Why Do Some Men Have Hobbies & Why You Should Have Them Too
As many of you may be aware we men are goal-oriented and are curious about things, whether it’s how an engine works, how to repair a TV, or even how to draw a cartoon figure.
Men choose to undertake hobbies for many reasons but here are the main ones:
- Hobbies give a sense of accomplishment
- Hobbies can reduce stress and improve health
- Hobbies are geared around you and are interesting
- Doing something you are passionate about is fun
- Doing a hobby with others makes you more social
Accomplishment – Getting stuff done
Finishing something, especially when it’s difficult or challenging leads to a sense of accomplishment, which we men love. There is something satisfying about completing something, turning the last screw on a woodworking project, placing the last piece in a jigsaw, or pushing out one more rep on a challenging set at the gym.
It’s an evolutionary trait we are still burdened with. A need to do, make, protect, a desire to keep going and feel restless when we don’t. Reaching a goal or target of finishing something is very rewarding for many reasons.
Knowing you can do something is very good for your personal esteem and self of value. Nobody wants to feel like a failure and finding something you can do is a real boost to your ego.
It can also help to make you more productive too. Just as you are getting stuck into your hobby you may find better ways of doing something. Just as we find a need to complete something we will often be thinking about how to do it better as well. This can spill over into other things in your life and make you more productive as a result.
We men often feel very pleased with ourselves when it comes down to doing something ourselves or DIY as it’s more commonly known. There is a reason this hobby or interest is one of the most popular pastimes of men and worth billions of dollars a year to companies selling DIY products and services.
Health – Hobbies help you live longer
Sounds crazy right? How can doing a jigsaw make you live longer? Studies have shown that as we men get older our minds and bodies deteriorate but having enjoyable hobbies can actually reduce these symptoms.
It’s true, for me as a guy in his fifties my body is not as capable as it was when I was in my thirties or even forties. My mind is the same, to be honest, I think. I get mentally tired more easily and focusing on something for many hours is extremely taxing. I do have hobbies, which I don’t do as much as I’d like so as well as writing this article to help you I’m using it as a mental kick up the backside for myself.
Physical hobbies will obviously help your body, keeping fit at all ages is important not just for your physical health but your mental health too. Exercise helps you focus and become more mentally acute. This may be because of our body’s fight or flight mechanisms.
When we exerted ourselves thousands of years ago it was either to catch food or flee danger thus sharpening our focus to achieve those goals.
Mental health is also very important. Guys who are mentally sound and content are less likely to develop harmful conditions than more stressed and unhappy guys would.
Interesting – Who, what why, where, when
I don’t know about you but I am very interested in many things. My list of hobbies actually attests to this. At the moment I am doing the following:
- Learning Japanese
- Improving my Thai language skill ( I live in Thailand at the time of writing this)
- Improving my French and Spanish languages
- Making arts and crafts
- Improving my cooking skills
- Writing for 4 different websites I own
- Bodyweight training
- Unarmed combat training
- Learning C++ programming so I can make things with microcontrollers
- Watching sci-fi and fantasy movies
- Writing fiction
- Learning about history from around the world
Some of these things I do more than others, but the point I’m trying to stress here is that hobbies are cool. Hobbies can be whatever you make of them. Whatever you are interested in can be grown into a hobby you can find interesting and enjoyable.
Even if you only have one hobby as long as it’s interesting to you then it’s a valuable addition to your life. Even things you don’t expect like watching sports are good for you if you are interested. You can talk with others about it, you can analyze statistics about it. You can be happy watching it and excited when the next event is coming.
Having an interesting hobby will satisfy your inner hunter-gatherer as well. In today’s world, there are much fewer chances for us to actually hunt for food, but we can satisfy that need in other ways. Hunting and gathering information about our hobby. Finding this information can be just as interesting as the content itself.
Imagine you are interested in a particular music band, you can spend time on the internet listening to their music, reading about the lives of the band members, seeing what hobbies they have, seeing when they are coming to your area and much more.
Fun – Enjoying your hobby
This is one of the most critical things about having a hobby. If you are not enjoying it then why on earth are you doing it? No, we men have hobbies because they are fun and we love them.
The combination of achievement, interest, and fun makes hobbies very rewarding indeed. But fun is very important. When I say fun it’s really enjoyment, yes some hobbies can be fun, make you laugh whereas others may not but the common theme though should be that they are enjoyable.
Some hobbies, especially some that really challenge you at least half of my hobbies for example involve study. This, while contributing heavily to my self-improvement are also interesting and fun for me as well.
Also, the fun can be shared with others too, you can reach out online and in-person to find other like-minded people with who you can share your hobby. Helping others as well as getting help from others can also be rewarding and fun. As you know we guys are very social and can often have just as much fun sharing information as getting it in the first place.
Social – A hobby shared is a hobby doubled
As I just said in the previous section men are social and as such sharing fun things together can often make them more fun.
When I was younger, around seventeen, I started working at a supermarket filling shelves part-time. It was there I met some guys who were into Dungeons and Dragons. I had never seen it before but after playing it once I was hooked. Not just for the enjoyment of the hobby itself but the social interactions that came with it.
We played this came and laughed and cried together. When something great happened we were cheering, when one of our characters died we mourned together. It was fun all the way and we became great friends as a result. We actually spent about twenty years on and of playing the game together and we all learned many valuable things apart from friendship.
Apart from the fun, we improved our math, vocabulary, writing skills, and storytelling, but we also learned valuable social skills like teamwork, compromise, leadership, and loyalty too. Valuable lessons I use often to this day.
You don’t need to play Dungeons and Dragons to improve yourself though. Any hobby can involve more than one person and fun can really be doubled or tripled when you have someone to share it with.
In conclusion:
We men have hobbies to satisfy a need in our lives, to make ourselves feel happy, satisfied, and useful. Feeling like you don’t have a purpose in life will kill us faster than anything. So, it’s important for us to have things to enable these positive feelings and to give our lives meaning.
Here are some links to UpcyclingPro a website dedicated to upcycling and recycling. There you can try some hobby ideas that can make you money too.
