10 creative hobbies for people too busy to pick up a hobby

My daily commute includes a 45-minute rail trip, a predictably pleasant ride spent shoulder-to-shoulder with professionals who clearly would rather be anywhere else. For a lot of them, their time on the train is a dead zone, a begrudged concession to the leafy suburban experience. Most people, even the busiest among us, have time like this each day — recurring periods long enough to feel oppressive but too brief or too spatially constrained to accommodate an elaborate leisure pursuit. Or so they believe. I’ve gathered a selection of genuinely enriching hobbies that can be practiced in roughly the time it takes to thumb a Facebook feed or tap through a game of Candy Crush. They are notable for their high creative value and low barrier of entry. None of them require expensive or unwieldy gear, and few of them require any expert guidance. The potential for bodily harm is comfortingly low, but the potential for personal growth is consistently high. And don’t be fooled by their accessibility: Any of these activities can be practiced to legitimate mastery, and many of them can serve as stepping stones to more advanced pursuits.

Keep a sketchbook

I owe my habit of spontaneously sketching coffee cups, fire hydrants, and abandoned bicycles to the boundlessly talented Danny Gregory, an eloquent champion of everyday art whose books (start with The Creative License) all come around a single theme: Drawing — even drawing badly — is good for the head and good for the heart. Start simple (think: coffee cup) and don’t stop. Particularly for professionals who work with words every day, exercising the nonverbal parts of the brain can have a profound effect on creative energy. As for tools, a Bic ballpoint and the back of an envelope can work, but dedicated implements can give even spontaneous sketching a sense of occasion. Every artist has his or her preferences for paper and pen. I like unlined hardcover Moleskine notebooks (about $15) and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (a set of six runs about $7).

Plan and execute one-pot meals

Any sort of cooking or baking can be a hobby, of course, but there is a creative compactness to concocting entire meals in a single vessel — a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, a terra-cotta Roman oven, or an electric slow-cooker — that makes this pursuit especially appealing to kitchen novices. Terrific one-dish dinners are exceedingly difficult to flub, even for rank amateurs, and the process of researching, planning, and experimenting can be as rewarding as the act of cooking itself.

Dabble in six-word fiction

Those with poetic leanings may opt for the five-seven-five economy of haiku, but for me, flash fiction — known to some as micro-fiction or sudden fiction — packs a bigger literary punch. If you’ve read the form’s most famous example (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), then you know pretty much everything you need to know about flash fiction. Defined only by its extreme word count but applicable to any genre (flash erotica, anyone?), six-word fiction is the chess of the writing world: a moment to learn but a lifetime to master. Where to begin? Look no further than Smith Magazine, whose celebrated Six-Word Memoir program has collected more than a million stories.

Try your hand at origami

There’s much more to the ancient art of paper-folding than the cute Japanese crane we made in summer camp. Designs can be staggeringly intricate, so there’s plenty of room to grow here. But the common denominator of all origami creations is the raw material: a sheet of paper — special origami stock, glossy pages cut from magazines, even paper money. There are countless books on the subject, but the website origami-art.us is an excellent place to start, with downloadable instructions for dozens of designs and a few helpful fold-by-fold videos.

Learn the “restaurant basics” of a foreign language

Imagine the looks on their faces when you order your Königsberger Klopse in hearty German or your pot-au-feu in mellifluous French. For most brains, picking up the rudiments of a foreign language — especially when the goal is limited to chatting up a waiter or effectively directing a taxi driver — is remarkably easy. And if you have children, the simple process of learning the foreign words for everyday items can quickly ascend to hobby status — particularly if you dangle a family vacation as a carrot. Where to begin? Check out travel blogger Nomadic Matt’s excellent four-step process for learning the basics of a non-native tongue.

Grow some cacti

I have a modest collection of small cacti lined up in little clay pots on a sunny windowsill in my home, all apparently thriving despite my occasional forgetfulness. They’re not for instant-gratification types, but cacti are the most forgiving of houseplants (just keep tweezers handy). To my mind, tending to a potted succulent — or, for the more ambitious grower, a desert scene terrarium — is bonsai for beginners. It requires almost no horticultural skill but rewards even a modicum of effort with a sense of quiet satisfaction. Need help? The National Gardening Association has put together an excellent cactus primer.

Pick up a simple musical instrument

Playing a musical instrument is perhaps the most desirable — and, for the newbie, the most daunting — of hobbies. Nobody just buys a Fender Telecaster and cranks out “Sympathy for the Devil,” after all. But there are instruments that can be acquired inexpensively and played passably without a decade of fastidious study and a Juilliard degree. A motivated beginner can pick up a decent Irish tin whistle (the brass Feadog FW01 runs about $15), and produce a credible tune in a week or less. Ditto a simple harmonica (the classic Hohner Blues Band runs about $7). A ukulele (I like the $70 Lanikai LU-21 Soprano) is a bit more musically ambitious, and a set of bongo drums (the excellent Tycoon Percussion Ritmo Bongos run about $60) are somewhat less so. But the message is simple: Your musical potential is bigger than singing in the shower.

Become a Google Local Guide

I take surprising delight in receiving the occasional auto-generated email from Google, announcing that some photo of mine, uploaded to Google Maps, has reached a new personal record for views. Google’s five-level Local Guides program is remarkably simple to join, with points awarded for uploading photos (including 360-degree spherical panoramas, uploaded via the company’s Street View app), contributing place reviews, adding new map locations, fixing errors or outdated information, and answering simple questions (e.g. “Is this place good for kids?”). And the company rewards contributors with perks of increasing value, including early access to new Google products and invitations to Google-hosted events.

Send handwritten postcards

At this writing, a United States Postal Service postcard stamp costs a mere 34 cents, but used to send a lovingly crafted message to an unsuspecting recipient, its real value is inestimable. Letter-writing is a fading pursuit in no small part because the act of legibly filling a sheet of stationery is seriously labor-intensive. But postcards are different; brevity is the beauty here. Send love, send gratitude, send a pithy quotation, send a silly drawing: The small act of creation, and the joy of dropping it in the mail slot will far outweigh the investment. And the medium can be anything from wish-you-were-here tourist glossies to hand-crafted art cards worthy of a spot on the mantel. To find the latter, I suggest browsing the magnificent time-suck that is Etsy.

Plan and perpetrate good deeds

One of my favorite pay-it-forward stunts involves buying a dozen or so compact umbrellas (about $40 at a bulk retailer like SaraGlove.com), then handing them out to random rain-soaked souls on the street. The act of brainstorming and executing small — or not-so-small — acts of kindness, and quietly journaling the effort and noting its emotional payoff, is closer to an act of charity than a leisure pursuit. If you do it right, you will never know the true value of your work (which is the essence of altruism, after all), but there’s a good chance that at some point, you will be the person who restored somebody’s faith in humanity.

Of course, this survey is by no means comprehensive. Have a favorite creative diversion? Share it with me.