Hacker News Reader

Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

How we spend our free time matters: research suggests that having hobbies can enhance mental and physical wellbeing and offer greater life satisfaction. From team sports to crafts classes, they can also be a means to meaningfully connect with others.

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IMO to take this benefit to a bit of a higher level, it also helps to have enough interests to bounce around between them. Especially when one interest may become annoyingl or irritating with too much focus.

I also noticed there's a very risky delay in the subjective monitoring/signaling loop which maintains conscious interest in a hobby.

If the original, reliable interest signal isn't really there anymore, but one acts as if it still is, the result can be a burnout/workaholic effect with hobbies, and it can be more devastating there than at work.

The mind will additionally tend to try to switch between blaming self and blaming hobby, as it reconciles precious identity and social signals and so on.

This in spite of the fact that it could just be that the person who previously enjoyed the hobby didn't take enough breaks.

That's news like breathing can extend your life expectancy.

Yet we have people who don't really have anything you could call a hobby.

That's their choice, isn't it?

Maybe, or maybe they're overworked and overstressed and don't have the time or mental capacity to pursue a hobby they would otherwise enjoy

Not if it's not entirely freely made.

It seems to me there are numerous distractions that compete for our time and attention. hackernews, social media, television, sports, and even drugs can all draw us away from pursuing our hobbies. Moreover, the limited time we have available to devote to our hobbies is further challenged by the prevalence of sophisticated, A/B tested platforms that are designed to capture and hold our attention.

We HN folks are basically selling crack and making people unhappier in exchange for their time and money.

> hackernews, social media, television, sports, and even drugs

Aren't these also hobbies, just not very esteemed ones?

great point! and.. you can be addicted to a hobby to a point where it becomes detrimental.

seems there are some similarities between the two. both hobbies and addictions involve engaging in an activity, seems a key differences lie in the level of control, balance, and well-being.

Not always. Hobbies generally require one or more of money, equipment, space and most of all free time, all luxuries that a large chunk of people around the world cannot afford.

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