3 Reasons Your Hobbies Might Be More Important Than You Think
And why we should be spending more time on them
“You never lose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby.” — Larry Page
With individuals worldwide feeling pressed for time, it has become more challenging for us to focus on activities that matter to us.
Several studies have been done to understand the benefits of activities like exercising, maintaining regular sleep, and following a good diet. However, we don’t usually mention participating in hobbies as positively influencing our well being as regularly as the examples mentioned earlier.
Historically, hobbies were associated with negative connotations and were viewed as an obsession detracting one from their occupation. It was seen as something of low consequence in an individual’s life.
Yet, in recent times, we have seen a high increase in engagement in hobbies outside of our day to day work. We are looking for activities that help break the monotony of our daily lives.
Pursuing our hobbies has been shown to have multiple beneficial effects on our physical, emotional, and mental health. For example, , participants, when engaging in hobbies, had less stress and lower heart rate than when not engaged.
But with our engagement in hobbies also comes the guilt of wasting time. I have spent hours feeling guilty about spending time assembling a lego kit when I could have been checking off the next item in my to-do list. However, more and more studies in this space show that having and participating in hobbies positively impacts our subjective well-being.
What is Subjective Well-Being?
Subjective well-being (SWB) is described as “how good [one’s life] feels, how well it meets expectations, how desirable it is deemed to be, etc.”
The above definitions, along with other academics in the field, agree that there are three components to SWB:
- frequent positive emotions such as joy, hope, etc
- infrequent negative emotions such as sadness, jealousy, anger, etc
- integrated judgement of one’s life satisfaction
Our hobbies play a huge role in impacting all three factors of our subjective well-being.
Frequent Positive Emotions
Find a way to relax that takes you to a joyful level, a level that quits the nerves and allows thoughts to be calm. One of these relaxing moods can be instilled through a hobby and one that brings you satisfaction and one that thoroughly involves your mind in something different than that which you do for work, or is a necessity. — Byron Pulsifer
Engaging in leisure activities to alleviate loneliness in older people. A similar effect of involvement in hobbies on increasing positive social relationships was also demonstrated in a amongst older Korean adults. Formation of such good social relationships through practicing hobbies ends up positively impacting one’s well-being.
In a , researchers saw that doctors with greater engagement in hobbies also had a greater sense of engagement in their work. This higher level of work engagement also ends in better performance and a higher chance of rewards at work.
Developing a hobby and progressing towards a higher level of skill or goal on that hobby can help one feel good about something. Engaging in creative self-expression through the hobby can also lead to increased self-esteem among individuals.
Research like this sheds light on the far-reaching benefits of leisure activities on various positive emotions that one can experience.
Infrequent negative emotions.
Having a hobby is a great way to reduce the amount of stress you feel. — Craig W. Baird
This aspect of our well-being though similar to the above component, isn’t quite the same. A higher presence of positive emotions does not necessarily mean the absence of negative emotions.
Our hobbies give us a way to relieve stress and anxiety.
In , researchers concluded that engaging in hobbies for more than an hour a day had lower dementia risk in late life. found evidence that engaging in different types of hobbies plays a role in buffering stress’s negative psychological impact.
It has been observed that long working hours were associated with declining mental health, yet practicing outside work hobbies helped mitigate some of those effects. Interestingly, hobbies can even manage the pain associated with chronic illness.
Hobbies help us improve our mental health by actively counteracting certain negative emotions.
Integrated judgement of one’s life satisfaction.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. — Oliver W. Holmes Sr.
In a 2005 study, it was found that practicing a hobby after retirement can help retirees reach a high level of life satisfaction by compensating for other possible negative factors.
In a by Martikainen among Finnish young adults, he found that leisure-time activities were one of the most essential variables relating to life satisfaction amongst a defined group of research participants.
Leisure activities are a more important factor than other experiences with regard to the quality of life. For older adults, higher participation in hobbies was shown to increase life satisfaction and improved quality of life.
The secret to hobbies lies in stepping away from our constant quest for efficiency and productivity.
Hobbies help us grow. They give us the opportunity to explore new skills and aspects of ourselves that we never knew existed. Hobbies can help unlock so much more for us in life. The benefits are far more than the downsides.
Enjoy the downtime and get lost in the magical world that you create with your hobby. You deserve it. Don’t be worried about being perfect. Just get started.
A hobby is nothing but a guilt-free way to have fun. So have fun.
