4 steps to find the things you love to do.
By Georgia Ritter
It’s surprisingly hard to spend your time doing things you love.
I’m not talking about a job. Fortunately, for an increasing number of industries (from hospital cleaning to tech work) job-crafting is on the rise which means better, more meaningful work. Instead, I’m talking about what you do with your free time.
The obligations of the day-to-day grind, the expectations of others, the sense that time will extend infinitely ahead, and the feeling that you can always find that other thing ‘later’, collide into a big ball of friction and we end up not starting our hobbies and side projects. Or, after a long period of work-as-our-identity, we fear we don’t have any passions at all.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I believe there are two main reasons why we don’t do more things that bring us joy with our free time:
We don’t know what our ‘passions’ are (and think they need to be fully formed)
Deep down we do know what our passions are, but we are too scared to act on them
If you don’t know what your passions are - you’re not alone. In our latest podcast episode with Elle Huerta from Mend, we talked about why it’s so hard to find what you really love to do. Elle left Google with nothing but a plan to ‘explore things that were interesting to her’ - a luxury we usually think is only possible in retirement. She apprenticed at a bakery, she started a newsletter about break ups (that later became the global app Mend), she took on some start up work, she took up ballet dancing in the Mission in San Francisco with old ladies - she found her joy. To find what you love to do you, she said, you have to “spend time with yourself”.
Why do we find it hard to spend time with ourselves? Why do we find it so hard to admit to ourselves the things we love to do, and acting on them?
Well firstly, I believe we are scared to act on our passions and curiosities because we think we’ll be no good at them. We have forgotten the power of a ‘beginners mindset’, and the fact that passions often don’t come fully formed. Somewhere along the line we learnt that we need to be 'good' at things, or perhaps that activities need to be monetised to be worthwhile. So we become scared to try new things.
Many of us also live in an achievement-oriented society, and many of us are perfectionists. We have high expectations for ourselves and believe others share these standards. We evaluate our lives expecting everyone to care about the linearity of our career paths and the heights of our success. So we perform for others. We don’t allow ourselves to explore the things that we love to do because we’re too busy living the lives we think other people expect from us.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, or where you are in your career, you can always reintroduce joyful moments to your time. And who knows, perhaps they will turn into something much bigger - just like the guests on our podcast.
the EXERCISES:
Finding forgotten passions, and rediscovering what we really love to do, can take time. So, what better day than today to get started.
Grab yourself a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, and maybe do these with a friend / partner.
WRITE: Write down all the things you are interested in doing that you never explored.
List everything that ‘one day’ you’d love to do: everything from writing, acting, sports to the more niche things that capture your interest. There is no right and wrong.
Think about what you loved to do as a child. Try not to map this to an adult activity right now. Let yourself write freely.
Ask yourself: ‘what is one thing I would do if money was no object?’
DON’T STOP: Keep going with the list! This list should be longer than you think. Allow yourself to write all the most embarrassing, small, insignificant things down, and remember you can always cross stuff off at the end.
ASK WHY: Go through the list and ask yourself ‘why is this on there?’
TAKE ACTION: Choose 1-5 things on the list you can start tomorrow, out of hours. It might be a hobby like ‘dancing’ or it might be a side project like ‘make a short film’ - ask yourself what you can start tomorrow? And what is (really) stopping you starting?
The key is to take the pressure off yourself. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be monetised. It doesn’t need to be a full time job. It doesn’t need to be something that makes sense to other people. Embrace the beginners mindset (and feel free to apply to our launchpad if you want to be supported and find the time to get it off the ground).
When you finish these exercises, please write and tell us how you found them: hello[@]outofhours.org.
I’d love to hear from you! 🌻