I know hobbies are supposed to be fun, but I think it’s fair to say that many of let’s get joy or fulfillment from making progress.
A while ago I realized that I was probably just trying to do too much at once because I wasn’t making a lot of progress. So I’ve cut myself back mostly to bouldering for exercise and studying chess. It was really fun and still is, but I haven’t been making much progress lately.
I’ve found that as my sense of progress dwindles, I lose motivation and start asking myself why I’m spending so much time on my hobbies. I’ve tried taking a break, but then I just come back worse or the feeling that I’m not making progress intensifies when I do return.
How do you deal with frustration, existential dread, lack of fulfillment? Alternatively, how have you broken through plateaus in your hobbies?
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I dunno I just do my hobbies. Basketball soccer and taking care of my chickens and growing food
I try to cycle between them. Write when i can, draw when i have the energy. I have to avoid procrastination activities though, social media, casual games, and things that are a time suck but offer no outputs.
Not saying set KPIs for hobbies but like….maybe?
Have to learn to enjoy the process rather than the results. I have a few hobbies that involve progression, but the progress is generally the cherry on top, and the enjoyment comes from just doing them.
Plus you have to be realistic…….. Im never gonna be a top motorcycle racer, I dont have the time to dedicate to become a top jazz pianist, Im never gonna be a pro bodybuilder. Once you accept that youre prob gonna hit a “low” ceiling then you can focus on other aspects of the hobby.
I’ve been running long distance since 2022 and got a PR in the marathon in 2023, which I’ve been trying to beat for the past two years. The plateau in running performance is very common amongst amateur runners who start to train consistently. It’s very frustrating and common, and there is a lot of advice out there about it. The main advice is to focus on process goals over outcome goals. Find ways to seek value in the process of your hobby, in this case run training. Value the comradery of group runs, spending time outdoors, doing well in a tough workout, learning from workouts or races that dont go well.
Not only can you control the process more than the outcome, but it can shift your mindset to appreciating the hobby instead of just one measure of success.
I grow semi rare plants and try to get them huge. So plants die or stay small. Yes it’s frustrating but that’s how you figure things out and improve. The only thing that’s certain is you don’t improve if you quit. I’ve quit hobbies and have kicked myself later because I could have been a competent guitar player by now.
When I’m frustrated I take a step back and realize that I have too many hobbies, and I can’t expect to get really good at one of them if I’m not putting in the time. I think about how I’m doing it for fun and that I should be appreciative that I have the time and $ to be doing this at all.
It does make me rethink about how much time I waste on social media. 30 minutes per day and I could soon get my tools and garage organized, and it would be a lot easier to get excited about playing with my antique cars.
Picking up my guitar for just 20 minutes/ day and I’d be killing it again after just a few weeks.
To get inspired, I like to watch videos of someone doing something really well. Sorry if all of this is obvious, I’m just thinking you’re not alone.
Couple ways – one is getting curious and experimenting with approaches and giving yourself feedback. You can try taking a bit more whimsical approach and see even if it doesn’t work out – “ok, that didn’t work out, oh well” or trying a different tack.
The other is really being ok with not making progress. As you get better, each additional “increase” (I’m talking linearly here) takes longer and longer. On some level, it’s being ok with where you are, and still putting in the work to progress. Or the other is if you are not progressing, being ok with that too.
The question to ask yourself with bouldering rather than chess because the whole competitive outcome thing often decides how you feel, is whether you’d be fine just bouldering without making progress. It’s really ok with enjoying something at not being good at it; society is really bad with telling us that everything we need to do needs to be the best.
I just do hobbies because i enjoy them. I play guitar and make tiny bits of progress, but even when I don’t it is just a satisfactory feeling to maintain my ability. I run 8-9 Km every other day and my time never improves , but I feel good just to be able to do it, same for gym workouts. I also started playing padel ball recently, and learn something from other players and from a coach.
I really enjoy the process much more than the result and appreciate that I am still active and able to learn new things, even if I can not improve much.
Sometimes the goal with a hobby is to enjoy it and not necessarily progress with it.
In my opinion, while it’s great to always strive to be better, it’s not a great thing to always expecting progress when we’re really just supposed to enjoy the hobby.
>frustration, existential dread, lack of fulfilment
We all get to the same place at the end of the day. We all die. Maybe there’s something after, maybe there isn’t. But the thing was worth doing for its own sake or it wasn’t. I don’t play music because I’m any good at it, I play it because it’s beautiful and when I play it I feel connected to other humans in history. (Heck, here’s something terrible for ya: The better you get at artistic expression, the better you get at picking at all the flaws in what you’re doing….) Likewise with exercise, if I never get any stronger than I am today – it was worth working out, it has made me healthier, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience, and there’s some joy in it. It’s a good thing to have done, regardless of whether it progresses from here.
It’s like being a kid: When you’re playing in the park you’re not intensely working out to get fitter, you’re just expressing yourself – having fun. You’re not trying to get any particular place. As you get older you play in more sophisticated ways. But it’s all just play. The game’s good to play or it’s not. Yes, to progress is also good, but it’s not the sole point. Progression is like getting your Steam achievements – if it’s a shit game, you’re probably not going to try to 100% them. The game has to be good for the achievements to be worth getting.
One day your ability to play chess will be zero, and your ability to exercise will be zero. Because you will be dead. And it will be as if all your achievements never happened at all. They were good at the time you did them, or they weren’t. They were good to have done, or they weren’t. The outcomes taken over a long enough time period are all the same; every story book ends with a full stop, but the value of the story wasn’t in the last character.
And that’s it man. That’s what you get.
Don’t get me wrong, I like watching the numbers go up too. But that’s a part of a game I’ve chosen to play. If the game wasn’t interesting in and of itself I wouldn’t be chasing the achievements. Like, Veilguard has a bunch of achievements, but there’s no achievement that could possibly motivate me to play that….
You’re treating your hobby as a competition (even if it’s just with yourself). Stop doing that. Simply treat it as a way to relax with no performance expectations. Voila!
Give up and start a new hobby. Rinse and repeat. Exploit the noob gains and dopamine forever!
I’d double down. I am not sure but maybe in this video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rbxr9Ad2oq8
(I’m not somewhere I can watch this to check it’s the right one but I’m sure it’s relevant to breaking plateaus anyway)
He breaks down how it’s not just in a send that you see progress, but learn to see it in holding individual holds, making individual moves, etc
Also, for staying motivated, for me there is nothing like jumping a whole grade past where I’m stuck
— caveat: I love sport
So in sport climbing I can try climbs way above my pay grade, and still do individual moves
It’s so satisfying to start linking more and more, finding the clipping stances, working the problem
Maybe if you are plateaued hard, switch disciplines??
My other love is coding. I took a walk from hobby coding from 2021-2024 due to life circumstances and I can’t be happier to have gotten back on it.
(I do code professionally but often there just isn’t time for the fun stuff unless I make sacrifices somewhere else)
Realize they are just hobbies for your enjoyment and see them as such. Whether you go bowling, golfing or take a music lesson, there are always an expert there who have devoted a lot more time to it. Don’t let that discourage you.