What Hobby Should I Pursue?

What Hobby Should I Pursue?

I found this question on Quora here.

I think many people in the creative community might want to know the answer to this question and there’s not a lot of content about this which helps tackle this in a structured approach. While there can be no one correct answer, there can be different approaches. Here’s mine and I’m sharing it below.

Let me answer this in 2 Parts:

  1. A structured plan to explore hobbies
  2. My personal story (so you can see if this strategy suits you)

Let’s help you navigate faster and maybe help you structure by giving you the right template questions you can ask yourself.

Reason?

  1. Hobbies and interests can fluctuate
  2. You might think hobby a is the right one for you but it might be that you were better skilled at something else
  3. You might miss out on exploring enough options before choosing

Structured Plan To Explore Hobbies

  1. Ask yourself what are you skilled in?
  2. Ask yourself what are you interested in?
  3. Try out those activities in priority which you are both skilled and interested in and see if you can get a decent output in what you do
  4. Don’t stick to it yet – now quickly explore the other interests. A structure can be every Saturday you can stick to the main hobby and every Sunday you can explore a different one. This helps you upskill in the one you’re sticking to and keep exploring. Don’t make long plans but 4 weekends is enough (if you work Monday to Friday).
  5. You’ll see yourself naturally looking forward to one hobby over a period and then you’ll automatically start sticking to it and following it.

Most likely the process should take 3–6 months, in which you can experience different hobbies as well as reflect upon your interests and skills.

In the final stage I guess this is what happens: 1 of your hobbies might scale – in terms of your skill or the reward you get out of it. Others – you might be average at it. Now going forward your interests may fade or go up, but the experience of all other interests you have explored will keep you satisfied, confident as well as creative. The dots some random day might connect and something you explored randomly out of interest might connect with your main hobby and you might innovate and invent a totally new way of doing things or a new hobby which can’t be put in a template here. It might not be singing or dancing but something new, innovative and niche which we don’t yet have a name for – and that is the most rewarding and I don’t want to rule this one out!.

My Personal Story:

I used to play music gigs on Saturdays and on Sundays (for a period of 1–3 months) I either attended art shows, gave tuitions at a nearby tuition center, joined a spiritual community, joined a dancing class, joined a book club, did poetry writing, built websites, taught singing, explored video editing, cooking, 2D-3D animation, became a YouTuber, explored (but wasn’t able to master) public speaking, became an online Instructor, read about the stock market, and lastly also for 1 month I planned and did nothing on Sundays – just binge watched on Netflix (yes this was good as well and helped boost creativity)

After years of doing this I’ve got a some proficiency in 3 hobbies and an average skill in many others. Now I’m able to connect these based on what’s required when and place it accordingly. For example, I’m into singing. So I do YouTube and Instagram videos sometimes, and on weekends I teach live classes online. I’ve also recorded some courses which I’ve published on Skillshare.

Additional Tip

It’s smart to do things with your own experience. But smarter to learn from other’s experience because that’s faster. And I started exploring Skillshare for this. For example I wanted to do 3D animation, and I was able to simply get a course there because I’m a subscriber. It’s not an expensive platform and I’ve probably explored 40–50 different creative hobbies there. That’s also something you can start with in your first 1–2 weeks (and then just check if you need it). Explore some creative hobbies there and see what interests you and then start the execution process the way I’ve explained.

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to know me better and explore my journey: Kushal Jasoria

I also teach on Skillshare: http://skillshare.com/kushaljasoria

Explified