The Psychology of your 20s - 243. Why having hobbies is so important

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Your hobbies may be just as important as your friendships in your 20s. But whilst you may dedicate 10-15 hours a week to your friends, most of us can go a week or two without actually performing our hobbies. Why is that, and what is the consequence?In today's episode we break down the psychology of why our hobbies are so important, including:  The debate around what makes a hobby  How many hobbies do you actually need?  How much time should you spend doing your hobbies?  The Rule of Four for hobbies The psychological benefits  The 3 major reasons we struggle to perform our hobbies How to find time, inspiration and motivation for your hobbies, and more Listen now if you want to make more of your leisure time!  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

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trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of your 20s. This topic has been a long time coming. It has been on my list of things that I really want to talk about for a while. And today we are finally getting around to doing it. We're going to be talking about the psychology of hobbies and how essential they are, not just for your well-being, but for this decade of life, I think personally, that hobbies are.

just as important as our friendships during our 20s. But despite that, we really do struggle, you and I, both of us can acknowledge that we struggle to devote the necessary time to them, to doing our hobbies. We wish that we had more kind of things that we love to do in our free time. For me personally, I feel like I collect hobbies almost like their trinkets. Like I have so many hobbies on rotation that I adore and then I love doing. but I don't always get the chance to actually do them and, you know, I'll drop them every now and again and then pick them back up like six months later. And what I've really begun to realize is that

the times when I'm not actively doing my hobbies are the times when my life kind of suffers. Often it's that my life feels like it's all centered on work and my relationships and my responsibilities and we need something deeper than that. We need projects. We need creativity. We need to be using different parts of our brain and there are just so many benefits that hobbies bring. You think that something so small and so playful often and so fun couldn't be so powerful. But I think actually enjoying your life is one of those crucial, you know, secret parts of being healthier physically, of being more rounded and more interesting, fulfilled person. Hobbies play a big role in that.

And it's so easy to see our well-being is like physical health, mental health, seeing friends. But having fun, being creative, doing something else with your time is significant. I also feel like hobbies are so great for reconnecting with your inner child. They make you feel curious. They're great for connecting with others. They use new parts of your brain that lay dormant whilst you're at work. You know, the list goes on. So today we're going to talk about the hidden psychological benefits.

of hobbies that you may not know, the different types of hobbies, different categories of hobbies that are really actually quite fascinating when you get into it, and why it is that we struggle so much to get engaged in them. Why it is so much easier to consume, to watch television, to watch Instagram reels, to watch TikToks, why that has become the status quo, and how we can overcome the three major barriers that are stopping us from doing our hobbies. I am energized by this episode. I am excited by this episode. I want us all to leave, ready to try something new, to get your hands dirty, to get playful, get active, whatever it is. So without further ado, let's dive into all of the psychology behind why we need hobbies, especially in our 20s.

Let's begin with the basics, something so simple that it might seem silly. What is a hobby? What does that even mean in this day and age? That's where we really have to begin. And it's actually not a stupid question because surprisingly, the very definition of what makes up a hobby is up for debate. I think the debate is actually best summarized by whether you think watching movies is a hobby or not. because some people say, yes, of course it is. It's like quite educational.

You can get quite intellectual about it. And other people would be like, yeah, absolutely no way. That's way too passive to be a hobby. Think about your answer because it actually points to a really important distinction between what makes up a hobby and what does it. We can all agree that a hobby is something we do with our free time that we naturally enjoy. It also can't be related to what. work and some people would even say it can't be related to anything that you need to do, anything

that is essential that you need for survival. So I love grocery shopping, right? And I do that in my free time, but it's not a hobby because it's something that is essential. So hobbies are their own unique form of, you know, leisure that is not purpose driven. The debate I mentioned before is also about whether a hobby requires some kind of effort or energy to be considered. a hobby. So there is very little mental effort that goes into being on your phone or scrolling or watching TV. And so people would say there's not an active commitment. You're not really getting something out because you're not putting anything in. But maybe, you know, foreign films at festivals would count because it does require some kind of cognitive expenditure. Hopefully that makes

