Stop Trying to Change Your Habits. Just Find Better Hobbies Instead

Choose your hobbies = Change your life

Most worthwhile writing advice can be distilled down to two simple points:

1. Write often
2. Read often

The first point has never been a problem for me. I’ve written consistently from a very young age. As a child, I penned many short stories and filled dozens of notebooks with fiction and poetry. Some of my fondest childhood memories were formed hovering over pen and paper.

By the time I was fourteen, I’d already written a full-length fantasy book… twice. (I lost the first version in a computer crash, so I rewrote the entire story from memory.) It goes without saying that the hobby of writing came naturally to me.

But reading, if you’ll excuse the pun, was a different story. I was less interested in reading books than I was in writing them. I seldom finished books or read anything remotely longform. This was a problem, and I knew it.

A regular reading habit is one of the greatest tools for mastering the craft of writing. But I couldn’t muster the interest or willpower to read consistently.

By my late teens, I decided it was time to change. I wanted to build a career as a writer. But first, I had to face reality: without fostering a regular reading habit, I would slowly sabotage my career aspirations.

But how do you form a hobby that you don’t naturally enjoy?

Passive vs. active hobbies

I was a gamer. I grew up on Halo 2, Zelda, Call of Duty, Rock Band, and probably a couple dozen other video games. I’m talking thousands of cumulative hours behind a screen.

On the surface, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with video games. But for me, this hobby caused a problem. Gaming was a fully passive experience. I could flip on a console and time would disappear. I routinely logged hours into a single gaming session without a second thought.

The problem came down to the passive nature of the hobby. Passive hobbies lull your brain into continuance. You might associate this experience with scrolling social media. Once you start, it’s easier to continue scrolling than to stop because the action is just satisfying enough to hold your attention. In this way, passive hobbies require even less effort than sitting still and doing nothing.

If I wanted to become a reader, I couldn’t rely on passive actions fueled by dopamine. I needed to make deliberate changes. I needed to make space in my life for the active hobby of reading, which meant restricting my access to passive hobbies like video games.

Active hobbies are the opposite of passive insofar as they come with friction. Going for a run is a form of active hobby. Writing and painting are both active hobbies. Preparing a complex meal can be an active hobby. They don’t happen by accident.

Another way to distinguish active from passive hobbies is to consider them through the lens of creation versus consumption. Creation is an active process that requires deliberate attention. As a general rule, I think active hobbies tend to provide more meaning to our lives than passive ones.

But making the shift from passive hobbies — like watching television, scrolling social media, playing video games —to active hobbies — like reading, writing, running — can at first be painful.

Fall in love with doing hard things

I started small.

I challenged myself to start reading more blogs and fewer social media posts. During this period, I discovered my first bloggers. Until this point, I mostly just followed friends on social media. But now I began to find bloggers outside my network who wrote about things I found interesting.

Two notable bloggers were Jedidiah Jenkins and Tynan, both of whom wrote about travel during a time when I was regularly backpacking. As I became accustomed to reading blogs, I challenged myself to read longer and longer posts. Eventually I scaled up to short books. There was a feeling of accomplishment every time I finished a book. That feeling carried momentum that challenged me to read slightly longer ones, and so on.

By the time I moved to Austin in 2014, I made the conscious choice to move without a gaming system. I gifted my new PS4 to my sister and moved to Austin with aspirations of becoming a writer and reader.

The first several months in Austin were lonely. I lived by myself in a small studio. I knew almost no one. If I had a PS4, it would have been easy to ignore or postpone the loneliness through gaming. Instead, I had to get out more. I had to force myself to find friends and community.

I also had to find ways to spend my time outside work. Fortunately, I was still on a mission to fall in love with reading.

I discovered a used bookstore a few miles from my studio. I bussed and walked my way there every few weeks to acquire new books. The more I read, the more my enjoyment and passion for reading grew.

Eight years later, today reading is one of my favorite pastimes. I read between 1–3 books per month (and I believe my writing is stronger for it). Plus, the friction I felt at the beginning of my reading journey has softened. I still consider reading an active hobby because it requires focus and intention. But rather than relying on willpower, I enjoy and look forward to times when I can sit quietly with a book.

Build a life of active hobbies

I don’t miss video games. I exchanged one passive hobby for an active one. And since then, I’ve seen the process of being selective about my hobbies almost like superpower. But it’s a superpower I believe almost anyone can tap into.

You can swap passive hobbies that provide momentary dopamine hits for active hobbies that improve your life over the long term.

Learning to love reading isn’t the only time I’ve seen this happen. I’ve made other attempts in my life to trade passive for active hobbies. For example, my wife Sarabeth and I intentionally don’t own a TV.

It’s not that we never watch shows or movies. We simply want to engage with this medium intentionally, rather than habitually. So, when we want to watch something, we either have to get a computer from one of our home offices, or we need to buy tickets to the movie theater. Either way, TV consumption has become a intentional event rather than a passive habit.

Similarly, I’ve given up almost all my social media accounts. I don’t want to give myself the option to mindlessly scroll Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram feeds. I’d rather spend my time writing articles — or at least reading content that I seek out (rather than the content an algorithm decides to put in front of me).

While I don’t use most social media channels, I still spend a lot of time reading and learning on the web. Most of this happens through following bloggers whose ideas and stories resonate with me.

Returning to the early pains of hobby adoption

The subject of hobby change is top of mind because I’m in the early stages of adopting one. I want to be a long-distance runner — and I’m quite bad at it today.

I’m still in the painful phase of active hobby adoption, when nothing feels natural. Running is a full-body experience. Your breath speeds up. Your heart beats against your chest. Your arms swing. You feel every muscle in your legs and feet. And if you’re like me, someone without much long-distance running practice, it doesn’t take long to tire from a simple run.

In short: It’s discouraging and embarrassing. The experience feels unnatural and unpleasant—the opposite of what most of us think of when we describe a hobby. In fact, for many years I said I didn’t like running without a larger purpose (like to score a touchdown or score a basket). Running just to run? Are you crazy?

But over the past few years, I’ve read the work of many writers and thinkers like Haruki Murakami, Rich Roll, Malcolm Gladwell, and Ryan Holiday who cherish running as a regular hobby. They use running to think, process decisions, exercise, and find community. I’ve decided that I want to join the fun.

But before the fun begins, I know I must endure the friction of the start.

Just as I had to build up to a good reading habit, I know good things are ahead. It’s been a few months since I began running almost every day. I’m already seeing progress — and light at the end of the tunnel. The pain of running today was much less than the pain I felt a month ago. I can also run further now than I did then. It takes longer for my breath to get heavy. And as my endurance grows, so does my enjoyment.

Now it’s only a matter of time…

Active hobbies deliver long-term rewards

Passive and active hobbies differ in one more notable way: their time horizons for delivering pleasure. Passive hobbies give immense pleasure in the moment and very little long-term reward. What is the long-term benefit of spending 2.5 hours per day on social media?

On the other hand, active hobbies tend to provide a mix of pain and pleasure in the moment, but provide great compounding rewards over the long term. Running a mile today may not change my life. But turning running into a long-term hobby, one that I engage in most days of the week, can greatly improve my life through better health, happiness, and focus.

It’s true: choosing your hobbies can change your life. The easiest hobbies to adopt aren’t always the most meaningful or rewarding ones. I try to remind myself that there’s joy in doing hard things.

There’s also great freedom in realizing the power of choice — the autonomy — you have over your hobbies. What will you accomplish once you push past the temporary friction?

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