7 Best Productive Hobbies to Take On

Hobbies seem a thing of the past. This may be because, as kids, we find ways to entertain and express ourselves. However, as adults, responsibilities and jobs seem to take center stage. Only a handful of us are able to carry on our hobbies into adulthood. 

Everyone must have a hobby. Hobbies are not simply avenues for killing idle time; they can help us discover our hidden tastes and talents. 

But there’s a catch. Most of these hobbies kill time without offering any real benefits. So, while you may enjoy playing Call of Duty for hours at a stretch, it promotes a sedentary lifestyle. 

Before going any further, let’s understand what productive hobbies are.

What are Productive Hobbies?

Productive hobbies are activities that not only provide enjoyment but also contribute to personal growth, skill development, or the accomplishment of other tangible outcomes.

As opposed to unproductive hobbies that merely count as ‘doing something’, productive hobbies can offer immense learning and advancement opportunities. They can last for decades and age with you. What you’re truly passionate about may hardly feel monotonous. 

Here are a few suggestions for productive hobbies:

Reading

Some of the most successful people around us are avid readers. 

According to The Reading Habits of Highly Successful People, Warren Buffet spends 80% of his day reading, while Elon Musk spends up to 10 hours reading books while growing up.  

Here’s how reading pans out as an outstandingly productive hobby:

• It helps you gain knowledge of your respective domain. When faced with new or challenging tasks, consulting relevant literature can provide invaluable guidance, saving you time that would otherwise be spent on trial and error.
  
• Reading sharpens your cognitive skills. As it requires prolonged focus and concentration, research suggests that habitual reading may mitigate the chances of cognitive decline that sets in with old age.
  
• It fosters creative thinking. Reading opens a world of possibilities. Learning about new strategies, principles, and experiments can help you think outside the box when approaching business matters.

Writing

One of the most beneficial hobbies is writing. Writing is a profoundly impactful form of self-expression. It enables you to channel your energies into something you’re passionate about, where you write about your thoughts, dreams, and aspirations.

Whether you’re composing articles, scripts, or personal journal entries, writing unleashes your creative potential and contributes to your overall productivity and well-being. It allows your imagination and creativity to run riot, which can be liberating. 

Nowadays, people are leveraging their writing abilities to take on freelance content writing. By polishing your grammar, expression, and content knowledge, you can earn a decent side income by writing content for marketers and agencies. 

Volunteering

Volunteering might not be a regular choice for a hobby, but it’s an activity pursued during leisure time and can be genuinely enjoyable. It is one of the most constructive ways to spend our free time. It is also our chance to give something back to society and make a real difference.

Through volunteering, you can:

• Experience satisfaction from helping others
• Connect with interesting individuals from all walks of life; make new friends
• Explore new opportunities and experiences; learn about yourself and discover your callings
• Learn new skills and teach others skills that you have to offer

You can combine volunteering with your existing hobbies. For example, if you’re passionate about crocheting, you can organize crocheting classes at foster homes, teaching kids to create beautiful pieces for themselves or for selling.  

Sports & Physical Activity

Engaging in sports activities ranks among the most widely embraced and thrilling hobbies. Whether participating in or spectating, sports benefit the body and mind. Examples include football, cricket, swimming, and dancing.

Adopting a sport can be highly beneficial if you aim to enhance your physical well-being. It not only fosters health improvements but also facilitates skill acquisition, broadens your life experiences, and serves as a source of motivation. Additionally, playing in teams can improve your strengths as a team player. 

Pursuing physical activities can create a sense of improvement. You may be challenged by yourself to improve your stamina, body composition, or form. Such intrinsic benchmarking can be applied at work, too, where you can set out to surpass your current productivity standards. 

Learn a New Language

While it may sound unconventional, acquiring a foreign language is a hobby with a huge possible payoff. Whether pursued at home or in a language class, learning a new language represents a productive and enriching hobby.

Learning a new language can enhance your resume and give you an edge over those who do not know that language. Not only is it beneficial when traveling, but it also aids memory retention, enhances decision-making abilities, and boosts concentration.

Multilingualism is a commendable attribute, offering a competitive advantage in the job market and facilitating communication with a broader global audience. With a remote job market on the rise, you can leverage your multilingualism to land a high-paying remote job sitting inside your home. 

Cooking

Good-ol’ cooking is a criminally underrated hobby. Considering that everyone requires food to survive, cooking stands out as a practical skill to cultivate. 

Beyond mere sustenance, cooking fosters:

• Increased concentration. Cooking is a hobby that demands unwavering focus, given the inherent risks associated with sharp tools, spilling and burning.
  
• Sharp planning skills. Planning is essential before you roll up your sleeves and start cooking. You need to ensure all necessary ingredients are on hand and how you will cook a dish step by step. Want to improve your forecasting and resource optimization skills? Start cooking! 
  
• Multitasking and speed. Cooking uplifts your mood by rendering you more productive. Nothing feels more rewarding than preparing healthy and delicious food. As an added bonus, it teaches you to multitask and improve your work efficiency. 

Gardening 

Gardening is a peaceful and therapeutic hobby that gives you a sense of achievement from growing new life forms. It’s a great stress buster that offers multiple physical and mental benefits. 

Here are some notable benefits experienced by those who like to grow stuff:

• Gardening improves our health. It is not always a light physical activity. All the digging, shoveling, and potting can require hard manual labor. This serves as an excellent source of regular exercise.

• It brings a sense of calm. Surrounded by lush green plants with no distractions, it can really calm you down.

• It improves observation skills. Planting stuff, nurturing it daily, and waiting for it to grow out requires patience and observation skills. You must discern between the various lifecycle stages of plants to care for them accordingly.
• It improves your project management. Nothing says project management is better than caring for hundreds of organisms, each with its own demands and lifecycles.It may also improve your multitasking and resource optimization skills. 

• Gardening fosters creativity. It involves regular crisis management. You may often have to fight off bugs attacking your plants. Handling new situations every day, gardening can help you come up with creative solutions and ideas to apply at work, too. 

Benefits of having Productive Hobbies

Yes, hobbies are great, but let us share some less obvious benefits of having productive hobbies.

Reduced Stress 

We need leisure time to destress and rearrange our thoughts. Hobbies can distract us from pressing issues and deadlines, helping us channel our pent-up negativity into healthy forms.

Over recent years, people have resorted to adopting hobbies to express emotions and deal with increased isolation in a hyper-digitized world. 

For example, a OnePoll survey found that to overcome boredom during the pandemic, people started spending more money and time on hobbies than ever before.  

Improved Health 

Hobbies that demand you to take time out from your daily schedules and expend your physical energy are top-tier. Sweating and working up your heart rate are some of the healthiest ways to improve your health. 

Engaging in regular physical activities can counteract all the damage that sitting for 40-plus hours a week does to us. This is especially useful for aging professionals and remote workers, who may not have much physical or social activity. 

Possibility of Extra Income

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free” 

If you’re exceptionally gifted at something that can be sold, you can turn it into a source of income. We have countless success stories where great people who were passionate about something turned it into a prosperous business. 

For example, the beloved Colonel Sanders, founder of KFC, was a fried chicken enthusiast. He spent his life creating and perfecting the best fried chicken recipe. It was not until his 60s that he finally found success by commercializing it. Soon after, Sanders owned over 600 KFC locations across the globe and later sold it to investors for a staggering $2 million in 1964.

Discover your Interests

Living in today’s fast-paced and stressful environment underscores the need to take time for ourselves. Pursuing productive hobbies is a great way to lift our spirits, make us healthier, and learn a thing or two about professional growth. 

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