We need a better popular understanding of "hobbies," because it conflates a bunch of highly sophisticated activities, and dismisses them as neutral distractions from laboring for the profit of others. The underlying presumption is that your identity is labour you get paid for, and anything you don't get paid for is somehow inessential to who you are. It's an impoverished worldview based on scarcity and ignores growth. A hobby is only a distraction if you have internazlied an identity as the subject of some supervisor, and that "free time," comes as a treat or a reward from some other unspecified party, as though you were just a pet doing tricks for approval. Treating them diminuitively is just a polite way of not embarassing other people who are unable to manage their time as well or enrich their own lives to the same degree. Personally, I don't have hobbies, I just do a lot of things, and so I manage my time to do them, and adopting that worldview lets you do more of them.

I have a theory, all the "high quality" hobbies are challenging in one way or another, thus require some level of will power to push yourself to do it.

If you've been pushing yourself hard at work all day, then you have likely depleted your will power. Passive activities become the only ones you feel like doing.

I've been seeing a lot of these sorts of articles recently (time online is ruining your life; here are 17 ways to disconnect), and I have to say I simply reject the premise. Once again, it's binary thinking creeping in and human brains generally being far more receptive to arguments along the lines of "this technology/concept/ideology/whatever is bad and you should reject it" over ones that say "this technology/concept/ideology/whatever is a tool and its value is dependent on how its used and when it's applied".

I've seen the binary thinking problem applied to the internet/online life quite a bit recently, and it bothers me because growing up my experiences of the internet/web were almost overwhelmingly positive, constructive, and developmental in nature. It was instrumental in my development as a person because it's a tool that allows you to read constantly. For people with lots of innate curiosity there really is nothing more powerful than that. The encroachment of the social media/video streaming/adtech companies into the space doesn't negate that use case, so I'm extremely hesitant to say if everyone would just unplug the world would magically be better.

I've actually found video games is one of my high quality leisure, but only the single player or local multiplayer experiences.

My low quality leisure are my consumption (or constant checking for new content or upvotes) of blogs, articles, news, social media posts of people that aren't my real close friends or family, and all of my online commenting, including this one.

Probably also consuming things I didn't actually want to consume count as well, so like watching random things that Netflix recommended or just showed up on TV versus watching a movie I'm actually interested in and want to watch. This is same for randomly playing video games like say on GamePass (like trying a bunch of games quickly).

I'm trying to cut a lot of that out, and instead focus on playing only the games that truly interest me, watching only the shows and movies that truly interest me, only the books I really want to read, etc. Once you cut it down to just that, you'll find you still have a ton of free time, and you'll slowly be forced to also take a walk, go for a bike ride, work on your hobby projects, call a friend, grab a coffee, do a workout, cook something from a recipe book, play with your kids, take your partner out on a date, or go to bed early, etc.

What is even going on here? Scroll to the bottom and this low production self-help book (which looks like it should be happy to be free) has three tiers of pricing and subscription crap?

This seems nutty.

Learning is not a leisure activity. I'm not saying it can't be fun or engaging or a great pastime but it requires as much focus if not more than work. It also requires constant attention (even if its in small amounts). It gives people a feeling of accomplishment and purpose but it is no way relaxing.

I am sort of tired of these articles about procrastination, etc that equate like watching a movie and going to the gym or hiking. The activities aren't in the same realm at all. Basically shaming people for sitting around doing nothing with your brain off. I don't think you should be living your life like that all the time, but having an hour or two of straight mindlessness is not a bad thing. Pushing yourself to always be doing the activities you "should" do because some online guru says thats the right way to spend your time leads to burnout too.

Reminds me of an episode of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy. The guy had a mess of a house. Clutter everywhere. He had no style to speak of. Didn’t really seem interesting either. Of course the queer guys fixed things up for him.

What was mentioned kind of in passing was that he worked two jobs. I don’t think the makeover was lasting.

> he was scared of stopping playing video games and surfing the Internet

For me it depends on the utility I get out of games. Minecraft is like Lego 2.0 and players often share custom maps they've built so there's a community there too. Minecraft is also hackable and I've seen many videos on Youtube of people creating exceptionally creative things with it. It's not just a time-sink: people derive pleasure out of sharing their creativity with the world - something difficult to do with Lego or board-games.

As for surfing the Internet: well yes the Internet can be an endless rabbithole if you let it. I've stopped treating it as a rabbithole though, and casually glance at the Hackernews frontpage in the morning, see what tools / services / products I can leverage going forward, then close the tab, after bookmarking a link or two which I will revisit later when I'm feeling creative. Same for Reddit, Twitter etc

You can either scroll mindfully or scroll mindlessly. It's your choice.

"meet new people" is missing from the list. I wonder how diverse a 20-something's circle is these days vs 20 years ago. I used to talk to as many different people as I could: motor cycle mechanics, Johns Hopkins post docs, NSA engineers, actors, set dressers, woodworkers, painters, business owners. Does the opportunity to get out of your "social bubble" still exist today?

My hobby is putting spaces before bold tags.

I also get the feeling that the upvotes on this are from blackhat SEO.

Tomorrow, when we will work less, have basic income, and have more leisure time, this type of list will be very important. Otherwise, we will be human in Wall E movie

The author doesn't have kids I guess :) that turns the world around. Especially if you have twins or more.

Pro-tip: Don't try to optimize your leisure time.

https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-07-25

Mild cfs has freed me from worry about these kinds of optimisations. Day on Reddit? All good.

Maybe you’ve been “online” for so long that you have no idea what to do when you’re not online.

This hit too close to home. Ive been online almost everyday since 2004 so yeah.

I think there are at least three notions of "high-quality" conflated in the article:

- leisure which also satisfies longer-term goals (e.g., listening to an educational podcast, practicing a skill), vs leisure which is only pleasant in the moment

- leisure that you had to make some deliberate effort to initiate and with a clear end time (e.g., going out, going to the movies) vs leisure which starts automatically and ends when it does (e.g., binge-watching)

- leisure that gets you outdoors and/or with other people, vs leisure that doesn't

And of course you can find many kinds of activities along these dimensions. Binge-reading Wikipedia can be instructive even if it's an impulsive behavior and indoors/alone. Sitting down to play a short video game and finish it in a few hours can be actively chosen fun even though it's indoors and only pleasant in the moment. Walking in nature can be pleasant and outdoors but not instructive. Ambient chatting with a friend can be social even if it's indoors and impulsive...

I'd add a scientific bent to those pursuits, if you are so inclined. Get into the habits of thinking like a naturist in the Age of Humboldt vein. A local library, for example, recently held a "DIY Telescope" night. And I always get personally nostalgic whenever I see a young child of today heading out to the fields to test an Estes Rocket ;)

What distinguishes streaming podcasts from the internet different than "spending time online" such that the former is good, while the latter is ruining your life?

How is consuming some of these other digital products better than "surfing" the internet?

Most of the time I'm learning things on the internet. It also helps one find new hobbies. For example, I've been researching ultralight aircraft recently. I dont think I'll actually get one due to price, storage, spouse, etc. But it's fun to learn about.

Cleaning the carpets and floors is also a good way to fill the vacuum.