Boy, now we’re really cooking, aren’t we? (Sorry, Joan.) I think it’s time to move on from all the shit that needs to get done, and start talking about the shit we simply want to do. Because for many of us, it’s difficult to justify making time for such activities—aka “hobbies”—that seem to benefit no one but ourselves.
Fuck. That. Shit.
Sacrificing your hobbies to the altar of the must-do list is no good. They should be ON the must-do list to begin with. This book is all about decluttering your mind and training yourself to think differently about your life and how you live it. “You do you” with instructions on how to do you, for maximum happiness. So instead of relegating crossword puzzles and cross-country skiing to the “someday when I have time” corner of your brain, make room for them right up front. Easy access.
To do this, you have to consider your hobbies—and the benefits you get from indulging in them—to be as important as the other stuff you “need” to do. You need to get up and go to work, because you need to make money to live on. But you also need to NOT be sad and NOT be frazzled and NOT be marinating in a cauldron of resentment 24/7, right?
What makes you not sad, frazzled, and resentful? Why, blowing off a little steam at the Go-Kart track, of course. Or puttering in the garden or going salsa dancing or zoning out to Elvis Costello while you perfect your latest batch of mead. Hobbies are not only an integral part of maintaining your happiness, they can go a long way toward balancing the annoyance of the more arduous, less exciting must-do tasks on your list. You can think of time spent on a hobby as a reward for completing annoying, time-and-energy-sucking shit. (And a hobby doesn’t have to be all that high-energy itself—it can be merely a distracting or restorative pastime: See sidebar.)
If you need any more convincing, I can tell you that I spent a great deal of my insurance company’s money on anxiety doctors in the early 2010s and I was told by MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS that I should take more bubble baths. Not because bubble baths themselves are fucking delightful, but because one way to “down-regulate” (fancy term for calm yo’self) is to switch your focus from The Thing That’s Causing Your Anxiety to A Thing That Makes You Happy. It’s like tricking your brain into feeling better.
But what if my brain resists such trickery? My brain is no fool. My brain is a force to be reckoned with!
Then reckon with it.
As someone with a perennially Pisa-esque tower of books on my nightstand, I often have to remind myself that reading is a worthy pastime—even if I could be doing something more “useful” with my afternoon, like generating my quarterly expense report. Yet I’ve never been sorry about winning that mental argument for pleasure reading; whereas guilting myself into a pas de deux with QuickBooks results in language emanating from my mouth that wouldn’t be out of place at a Brooklyn Navy Yard bar circa 1941.
Whether your diversion of choice is reading, fly-fishing, or ripping a massive bong hit and then trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube, you need to treat it like a lobbyist treats his or her cause, advocating for and influencing the government’s decision favorably toward it. Fortunately, you are both the lobbyist and the legislator in this scenario, so you have a real inside track. You give a fuck about books, backcasting, and Blue Lightning Kush? Great, now ensure that these activities are well represented on your calendar. Schedule them in.
A highly effective way to increase time spent on a hobby is to let yourself spend time on a hobby to remind yourself how much joy it brings. Then when you’re faced with that mental debate about smoking up vs. buckling down, your inner lobbyist won’t have to work so hard to persuade the government that you have a right to your 10:00 PM date with Chandler T. Bong.
Finally, when in doubt: Don’t think. Do.
Don’t even bother hemming and hawing and bargaining with your brain. Just do what I do—turn on the faucet and climb on into the tub before you can second- (or third-) guess yourself out of it. Once you’re there, your brain will readjust to all the positive vibes it gets from doing something you actually want to be doing, and you’ll be happy about it.
That’s some real chicken-and-egg shit, I know, but it works.
Lots of people who responded to my survey said they wished they could get their shit together to pursue not only hobbies, but specific creative goals—like writing, music, and art—but are too bogged down in work, family commitments, or other obligations of the no-fun variety.
I hear you loud and clear.
It’s not easy to “make time” for stuff that doesn’t [yet or may never] pay the bills. But novels don’t write themselves, guitars don’t gently weep on command, and painting happy trees is not as easy as Bob Ross makes it look. At some point, you have to get your shit together in order to stop aspiring to do the thing and ACTUALLY DO THE THING, whether it pays bills or just makes you happy.