sense. It's really that debate around what crosses the line. And if you want my opinion, I'm a bit a hobby traditionalist. I do think that your hobbies kind of require something extra. They require you to like switch on your brain or your body or your creativity in a way that, you know, a passive act like watching TV or being on your phone doesn't. Like it's active. If you don't agree, obviously, I would love to hear from you because I know that there's differing opinions. But basically it's something that you find fun that you do in your leisure time that you do in your leisure time that you do regularly, which we'll get to later, and that uses some part of your brain or your body which is not related to work or something essential. Something really fascinating, at least I think

it's fascinating, but something fascinating that I discovered is about how certain people think about hobbies, especially sociologists, and how they group them. So there are actually three different types of hobbies or hobbyists, people who do hobbies. According to this book, which is a whole book on the psychology and the sociology of hobbies published in 2015, there is the casual leisure kind of hobby that is fun, you know, maybe short-lived, doesn't really require a lot of preparation or money. So like, you might go and play basketball at a community court once a week, or you swim at a local pool, you play board games, you make some kind of art like coloring in. That is casual leisure. Then we get a bit more serious. And this is very properly called serious leisure hobbies.

These are the kinds of hobbies that require a bit more effort, a bit more money as well to be rewarding. Like ceramics. There is, you do have to pay for the tools. You have to pay for the equipment or horse riding or scuba diving. It can also describe people who have taken a casual leisure hobby. So like bike riding and made it a lot more serious. You know, you can get a $50 secondhand bike on Facebook marketplace and like ride it around your neighborhood and that can be a hobby. Or for example, you know, I have a friend Felix who spends so much money on bikes and equipment and he does races and he has gels and outfits. Like, you know, he's at that serious leisure leisure.

level. I'm going to make an argument that even like a hobby like reading can become serious leisure. And we're seeing that more with like the popularity of book talk where like people build whole rooms for their books. They collect them. They have these long term yearly reading goals of like 100, 200 books. Like that has to cost money. And I was speaking to a friend about this recently who was saying and she's like a huge avid reader. and she was saying how that culture has really taken the fun out of reading and the fun of book clubs and of the community because it's not leisure anymore. It's almost like work. It's almost like competition amongst other people in the community. Just a quick sidebar.

I thought that was very interesting. But finally, we have project-based leisure. That's our final category. And this is short term. It's often one-off projects that are rewarding. like building Lego sets, volunteering for sports events or like building a really elaborate garden. You know, you just, you can't do that every day. You might only do it like three to four times a year.

But it is still like an ongoing project based hobby. So that brings us to another fascinating debate. How many hobbies should you have and how often should you be doing them? this definitely like varies on age. I feel like we all have the experience of being a kid or a teenager and having seemingly like thousands of hobbies that are then replaced by work and replaced by like the other things that we need to do day in and day out as we get older. But then I think as we reach like an older age almost becoming elderly, all of our hobbies

come back. And I am going to use the example of. my grandma as a prime opportunity to explain this, that woman is so busy. She is bustling. She is doing. She gardens. She paints. Volunteers. She reads. Bakes. Go to the gym. Even like 78. So it's kind of like it definitely differs across our lifespan. But if we are following the law of averages, researchers will typically say that two to five hobbies is the sweet spot. You should have between two to five things that you're really passionate about and then maybe a few other things that you do occasionally. So one study from 2010 that was actually the first of its kind. It basically

tried to find the golden number for hobbies and fascinatingly, interestingly, shockingly, they found that the limit does not exist as long as you have the space and the time, the more hobbies you do, the more improvements you will see to your physical and psychological health. It's also associated with less stress, lower blood pressure. That's what having more hobbies and more leisure time brings you. I think the more leisure time is also an important factor. These are all things that, you know, we really want to say. So basically, as long as you have the space, you can have as many hobbies as you want and still be benefiting. There is another formula that you've probably heard as well. Another like golden number for hobbies. And that is the formula of four.

We need four hobbies. A hobby to keep you physically fit. A hobby to stay creative. A hobby to stay mentally fit. And a hobby to make money. I tried so hard to like try and figure out who said this first. I think nowadays it's just common wisdom. And I love the first. I love the first. I think that's the first three. My hobby to keep me fit is boxing in the gym and then I do ceramics to stay creative and I read and I listen to podcasts. I read journals to like keep myself mentally fit. But the last one, a hobby to make you money, I do have a small issue with including that because I think when you make money from a hobby, you lose the implicit natural enjoyment that is meant to bring. And I actually say that as someone who made one of their hobbies like a full-time job.

