The Ultimate Guide to Easy Hobbies — We Love Hobbies

Modern life is busy. It’s easy to find yourself in need of a hobby or interest but many hobbies seem to require vast amounts of skill to really feel the benefits of practising that hobby. This said there are so many options for you when you are stuck for time to introduce yourself to the basics of a new hobby and start building the required skills. There are entry level skills that you can develop within more complex hobbies such as music, arts and crafts. There are also hobbies that are more relaxing and require less skill. This ultimate hobby guide is packed full of easy hobby ideas and ideas on how to introduce yourself to many different hobbies.

Learn to play an instrument

Becoming a master of almost any instrument requires dedication. It takes a lot of practice and time to be great at playing a particular instrument. Not all instruments require this to get good/acceptable at playing. Okay there are notoriously difficult instruments like violins but not every instrument has such a steep learning curve and there are more learning resources available than there have ever been!

Woodwind

In terms of woodwind there are instruments such as the classic recorder but with modern advances there are even new instruments like the Roland aerophone mini. This is a very simplified version of their more pricey electronic woodwind synthesisers with basic fingering (based on saxophone fingering) and a selection of different sounds. What makes this more affordable version really interesting, is that it includes the learning app. This will help guide you through the basics of playing the instrument and because the instrument is electronic the app can recognise when you are playing correctly and incorrectly. This gives you instant feedback to help you adjust your playing style and play the correct notes in the right timing.

Percussion

Percussion incorporates a huge range of instruments (piano can technically be classed as a percussion instrument as well as a stringed instrument). Basic percussion instruments can help you grasp the basics of rhythm in music.

Karaoke

While it certainly helps to know how to sing, you don’t need to know how to sing to participate in karaoke. You can book rooms for fun with friends/parties with lyric prompters and karaoke tracks to goof around with friends.

Learning resources

You no longer have to follow a traditional learning path to learn how to play an instrument. There are so many more resources available to you from apps to help you learn notation/how to play specific instruments to YouTube videos, online instructors/classes and virtual instruments.

Electronic music

The hobby of music is not just limited to learning to play physical instruments, there are also many electronic mediums and software that you can learn. You could learn to write music through notations using various software. You could learn to mix music and DJ for various genres from pre-written music or you could even create/record your own electronic tracks using software such as Ableton Live.

How far can music take you?

While it will take time to learn complex techniques, picking up an instrument has never been easier. You can start with easier pieces and songs and with practice and time you can really level up your skill within this hobby. Music is a hobby that can take you very far. Once you’ve learned the basics and are confident in your abilities, if you wish to take your hobby further there are so many ways to do this. These include starting a band, performing/gigs, recording/writing your own music, posting content to social media and producing an album.

Getting out into nature

Appreciating and exploring nature opens up so many activities. It’s free, it’s all around us and there is so much to explore and learn.

Learning about nature

If you feel that you want to get out into and appreciate nature more, then learning about your local nature is a great first step into this type of hobby. When you learn about your local nature you can not only gain a deeper understanding of nature but also about how to safely navigate natural areas and how to prevent damaging nature from your activities. Ways to learn about nature could include…

• Using plant and animal identification guides
• Reading about nature
• Watching documentaries and videos about your local nature
• Going on a guided tour of nature with a naturalist
• Joining Facebook and other online communities about local wildlife and plants for example moth groups, photography groups, wildlife groups, trekking groups…
• Supporting a local wildlife trust/charity (some may in return send you information or news about what they are doing and any information on public nature walks).
• Researching local nature reserves by looking at the information they provide to those who visit areas
• Visiting publically accessible nature areas

Camping

While you will have to research rules and regulations behind where you can camp should you choose to wild camp, going to a camp ground can still be a way to get out into a more natural environment. Camping can be a fun activity to do with friends and a cheap way to travel and explore new places.

Walking

Walking is a good low impact form of exercise and can be a good way to explore publicly accessible natural areas.

Nature Photography

To quote the often quoted guidance “leave nothing by footprints, take nothing but pictures” nature photography can be a great way of remembering and documenting your nature excursions. It’s still important to learn about wildlife first (as well as wildlife photography techniques) because you don’t want your activities to cause disturbance or distress to anything that you encounter in nature.

