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 twenties. 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 wellbeing, but for this decade of life. I think personally that hobbies are just as important as our friendships during our twenties. 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 that 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 of it 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 healthy physically, of being more rounded, a 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 grateful, 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, the psychological benefits of the 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'm 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 twenties. 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 watch 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 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 that festivals would count because it does
require some kind of cognitive expenditure. Hopefully that makes sense. It's really that debate abound what crosses the line, And if you want my opinion, I'm a bit of 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, it would love to hear from you,
because I know that there is differing opinions. But basically, it's something that you find fun, 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 twenty fifteen, 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 the local pool, you play board game, 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 do you 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 fifty dollars secondhand bike on Facebook marketplace and like ride it around your neighborhood, and that can be a hobby.
Or for example, you don't 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 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 one hundred two
hundred 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 like 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 doing sheet gardens, she paints, volunteers, she reads, bakes, go to the gym, even like seventy eight. 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 you know occasionally. So one study from twenty ten 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 all so 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 try and figure out who said this first. I think nowadays it's just common wisdom. And I love 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 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 thing that you used to do purely for enjoyment as a
way to make money. You have got to love it at least like two hundred percent, because when money and fine answers get involved, it is naturally going to become stressful and you will lose I would like to say, one hundred percent of the love. So you have to be at a two hundred percent level to afford to lose one hundred percent of the love, so that you're still full of passion for it. So you 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 the thing I really loved doing, and then it became additionally my source of financial security or lack their 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 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 benefit We are going to talk about all of that and more after this shortbreak. I'm gonna 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 twenties, 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 spending 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 wouldn't 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 time mention, and that brings me to a huge benefit having a hobby. Having a couple allows you to build an intentional life outside of Korea and outside your work. Think of yourself and your life as like containing five buckets. You have your relationships, you have your work, your wellbeing, 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 pull 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 or 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 be stress, it can compartmentalize. That's also why I really often say that your hobbies should be different to what you do at work all day. You know, like if you're a nurse, your hobby there's going to sound santly, 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 gonna 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, favorite pieces of research that supports this was conducted with almost and I'm going to say this number because it's astounding, one hundred thousand people. That's right. It was a piece of research on a hundred thousand people, all of them over the age of sixty five, 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 it's 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, I'm not going to go to the gym, I'm not going to do this that whatever. Actually setting a same 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 nineteen ninety five, we are not picking up hobbies the same
way people used to. We're seeing a steady decline in hobby. Yes, 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 technolog 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 feel 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 life, 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. 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 out to do list. Something I've seen a lot recently is like even amongst my you know, 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 kind of 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, the
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. Where it's 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 ten pm, 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 the more, but the more
we don't do them, the less motivated we become. So really the high 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 just by 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 like make that my new hobby. I even had like the shoes and everything. I just couldn't. 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 foe 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 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 copies 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 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.
During 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 bondside 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 grandmar Core, but when you get into it, you can like sit and listen to a podcast and just get so stuck into it. There's also people who
like upsyde call, 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 a 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 gonna 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 now 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. Is to just have a little palate cleanse, is to just fill your
days with activities rather than just lounging passive consumption. On another note, returning to your 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 gonna let myself watch TV in twenty 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 would 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 ten twenty 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. 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 twenty minute commute on the barsa 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 it's 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 do. 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 thirty 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 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 makes 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 got and 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 twenties. So I just hope this has inspired you to get back into something that you 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
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We would love to hear from you as always, and until next week, stay safe, be kind, to be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very soon.