You know, this podcast used to be purely a leisure activity. I posted what I wanted not as frequently as I do now. It was just super random topics that I'd cover and I'd literally have my friends on as guests. And then a lot of you tuned in. Thank you for doing that. And it became my full-time job. This is what I want to say about that. And I want to caveat by saying, I absolutely love what I do.

But when you start doing the things, that you used to do purely for enjoyment as a way to make money, you have got to love it at least like 200%. Because when money and finances get involved, it is naturally going to become stressful and you will lose, I would like to say, 100% of the love. So you have to be at a 200% level to afford to lose 100% of the love so that you're still full of passion for it. So you've, you know, you've still got to make sure you have that motivation. you're naturally going to lose that when it becomes a job. And it's really, really common that this happens, especially amongst people who are creators or musicians or people who are sports people,

athletes. I love that I didn't know the word for that. Athletes. For me, I, you know, I had like basically a hobby crisis when the podcast became my full-time job like almost two years ago now, because it was all I cared about. It was all I cared about. It was all I cared about. about it was the thing I really loved doing and then it became additionally my source of financial security or lack thereof and it made it pretty exhausting because additionally I think nothing had taken its place in my life as the thing that I just purely did for the pleasure of it. There was nothing leisure based that I was doing outside of this because it was taking a while for everything to kind of line up or kind of settle into place.

And that is when I think I had this whole crisis of like, who am I? What do I even stand for that isn't work? And I made it a real thing that I was dedicating myself to. I was dedicating myself to my hobbies. I started pottery. I started swimming in the ocean again. I started boxing because I didn't want to lose myself any further in that process. So why do we need?

need to do this? Why do we need to spend time, devote time, prioritize time for our hobbies? And speaking from a psychological, emotional, even physical perspective, what are the benefits? We are going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.

We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships. and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO%.

On the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast.

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We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games.

And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it.

And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions.

bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keer Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies. In her story, this began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test ones.

It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marincini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young.

this is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.

Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to hold your hand when I say this, but your life will never, be truly fulfilling if all you have is work and your relationships. Both of those things are really crucial, but you need something that's just about you. You need more flavor. You need more excitement. That is what hobbies are for. Especially in our 20s, there is this very important developmental

transition we experience where work becomes the predominant activity in our lives. And naturally, it takes over a lot of our identity. And that makes sense. If you're spent, eight hours plus at your job every day, that is a big chunk of your time that it's going to be consumed with whatever it is you're doing, data entry, talking to people, solving problems, helping people moving things, whatever it is. There was a really great article from Yale University that spoke about how this is particularly a problem for those of us who are relatively early on in our careers, because there's that implicit fear of failure that drives us to center our lives on work and achieving what is

expected of us. This intense like drive and focus, it forces our identity to ultimately become synonymous with what we do for a living. I remember when I was working as a consultant, like someone asked me like two years into working this job, what do you do for fun? And I had to really think about it and then I had to make it up. because at that point, work was everything to me. Yes, I would like see my friends. I would go out for drinks. I would go out for dinner.

I'd go to the gym. But there wasn't much more. There wasn't much that was individual to me. And that is a big risk of not having hobbies. You stop being someone who has dimension. And that brings me to a huge benefit. Having a hobby, having a couple allows you to build. an intentional life outside of career and outside your work.

Think of yourself and your life as like containing five buckets. You have your relationships, you have your work, your well-being, personal growth, and then you have fun, you have leisure. Your way to a balanced life is to pour as equally as you can into each of these buckets. But you kind of never get more water. So at any given time, the amount of water you have to distribute, across all these things is going to be the same. You can pour from one bucket into another. You can empty a bucket, but when these buckets are uneven, we suffer. If you keep pouring into the work

bucket, you have to pour from the health bucket, you have to pour from the personal growth bucket, from your leisure bucket, your relationships will suffer. By having those hobbies that we enjoy and make time for, we balance out all the other buckets. We make sure that no, one bucket ever gets too big that it consumes all the liquid, all the water, all the energy. One study, for example, looked at the relationship between when you work really long hours and how that impacts depression and well-being. And on top of discovering the very obvious thing, which is that the more hours you work, the more significant negative impact it has on your health, what researchers did find was that

