How to Find a Hobby or Passion: Guidelines and Suggestions

Introduction

Have you had the feeling recently that you’ve been wasting your free time? Has work started to take up the majority of your time and your thoughts?

Don’t worry, we all have moments like that. A daily routine can become exhausting, especially when it’s repeated, ad nauseum.

To help yourself relax and maintain your sanity, you should consider finding a new hobby or pastime to keep yourself occupied during your downtime.

Hobbies offer a healthy creative outlet while also giving you the chance to connect with other people who share your interests.

Below, you’ll find our guide on how to find a hobby or passion through some light research, conversation, and some trial and error.

Get in Touch with Your Childhood

Many people abandon hobbies and interests from their childhoods, especially when they feel that they’re not especially talented with regards to those hobbies.

And as a result, their skills in these hobbies don’t develop over time and they may be less likely to show any interest in them in the future.

But if you’ve been looking for a new interest lately, then you may want to look back to your childhood and what you enjoyed then.

Maybe you enjoyed drawing as a child but stopped sometime before high school. Now is your chance to start again and rediscover what you loved about it.

Ask Friends

Asking friends about hobbies and interests of their own is a great way to find a new one for yourself.

Maybe they’ve recently discovered the joys of cooking or hiking and would be happy to show you the ropes.

If a friend of yours already attends events related to their personal passions, you should ask whether you can come along next time.

You’ll get an in-depth look at the kind of people who enjoy sharing their thoughts and experiences surrounding a specific hobby.

You will also have the chance to see the sense of community that the members of this group draw from their meetings.

Ask the Internet

A significant portion of the internet is dedicated just to people discussing their hobbies and interests.

Forums and message boards are a great way for people to share their knowledge of a hobby and how they got involved with it in the first place.

Reading other people’s stories about finding their hobbies could serve as a source of inspiration when looking for your own.

If you’re still unsure about becoming more involved with a specific hobby, then you should consider making a post on a related forum.

Explain your situation and your curiosity. There will likely be many members who would be happy to point you to some great introductory resources.

Take a Trial Run

You don’t have to decide on a new hobby right away. We highly encourage you to give yourself a trial run with several different hobbies to see if any of them are a good fit.

For example, if you’re interested in learning guitar, rent a guitar from a local music shop and spend just a couple weeks learning a few songs.

If you really enjoy the experience, then you can look into actually purchasing a guitar. And if you know right away that you don’t enjoy playing the guitar at all, you can simply return the instrument to the music shop.

No harm, no foul.

Some Suggestions

Below we’ve listed just a few common hobbies that make great use of both technical skill and pure creativity.

If any of them sound interesting to you, start by searching for related groups online.

Music

Playing music is one of the most popular pastimes around the world. No matter what your other interests are, you’re likely to find an instrument that appeals to you on a personal level.

Choosing an instrument and learning how to play it through the years can be incredibly satisfying and fun, too.

And if you don’t see yourself as having any natural talent for playing musical instruments, don’t worry. There are many inventive, relatively new instruments that are easy to play with little or no technical knowledge of the instrument.

For example, the theremin has become popular with many people who never enjoyed interacting with traditional instruments, as playing it is much more intuitive.

Best of all, once you’ve become comfortable playing an instrument, you can find other people to play with and maybe even perform with.

Photography

Photography may seem like an intimidating and expensive hobby at first, but in reality it’s highly accessible.

This is especially true in the modern era when the majority of smartphones include built-in high-quality cameras.

You don’t need to purchase an expensive DSLR anymore. Just take your phone around and do your best to capture some interesting images.

Maybe you’ll prefer taking pictures of friends and family members. Or you might enjoy going out into nature and taking landscape photos.

Cars

Have you ever wondered how exactly your car works, or how you could make it even better?

Do you enjoy seeing vintage cars in movies and TV shows?

And most importantly, are you willing to get your hands dirty?

Well, we have some good news. Car culture is alive and well in the internet age. There are many different YouTube channels and web forums where car lovers gather to discuss cars new and old, and to tell their own stories of mods and custom changes.

Cooking

Cooking is both an enjoyable hobby and a great practical skill. And it can be enjoyed alone or with family and friends.

Even better, there are an incredible number of resources both online and on television that can help guide you to a deeper understanding of the science behind cooking, why certain flavor combinations work so well, etc.

Travel

As many have said before, travel broadens the mind. And it’s true.

Traveling domestically or internationally is a great way to explore other places, cultures, and cuisines.

Travel blogs can be a great resource when it comes to deciding how much to budget for different trips and how to stay safe when traveling alone.