Nature watching

Looking for and identifying specific flora and fauna can be an exciting way to observe nature. Many people like to look for a specific type of wildlife for example in the UK the word twitcher is often used to describe a bird watcher. Some nature areas that have public paths provide structures such as hides to be able to watch for specific animals while minimising disturbance which allows you to be able to see these animals act more naturally in their environment. Tools as binoculars can help you see the animal better from a distance and identification guides can help you to understand more about your local nature. The types of nature that you might see and how you can view it depends on your local ecology. At night there may also be different types of nature to view. Here in the UK there are sometimes activities that you can participate in for example guided bat walks, species counts (such as moth counts) and public surveys.

Food Hobbies

Food hobbies can range from trying new foods to cooking food from scratch. Learning to cook does not need to be difficult if you follow recipes and get the right cooking tools/accessories to make life easier. Food hobbies have the ability to enhance your life greatly and cooking can enhance your social life if you cook for people that you know. Sometimes there is nothing better than someone else cooking you a meal and you can use your new found skills to cook for family, partners/potential partners and entertain guests. You can also concentrate on fresher and healthier foods as well as portion sizing to both decrease your carbon footprint and a healthier diet.

Trying new foods

We live in a world with tones of cultural diversity. Many cultures can be expressed through the different recipes and foods typically cooked and eaten in this culture. By trying new foods you can share and learn about the cultures of others.

Cooking

Learning to cook can have so many benefits from healthier eating if you focus on portion size as well as fresher and healthier foods, to social benefits by cooking for others. Ideas to try could include going to your local butcher or grocery store for fresher ingredients to cook with, following a new recipe or trying a different culinary dish. One easy recipe to start with could be something like Gordon Ramsey’s scrambled egg recipe. Gordon Ramsey can be quoted in saying that “If they can make the perfect scrambled egg, you know they know how to cook properly” when judging the cooking ability of a new cook.

Make cooking easier with the right tools

Cooking has been made much simpler with the invention of many useful tools and gadgets to help remove stress and simplify cooking. Two useful cooking gadgets include meat thermometers which let you check the internal temperature of food such as meat. This allows you to better access how well done your meat is and reduces the chance of you serving underdone foods. Another really useful gadget is a rice cooker which helps you to better cook rice for rice dishes like curry and sushi.

Grow your own foods

Growing your own food helps you to access the freshest possible ingredients. While you could start planting your own foods in your garden such as strawberries, salads, root veg and bean plants (depending on your country), there are easier foods that you can grow in your own home. One easy food to grow in your home includes mushrooms. You can purchase mushroom growing kits with everything that you need to grow specific mushrooms including instructions and this can also make it easier for you to access specialty mushrooms. You can also grow potted plants such as herbs and chillies or even get a home aeroponics growing kit for plants salads and strawberries. While you might not be able to become self sufficient from growing edible plants and fungi at home, it can be a way to better connect with where your food comes from, give you more access to fresh food and an exciting to try food that you have grown.

Gaming

Video games

Video gaming is an easy hobby to pick up. While some more graphically intense video games require expensive equipment like the playstation, gaming laptops or an Xbox, increased graphics quality of newer mobile phones and tablet pcs has improved the quality of the mobile gaming experience. Now anyone with a modern smartphone has the ability to play a variety of mobile games making mobile gaming more accessible. As well as this with the release of more modern gaming systems, older gaming systems and games may still be available for second hand purchase by people who prefer an older/vintage type of gaming experience. Video gaming makes for an easy hobby to get into as there are so many games to choose from and because you can choose your difficulty level through your game choice, style of gaming and the difficulty level that you set. There are countless games available to suit your personal interest and it can be a fun way to relax at home. You can buy multiplayer/single player games, so you have the option to play on your own or with friends. Some people stream their games online via twitch/make videos of their game play, it has become a popular subject for many content creators, some of which make a full time living playing games.

To some people gaming can become a serious hobby. While there has been stigma attached to gaming as a hobby (particularly in the past) like all things in life and indeed for all hobbies in life everything is about balance. Many consoles and devices have ways to set timing limits if you find that you need help finding this balance. Another option could be to find supplemental hobbies to video games that limit your screen time. These could be options to consider if you find that you are gaming excessively as there are many studies that show that while gaming can have positive benefits, excessive screen time and gaming can also have a lot of negative impacts to health and relationships. Some of those are standard to the fact that if you obsess with any hobby and don’t allow time for things like career development or relationships/friendships then you could miss out on some of the benefits to allowing time for this. Other negatives involve the fact that the hobby could increase your screen time which can have negatives when in excess.