having hobbies, even if you had limited time, actually helped mitigate those adverse side effects because you were still putting time, energy, you were making an investment in yourself as someone who was not just an employee. You know, you had this place to go where your brain can think about something different. It can de-stress. It can compartmentalize. That's also why I really often say that your hobbies should be different to what you do at work. or day, you know, like if you're a nurse, your hobby, this is going to sound silly, but it can't be like playing operation. You know, that's a silly example. But if you spend your day working in front of a screen doing like data or like marketing or whatever, you know, it's not

great if you come home and you have more screen-based hobbies. You want it to be quite nuanced. You want to give your brain something more to play with. You know, hobbies also just simply make you happier. We're just going to say it from the most basic psychological, lens. When you participate in something you love, your brain rewards you with dopamine. That keeps you motivated to keep going. It makes you happier. A life filled with hobbies feels more purposeful. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite pieces of research that supports this was conducted with almost, and I'm going to say this number because it's astounding 100,000 people. That's right. It was a piece of research on a hundred thousand people, all of them over the age of 65 and they'd all retired.

And what they found was that when these older adults had hobbies and they did their hobby more than once a week, they not only were happier, they also lived longer because health is not just physical. It is mental. It is cognitive. You will start giving up on your physical health, you will start not caring about yourself as much if you don't have something that you actually want to live for, something that you actually enjoy doing. You won't feel as positive towards yourself. You won't feel as positive towards your well-being and as active and protective if you don't feel like you have a purpose, if you're not happy. And you know, we don't need like a study to tell us that. Like intuitively, humans need recreational time. They need things to care about. But I do

think it's really important that I remind you. I'm just going to rattle off some other benefits. I know I've probably convinced you by now, but just quickly. Hobbies improve your focus. You know, even if you think, I don't have time for this, I'm so busy with work or school, like I'm not going to do my hobbies. I'm not going to go for a swim and not going to go to the gym and not going to do this, that, whatever. Actually, setting aside time to do those things will mean that you perform better anyways. They make you less stressed. They make you more in touch with your authentic self. And like depending on whether the activity is solo or group based as well, it can make you

less lonely. It's a valuable part of our routine. It makes us more flexible. Every single thing points to us needing more time to do this. Scary finding though from the last few years is that this generation, you know, you and me people born after 1995, we are not picking up hobbies the same way people used to. We're seeing a steady decline in hobbyists, the people who have a lot of hobbies, who make hobbies a part of who they are.

And a lot of our hobbies are based on consumption. So they are based on watching TV. They are based on collecting things that we have to buy, shopping, video games, movies, rather than production-based hobbies, production-based activities, things that are about. creating something new, expressing yourself, expending energy, giving something back. And it's not to say that certain hobbies are better or worse than others or like more pure, but I think if all our activities are attached to consumption and spending money, you know, it doesn't feel as fruitful. You don't actually feel like you're connecting in the same way with what you're doing. this probably comes down to a few things like this whole trend obviously like the rise in technology

is one of them like that is just what we are being fed screens are always at hand always available I don't think that they're like the devil that we think they are I think they're actually really important but you know our way of entertaining ourselves has shifted online I also think we are busier than ever. We have more commitments. We spend more time at work. There is less community fuel to our hobbies. This really sticks out to me. I think that people are craving in-person activities and community building, especially after the pandemic, because everything that we were doing became so solitary, meaning that we don't have the same social motivation to do them. It is why, personal opinion, book clubs, meetups, social sports, so special, but also so much more popular.

I want to talk about how we can make our hobbies a priority, even in our busy lives, even when we're burnt out, even when it's so much easier to like turn on the TV or scroll on TikTok. How do we find the time? How do we make the time more importantly? We're going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more,

to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-Persent on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people.

I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jett. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of Congress.

crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now.

Thank you finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your

Podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations

with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person.

Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search learn the hard way and listen now. In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Greg Alespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice is.

served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want you to pause for a second and ask yourself an important question. How many hobbies do you actually have? Like, that you regularly do more than once a fortnight and how often are you actually doing them? A lot of us might come up with a few things, maybe nothing.

