Making time for a hobby is hard.
No matter how much you want to do it, you are never in the right headspace to start a new project, there is too much to do, too many life responsibilities, too much chaos.
Speaking of chaotic, as I write this we are amidst the biggest pandemic known to any living person.
You are bored, you are stir-crazy, you are looking for ways to entertain yourself.
Enter the golden hour for hobbies! This is the perfect time to start or resume your chosen hobbies during quarantine.
Look at how some of the popular hobbies are growing right now!
Now that you are in lockdown, you have far fewer commitments and more time to dedicate to doing something that will bring you joy and pass some time.
But, lockdown, or not, sometimes as much as you want to get started the lure and relative ease of a binge-watching session, a good book or scrolling on your mobile can be hard to resist.
So how do you get started on a hobby when you just can’t quite get there?
Like many people, I suffered from a distinct lack of motivation when COVID-19 turned the world upside-down. Prior to that, I could more often than not muster the energy for my hobby, sewing. Sewing is my zen. When I am working on a project there is nothing else in the world I need to worry about. But, after a few weeks of inaction, I realised I needed a swift hit of pure drive to get me sewing again.
So, what did I do? I took my organisational skills and got my shit together. Because when something isn’t working for you, nothing feels better than sorting it out, tidying it up and throwing out the garbage. That is exactly what I needed for my sewing projects. I had so many things on my mind; new projects, mending, gifts and finishing off the wedding dress for the wedding that had to be postponed due to Coronavirus!
To sort through the backlog, I built a sewing Kanban board. A Kanban board is a project planning tool to visualise your workflow, it allows me to see, in four simple columns;
- Tasks I have not yet started but would like to get to.
- Tasks I with tackle next.
- Tasks currently underway.
- Tasks I have completed.
Crazy right, seems like complete overkill using a project planning tool for my hobby? But, guess what? It worked. This is why I think it helped;
- I could automatically see which projects I didn’t have the right materials for.
- I could feel which projects didn’t excite me any more and could put them to the side without feeling guilty.
- I had a step by step approach for things that previously seemed to be massive tasks e.g. the wedding dress project, which I broke into smaller tasks and within those tasks also created to-do lists;
4. By pulling everything out of my head and putting it on the board I didn’t feel overloaded by the sheer amount of things I wanted to achieve.
And, all of a sudden, I had a zeal for my hobby again!
I used Notion for my hobby board because it is easy to create a Kanban board and create customised tags to keep your tasks organised. You can also quickly build to-do lists on each card so you have a clear picture of how you are going to tackle a task.
Try it today and kickstart that hobby you have been meaning to explore.