There’s so much going on in the outside world right now, large amounts of information are right at our finger tips to be accessed instantly. With this in mind, you’d think it’d be easy to find something you enjoy. However, matters of the inside are harder to access oftentimes. This is not to say that it is not worth the effort though, hobbies often give people new purpose that they never had before and they make ways to schedule their life around these new things.

Why having a hobby is important:

“Parkinson’s law” thought up by C. Northcote Parkinson, states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. This is a trap that many people fall into time after time (and rightly so). To take this further, if set tasks aren’t assigned a deadline, then they may never be completed. Although this may not seem like a major problem, it can seep into other areas of your life and you can become an overall less productive person that constantly puts work off and can never truly relax because nothing is ever truly finished until it needs to be.

Not to mention, hobbies give you the tools to manage your time effectively by making you create plans, complete actions, look back on what you’ve done and think of how things could’ve gone better. First-hand experience like this is often more effective at teaching people skills than just the how-to knowledge, it gives practice of actually applying these principles and they can be carried into other areas of life. If that isn’t enough reason to pick up the notepad and jot down ideas of hobbies, other benefits include: others seeing you as a more interesting person, they are an effective form on stress-relief and they help to forge new friends and relationships.

How to find one:

Many people aren’t particularly passionate about anything (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but that doesn't mean that there's nothing for you to enjoy investing both your time and effort into. Now you know the importance of finding a hobby, here's how you'd discover yours:

      1. Past Projects

Looking back at old projects is a great way to find things that catch your interest, a lot of these things are incomplete and forgotten, so the things you'll find will be a surprise. Old photo albums from an exciting road trip, drawings of imaginary characters, dumbbells for your (meant to be) gym etc. Simply have a quick rummage around your house and see what you find, you may be shocked!

2. What relaxes or excites you?

Hobbies don’t simply have to be an activity that fills in your down-time, it can be something to take your mind off everything else and relax during that activity or something that makes you overly excited to get up and go do that thing. There are many examples of great people that felt this way about their hobby of choice, Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted saying “Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit just as exercise conditions the body”.

3. Guilty Pleasures

Think of the things you can’t help but feel tempted by while shopping, objects you often feel drawn to are likely to be the things that you would find enjoyment in creating as well. If when walking down the high street, you can’t help but gaze through the windows of Waterstones and eye up the all latest novels, try your hand at writing a short story. If you simply must have each pair of running shoes that cross your eyes, try making some! These things can generally be an easy way of revealing your soon-to-be hobby because don't involve any searching for and they’re already quite obvious to start with.