The path to this version of life-winning is obstructed by two separate but related challenges. We’ll call them the Scylla and Charybdis of getting your shit together.*
Scylla is scheduling. If you work all day and have a busy family/social life—or are just so tired you keel over when you get home—when do you have time for creative stuff?
Answer: You have to make or find time.
By now, you probably expect me to trot out my trusty must-do list. And yeah, that’s one way to tackle it, but its efficacy depends on the kind of creative person you are. A former colleague of mine worked on her novel very early in the morning before going to her day job. Apparently she was capable of producing quality words at this time every day—and committed to doing so regularly—because she ended up with a jillion-dollar book deal, and quit the day job.
A victory for must-do lists everywhere!
For others, the creative urge has to strike, and then you have to find time to exploit it. A melody might pop into your head during your morning commute, but you can’t just bail on your 8:00 AM presentation because you suddenly found yourself in the groove. Still, you could take five minutes to jot down the basics of your inspiration and shuffle tomorrow’s must-do list accordingly, to prioritize writing a new song. Not ideal, but it’s a start. Scylla, you can work with.
This is where Charybdis comes in, which is the mistaken idea that there is no value in the creative stuff you’re trying to schedule. Sailing safely around this salty sea-witch means accepting the notion that you may be devoting an hour—or several—every day or week to an activity that has no perfectly defined purpose, one that might result in a finished product or might not. Spending an afternoon painting in your room could be an extremely rewarding period of craft-honing that brings you a lot of joy even if it doesn’t land you a gallery show. Then again, it might very well land you a gallery show just like it landed my former coworker a book deal. You’ll never know until you try, will you?
Therefore, the best, most potentially winning path toward achieving your creative goals lies between finding time and granting yourself permission to use it. Tap-dance right past Scylla and slip Charybdis a high five on your way.
Whether you’re taking time “away” from your kids to play mah-jongg with the girls, or taking time “away” from your wife to hang out alone in a darkroom for a few hours and get your Ansel Adams on, making room for hobbies and creative goals is a prime example of my get-your-shit-together practice overlapping with my no-fucks-given philosophy.
After The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck came out, I gave interviews where I talked about being selfish as a good thing, and some people viewed that as a controversial stance. I was accused both of contributing to the downfall of society and of being a millennial, neither of which is accurate and one of which is deeply offensive.
But none of that criticism has changed my mind in the slightest. I firmly believe that being selfish—in pursuit of your health and well-being—can be a good thing for you AND everyone in your life. If you’re happy and fulfilled, that automatically makes you a better person to be around. A more relaxed parent. A kinder partner. A more patient boss and a more energetic employee. You can’t give of yourself to others if there’s nothing left of yourself to give, can you?
So yeah, giving fewer, better fucks is an exercise in selfishness—focusing on what you want to do rather than what you need to do (or what other people think you should do). But there’s nothing wrong with that! And this mind-set serves you especially well in getting your shit together to pursue hobbies, creative work, or any other activity that doesn’t necessarily “result” in anything other than you being happy.
I’ve got news for you: Happiness is a goal in and of itself.
A couple of years ago, when I was still mired in corporate drudgery and the white-sand beaches of Hispaniola were barely a twinkle in my eye, my parents were visiting us in New York, and we were seated around our dining table shooting the shit.
We were talking about my husband and me not having kids, and how some people of my parents’ generation don’t understand that particular life choice. I mused aloud about how, if we were to breed, I would just end up being Bad Cop to his Good, especially because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop riding my kids’ asses to be “successful.”
“Even if I tried to take it easy on them, I’d just keep thinking about how I did all my schoolwork and graduated at the top of my class and got into a good college and have this great career because I worked so hard—instead of this guy [gestures to husband] who was focused on mere happiness his entire life!”
That’s when my parents looked at me, horrified, and my husband (who’s pretty fucking successful, I might add) kind of patted me gently on the arm.
“Whoa,” he said.
“Mere happiness?” they said.*
That conversation was what we in the biz term a “wake-up call.” Except it was more like staying at the Marriott on Bourbon Street and asking them to provide a 6:00 AM brass band on your balcony, extra trombone.
No surprise that the quit-my-job-and-move-to-the-Caribbean plan was enacted soon after that, is it? I had my goal. It was time to strategize, focus, and commit.
How about you, Alvin? Is it time yet?