I think that is the major problem we're facing here. We like to think that we're doing our hobbies, but actually they tend to fall of our prioritization, our to-do list. Something I've seen a lot recently is like, even within myself, being like, oh yeah, I love reading, I love hiking, I love rock climbing. And then you go back through your recent memories and you're like, I can't actually remember the last time I did those things. Can't remember when I last finished a book,

when I went on a nice hike for the weekend. I think it comes down to three major problems. Firstly, there is a genuine lack of time. You know, life is really busy at the moment. We've got places to go. We've got people to see. A lot of us are embracing hustle culture and when there always seems to be something more urgent to do,

you just don't have the same capacity time-wise for your hobbies. That's problem one, a very serious problem. problem two is that we just think we don't have enough time but actually we do we just don't have the motivation number two a lack of motivation this is often linked to procrastination which we know can also come down to perfectionism like i can't do my hobbies because i'm not as good as other people are i'm not as good as the people i see in the studio online at the gym that's what gets in our way or we just don't prioritize our hobbies because there is something easier to do, something easier that we want to do, like maybe scroll on our phones, whatever, that gives us that instant dopamine and that instant gratification,

whereas pursuing our hobbies takes more of a time investment to get the reward. You may start out your night, like wanting to do some painting or like wanting to do something fun, But then pretty soon you get pulled in by your phone. It's 10pm. It's time for bed. That is a really common dilemma. Something interesting that I found in some research conducted in the UK a few years ago is that our failure to do our hobbies is actually a cycle that comes back to motivational fatigue or a motivational deficit

whereby our hobbies would actually motivate us to do them more. But the more we don't do them, the less motivated we, become. So really the hardest step when you've fallen off your hobbies, when you've stopped doing them, the hardest step is the first one, you know, just doing the thing, just committing, despite all the other distractions. That is where you're going to struggle the most. But then you get the motivation, you get the wheel rolling again. I think that's like any habit. It's always hard at the beginning, like the first five minutes of a run, the first hour of starting an assignment. there is just like so much time ahead of you, it just feels so long.

But then you get going, it becomes more enjoyable. That is the motivational process of doing your hobbies more regularly. Finally, it may be that actually those hobbies that you've fallen away from, they just aren't fun anymore. They're just not something that you want to do. We're not particularly keen on doing them. I remember trying so hard to like be into rock climbing back in the day and make that my new hobby.

I even had like the shoes and everything. I just couldn't force it. I couldn't do it. It was like trying to fit into the wrong relationship. I think at those points, obviously you're not going to want to participate. But you still have this like almost hypothetical like fake faux idea in your mind that that is still an active hobby for you when you haven't done it in like years, maybe even months. Maybe it's time to start something new.

Maybe it's time to refresh the hobby. be roster. And that brings me to the final reason that you're not doing your hobbies, it's because you're not excited about them. It's because you lack inspiration. Let's address that issue first, because I actually think that is the biggest culprit of all these reasons. I want to give you some ideas of some hobbies that you maybe haven't considered. I think we're all pretty used to the basic hobbies that people will list. And if you're not really into running or reading, Sometimes it's like, well, kind of what else is out there, but fear not. There are so many other things out there.

I want to give you some of that inspiration you might be lacking. You could go shell collecting. Maybe your hobby is to go to the beach once a week, have a swim and find some shells and make cool jewelry out of them. Like make cool ceramic dishes using the shells. Baking for a new person each week. I was really into this a few years ago, like each week. I would choose someone new, like my neighbors, my roommates, some person I was going over to have dinner with, and I would make a new recipe for them.

Join a social sport team that, like, plays a new sport every week. I used to do this last year. It was super, super fun. Letter writing, you could make, like, really beautiful letters for your family or, like, your internet friends or, like, your long-distance college friends and send them back and forth. Hosting, you could host, like, a little dinner party every Sunday as, like, your hobby is literally hosting. Like your hobby is to create nice events for people to come and like hang out together.

Make a little veggie patch or a garden that you tend to or a bonsai tree. Go to a ceramics class. I'm doing this currently. Actually, I've done three now and they're all like six weeks long. So you have to keep going because you pay at the beginning and you've committed knitting. This is one of my favorites. It sounds so like grandma core. But when you get into it, you can like sit and listen.

into a podcast and just get so stuck into it. There's also people who like upcycle, which I love. That's something that me and my boyfriend Tom do, like once a week. We might go for a little walk around our neighborhood. Maybe this is just like an Australian thing, but people leave stuff out on the street all the time for like people to take with like little notes. So they'll have like, you know, everyone will have like a little box of stuff that people put things in and I don't know.

