to look forward to, not an item on a to-do list.

Also, it is okay to find you don’t like a potential hobby as much as you would have liked. I honestly didn’t enjoy song-writing that much, that is the point of the exercise!

The cool part of investigating different hobbies is that you will find something you didn’t think you would have enjoyed as much! I didn’t think I would like planted tanks and now I am working on improving my own 5 Gallon aquarium!I also didn’t think I’d enjoy magic but now I know how to do ten-card tricks and routinely do them for my patient fiancé and friends!

Key Take-Aways

Life can make it hard to investigate the hobbies we have always dreamed of doing. Yet, by dedicating one month to the hobby allows for time to look into the hobby and see if it is for you.

By the end of the year, you will have investigated 12 (or 10) hobbies that you never would have had time to do before!

Action items

What are some hobbies or interests you have always wanted to look into but never have had the time before. Make a list of your top interests and assign one to a month for the next several months. Start finding yourself some new hobbies!