Learn Your Hobbies Not Your Interests
I was recently doing one of my not so frequent thinking and reflecting on my skills and goals and something struck me, people often say learning to code is boring and those that do it have boring lives, well, if you’ve met me you’d know programmers don’t have a boring life.
I often try my best to learn as much as I can on the go so as to enhance my skill-set but then I realized you can’t be good at everything. On a good day, I’m interested in learning new stuff to broaden my knowledge e.g Music, Dancing, Writing, Talking, Basketball, e.t.c and there are also things I’m not interested in e.g learning about Medicine, learning the botanical names of the different plants or learning about the different sections of the law or whatever it’s called. I’ll sleep off even before the learning journey starts. But then even things I’m in interested in will they be fun to me???? This brings me to hobbies and interests…..
Hobbies and Interests
A Hobby according to the oxford dictionary and other related sources is an activity done regularly at ones leisure time while an Interest is the feeling of wanting to know or learn about something or someone.

So why should I learn my Hobby when it’s supposed to be done at a leisure time? It’s simple, that’s because when you are bored you get to do those stuffs to brighten up your mood. And this is best path to a happy work-life balance because when your work is related to your hobby then work becomes leisure, work is never boring it’s always fun to you and you perform excellently.
Interest on the other hand which is the feeling (just a feeling) of wanting to know or learn…. So here’s the deal, the fact that you WANT to know or learn doesn’t necessarily mean you NEED to know or learn it. It’s just a want not a need. A Hobby on the other hand is a necessity, a serious need to do something while the clock is ticking. You wouldn’t want to be lying around wasting away just because you don’t have anything to do you always want to be on the go, learning and doing stuffs.
So why then should learning be boring if it’s something you really like doing? Should learning to write computer programs be a boring thing? Absolutely not! If you have a hobby of building softwares then learning to write codes won’t be boring. It’s simple, you like to build your own things, then there’s a proper motivation to learn to code.
But then one would ask, how do you develop such hobbies? You have to be interested first. Yes I said it ‘Interest’. When you are interested in something doesn’t mean you need it but when you find yourself going back to that thing over and over and over again, then it becomes a hobby. You start telling people you like doing this and that which is now your hobby and then you find yourself furthering in that hobby. A point worth noting is Hobbies are born out of Interests
To find out what your hobbies are, make a list of your interests and order them on a scale of preference from the most preferred to the least. The ones you prefer the most are your hobbies and that’s what you should be learning.
A practical example is Me. I know I’m really interested in Music but for almost 5years now I’ve been struggling with learning how to site read or read all that music staff notation and all sometimes I even tell myself this shit is boring but the truth is I’ve just been forcing myself to learn it and have not created enough time to look at it which is why it’s not entering. On a good day, if I’m asked to choose between learning about softwares and learning music I’d pick learning softwares anytime, not because I’m not interested in Music but because I do softwares more often than I’d do Music. The good thing is I’ve learnt how to play the guitar and piano because Music is the second thing on my list of interests that’s why I could even learn somethings about music which makes it a Hobby cuz whenever there’s no provision to learn my first hobby which is Software maybe due to light or internet, I fall back to the second one which is Music and the list goes on in that manner.
So yes, if you find yourself struggling to learn programming or whatever it is you are trying to learn, then it’s not yet your hobby, you are not giving it enough time look for what interests you more and you always like to go back to and major in that. Don’t do what you are not cut out for. LEARNING MUST BE FUN never forget that. Once it becomes stressful or forceful then stop learning.
This post is for all those always wanting to learn how to code just because one guy codes and he looks cool coding but they just can’t seem to wrap their hands and heads around the programming thing. Read this, if you can’t do the things in that post then you are not cut out to learn programming.
Turn your hobbies into a money making machine. If you have the hobby of playing games then start entering for gaming competitions and making the most of it. If you have a hobby of Talking, then be a Master of Ceremony or a Motivational Speaker or something. If it’s making up then be a make up artist, if it’s dancing, go and be Michael Jackson, if it’s Singing you know what to do, if it’s swimming, be a professional swimmer or something don’t just let your hobby go to waste. Remember order your hobbies on a scale of preference and learn or major in the hobbies which are in the highest ranks.
Need I forget, for as many of you that put sleeping as a hobby… Really???? You really mean to tell me your hobby is sleeping? Please don’t confuse laziness for a hobby. That’s all I’ll say.
Learn Your Hobbies Not Your Interests