It's just some people call it. garbage, I think it's treasure. You know, you could start a podcast, just like documenting your life and learning how to do all the sound editing and the uploading and the publishing and just not even tell anyone, it's just going to be like your own personal audio journal. There is just so much out there. That's really what I want to remind you. There is a lot that you can do. You might just need to invest a little bit of time to get things off the ground and to feel excited by it and that kind of brings me to my next barrier which is a lack of motivation. This is probably the hardest one to overcome if a lack of inspiration is the most common.

A lack of motivation is the hardest. I think if you're in this position, you need to treat the next month as like an exploration phase for you. So like set a personal challenge, set a goal to just try heaps of new things. Even if you don't have high expectations. make it like a way to socialize. Like instead of drinks, go and like get a jewelry making set or like go and get a puzzle. Do a board games night at a pub.

Go for a hike. You don't have to commit to anything. All you're required to do is to have a taste. It's to just have a little palate cleanse. It's to just fill your days with activities rather than just lounging passive consumption. On another note, returning to your own. old hobbies often does start with just remembering why they brought you so much joy in the first place. We can forget that.

It's very easy to lose touch with the things you love when life gets busy or when other priorities take over. But hobbies are a form of self-care. Think about how great you always feel afterwards. Even if you have to kind of like mentally drag yourself to the starting line, be like, okay, I'm going to let myself watch TV in 20 minutes. But before I do that, the same way that I make time to exercise, I make time to clean my house, I make time to talk to my friends,

I'm going to make time to do my hobbies as a part of my hygiene routine as a part of my wellness routine. This, look at this perfect segue into talking about a lack of time because that is another big conundrum, another big problem, that we hear a lot. I hate to say it, and I'm going to be very gentle when I say it, but we can always make time for what we care about. And just to prove that, I want you to just think about your screen time for a second. How many 10, 20 minute increments do we have each day that instead we spend scrolling or watching? You know, you could switch that up. You could make

time for something else, even if it's small, even if it doesn't initially feel significant. Think about like when you're on the train. I saw this woman the other day knitting. She was only on for like four stops, but she pulled out her knitting needles and she was making, I don't really know what she was making. It looked really, really amazing though. You could bring your book and your goal for the next month is to, instead of go on your phone on your 20 minute commute on the bus or on the train, is to read. Try and find small pockets of time just because it doesn't feel like it's an extended hour or two hours doesn't mean that it's not a significant investment because the habit is really being built. I also think try and reframe the activity,

not as an obligation, but as like something that you have the privilege of doing, something you want to do, it's a chance to unwind, it's a chance to explore, it's a chance to have real fun, like real true enjoyment, taking real true enjoyment from something that you're doing. And you'll notice like when you fall asleep at the end of the day, you're like, wow, I just feel so much more fulfilled. Because I didn't do what was easiest. I did what I knew was going to fill my cup the most, which was my hobbies. You can notice that change. Give yourself just 30 minutes a day to prioritize this. Even if it's not on all days, you're allowed to obviously have breaks. We can't all be disciplined with new habits. But ask yourself, at the end of the day, when you've tried these things, do what?

I feel better? Do I feel better? And the days that I have the time, but I choose not to do them, am I going to feel worse? And is that something that I've kind of allowed myself to feel? Knowing that I could have done something that was going to make me feel more energized and inspired and happier, choosing not to do that. That was a choice I made. And I could make a different choice next time. I could do something that actually fills my cup, makes me interested, makes me interesting, like, me happy, fulfilled, someone who has nuance, someone who has dimension to them, who isn't just work and responsibility. So I do know it's really, really hard. I'm saying this to someone who's definitely struggled with this as I've gotten older. There's just less pieces of the pie

to give out. And it's always like a, it's always like a balancing act of like what part of my life, what bucket is going to get more from me. But I do think that this is the bucket we should be pouring more into than we actually are. Hobbies are spectacular. They're amazing. They're so valuable for your 20s. So I just hope this has inspired you to get back into something that used to bring you a lot of joy and a lot of freedom and that you just really love doing, whether it's music, sport, art, whatever it is. Find a way back to it. See how your life improves. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please, feel free to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now.

I say it every time, but it does help the show grow, meet new people, reach new people, sorry, and I do read every single one of your reviews. They often end up in my little smile file. They're often the thing that I feel very grateful for at the end of the day. So thank you for the support if you have done so already. If you have an episode suggestion, questions, follow-ups to this episode, you can DM me at that psychology podcast. We would love to hear from you as always.

And until next week, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very, very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.

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