Work, Hobbies and Happiness
Work that people are happy doing is satisfying. From personal experience, work that is satisfying has the following characteristics:
- it provides moderately challenging objectives.
- it is moderately difficult.
- it demands your full attention.
This is the kind of work that you can lose yourself in. The time spent working passes rapidly and at the end of the day you go home satisfied with your efforts and achievements.
- You will have spent most of the day living in the moment.
- You will have spent little time thinking (or worrying) about anything else..
- You will have been in the healthy, happy, mental state that meditation is intended to bring about.
If the right kind of work can make us happy while you are working, then what does this say about how we can spend our free time?
By my way of thinking, the ideal pastime or hobby would share the same characteristics as a satisfying job. It would let you:
- set moderately challenging objectives.
- select an optimum degree of difficulty (challenging, but achievable).
- focus your full attention to a single task for an extended periods of time.
Hobbies that fit this model would include, learning a musical instrument, some team sports and many creative activities such as painting or writing. However, they all need to be approached in an organised fashion to get the most satisfaction from them.
Some pastimes don’t fit this model; activities that are goal-free, easy to do and undemanding are inherently less satisfying and less therapeutic.
Part of the problem some people have with getting regular exercise stems from not structuring their exercise so that it is consistent with these principles. If you don’t look forward to exercising and don’t gain any satisfaction from it - then failure beckons. Exercise has to have hobby status and be organised accordingly.
I believe everyone can be happier with a hobby and there is good science behind the reasons why. Take 10 minutes to watch this video.