Board games

Board gaming can be a competitive or relaxing hobby. There are a tone of board games available to play and second hand games are easily available in charity shops or online stores like eBay. You even have a seemingly endless choice of mobile/online games available to download or play from your phone/tablet/computer that are instantly available to you from classics like snakes and ladders, monopoly, chess, scrabble and hungry hungry hippos to more role playing and fantasy games like dungeons and dragons. There are games you can play alone, against a computer or with friends. You can join a club to play your choice in games, use them as a way to relax at home or keep a collection of board games/classic games such as Jenga/twister for house parties and social events. It’s important to remember still that excessive screen time can have negative effects when in excess so similarly as with video games you may want to limit your time with these games.

Cards tricks

Card tricks can be a hobby of themselves but for this I will class under games for all this hobby requires is at least one deck of cards, some instruction and time to learn new tricks. According to VanishingInc one of the earliest written references to card tricks was in the 1400’s in regards to gamblers using tricks to cheat at card games. Today card tricks make popular magic tricks and with a long history there is a lot of instruction available to learn new card tricks. Many people have their own card trick to share, you can learn from online tutorials and books showing how to learn particular card tricks. The low cost of a set of cards, books and free online instruction make this an easy hobby to start and allows you to freely or cheaply learn multiple tricks to impress your friends.

Art and Crafting

There are some amazing artists and crafters out there who create beautiful pieces of work. This said they all started somewhere and you don’t have to be amazing at arts and crafts to take on small projects. Learning these skills has the potential to both save you money and to create some very personal custom pieces for yourself as well as friends and family.

Easy craft ideas…

It is possible to make an endless array of crafted items using a multitude of different mediums. There are also many tutorials available on sites like skillshare and YouTube with a dedicated makers movement community. Some easy crafting ideas include…

• Knit a scarf
• Create your own festive cards
• Create simple beaded jewellery
• Create a simple wallet
• Scrap booking
• Learn Origami
• Create a puppet
• Learn to fix/patch your own clothing
• Paper Mache
• Simple upcycling projects
• Create decorative ornaments

Artistic ideas

You could learn traditional artistic techniques such as drawing and painting but also with modern artistic mediums such as photography or digital art we can also use technology to open up more artistic mediums. Ideas for art projects include..

• Learning to paint
• Drawing
• Calligraphy
• Photography
• Mobile photography
• Digital art
• Make a collage

iPad and tablets for art

iPads and tablets like the Samsung galaxy Tab and other tablets with pen support have opened up a whole new world of digital art for creatives. No longer do you need expensive graphics tablets or software to be able to create impressive digital art. Apps like Procreate allow you to use tools like layers and merge functions to more easily produce art and pen support helps you to create digital drawings more like you would on paper. Yes tablets can be expensive but the price can be more justifiable when you use your tablet computer for other functions rather than just buying a tool that is specific to creating digital art.

Guides and resources

There are numerous guides and tools to help you become more creative. One obvious resource are sites like YouTube but there are also extensive “how to” books on crafting and art. Useful books to purchase to learn to draw are those that teach you techniques on how to use perspective and how to use basic shapes as guides to draw more complex drawings.

Reading and Writing

Reading and writing are both relaxing hobbies. The benefits for each depends on what style of text that you like to read/write. Non-fiction can help you learn more about the world around you. Writing non-fiction requires a lot of reading around the topic and/or experience on the subject. Fiction allows you to enter a fantasy world acting as a retreat from modern life.

Reading

Delving into books, blog posts, scripts and written mediums helps you see the world from the perspective of another. You could learn from the written words of others that are experts in their fields, gain a new perspective on a topic or learn a new skill. Through fiction you can immerse yourself within a story, allowing the author to guide your imagination through their written words.

Writing

Writing and reading go hand in hand. To create useful informative text or even a convincing story you have to be able to research or develop knowledge surrounding your writing. With modern technology you can express your writing through multiple platforms including blogs, article sites, forums, social media and websites. There are also writing challenges through sites such as Vocal Media and National Novel Writing Month. If you want a more personal way to write by hand there are some beautifully designed notebooks to write in.

Relaxing hobbies

There are numerous hobbies available to you if you want some extra chilled activities to practise in an evening. Some laidback hobbies not included in the previous lists include…

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Painting or drawing by numbers
• Colouring books
• Travel

The endless possibilities

The amount of hobbies that you can take up is literally endless. Hopefully this guide has been a great starting point and inspired you to start a new hobby of your own.

Originally published at https://welovehobbies.com on October 14, 2023.