We treat our dreams like hobbies: all too easy to dabble in and abandon. Starting and stopping, preparing and never doing.
As go our hobbies, so goes our lives.
My first failed hobby as an adult was raising bonsai trees.
Seriously. Bonsai trees. I was a brand-new Second Lieutenant leading an Infantry platoon, so I was supposed to have a hard-charging, “bayonet everyone and let God sort them out” mentality. An appropriate hobby for an infantryman would have been target shooting or backpacking. Instead, I decided to undertake the slow-motion, years-long process of contemplatively trimming little trees to occupy my free time.1
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I don’t know why. I’ve just always liked the way they looked. So I bought the book, the little scissors, the tiny digging implements. And then…nothing. For the next four years, I frequently thought of bonsai-ing, picturing my perfect, potted trees, and never once did I actually purchase, pot, or cultivate a bonsai tree.
Well…that’s not entirely true. The closest I ever came was planting a tree seed in a small pot from an old 1960’s bonsai kit from my mother-in-law’s attic. So technically, I did own a bonsai tree for two weeks, which is the lifespan of any seed that is planted and ignored.

Bonsai was my first glimpse of the two dangers of “hobbifying” life activities:
1. First, focusing on hobbies instead of pursuing important goals.
2. Second, when we finally get around to our important goals, treating them like hobbies.
We have some hard choices to make, and it’s taken me a lifetime to get my priorities straight.
Playing at hobbies – and at life
Dreams of bonsai aren’t harmful in themselves. The danger comes when we start investing time in activities that are not moving us where we want to go in life – activities that are interesting, even fascinating, but not the hard work of actual life change.
That’s when the true waste begins. And, like many with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, it’s something at which I excel. I was just getting warmed up with tiny trees; I eventually began wasting time on much larger trees. More on that in a bit.
First, let’s look at the typical hobby cycle.
The Compelling Idea
- Online research
- Buy and read books
- Start using the lingo
- Join Facebook group
The Exciting Launch
- Buy tools and supplies
- Update status on social media
- Set up hobby area
- Update status on social media
- Buy more supplies
- Update status on social media
- Rearrange hobby area
- Update status on social media
The Whimpering Death
- Procrastinate starting
- Launch a project that is never finished
- Lie to yourself about how busy you are
- Stop updating social media
- Pile stuff on top of your hobby tools
- Forget about it for days, then weeks, then months
- Put all tools and supplies out at your neighbor’s yard sale
This is pointless…unless your hobby is getting ready to do hobbies.
The endless cycle of starting-but-not-finishing causes stress and self-disappointment as you rack up repeated failures to launch. Aside from the expense, those tools and supplies become ever-present reminders of all the dreams you have failed at, all the bits of your life you have wasted.
And life doesn’t come with a built-in reserve that is available for wasting.
We treat our dreams like they are hobbies: all too easy to dabble in and abandon. Click To TweetHow much of our lives are available to waste?
My readers often tell me they want to make changes in their lives, that they are itching to break out – in ways large or small – from their current existence.3 And I’m often pointing out that the time we have to work on our goals is limited. In a 24-hour day, there is only a small slice of time available to most people to work on making a change.
Here’s a typical day, plucked from an ordinary life:

Life is filled with obligations that drain our mental energy every day. So, when we have that little bit of time that is available just for us and our goals, what do we do?
There are a lot of things that can fit into that slot:
I could write an article on each of those choices, but I’ll focus on a seemingly benign option:
Hobbies: The candy bars of personal change. A soft nougat filling of self-improvement wrapped in a tasty layer of fun. Just enough of a snack to ruin your appetite for real change.
I have a terrible sweet tooth, so it’s no surprise that I’ve binged on hobbies like a pre-diabetic throughout my life.
The most expensive prunes on earth
I have an almost unlimited capacity to create a giant project out of anything. Once something is on my to-do list, I’m compelled to finish it down to the last detail, even after the fun has long since evaporated.
Such was the case with my fruit tree obsession.
I come from a farming heritage and my parents, as well as my grandparents, grew fruit trees. The idea of pulling fresh fruit off my own trees appealed to me. So, during a period in my life when I had only a tiny slice of time available in my busy day, I decided to take up the hobby of being a small-time orchardist. Apple, peach, and plum tree seedlings began pushing their way skyward in my side yard, while dreams of fresh-baked apple pies, fresh-churned peach ice cream, and tasty plum tarts danced in my head.
When I choose a hobby, I’m not deterred by a years-long commitment.
The problem is that orcharding is a time-consuming activity with a minuscule reward. Of course, someone with a greener thumb might have more success. But the fertilizing, pruning, and spraying takes a lot of time during the growing season…while the harvest – when it eventually arrives – can be disappointing, to say the least.
In many years, a late bud-freezing frost or lack of pollinating bees removed any hope of a fruity payoff before the growing season had even properly started. But, tree maintenance still had to continue all spring, summer, and fall. Eventually, the apple and peach trees were turned into firewood for camping trips (a hobby with a much better payoff) and I was left with the hardy and somewhat-more-reliably-productive plum.
In the best years, when all the orcharding stars lined up, my plum tree would reward us with a bounty of purple fruit. But, since plums are simply the fresh version of prunes (the well-known laxative), you can only eat three or four at a time, whether they are filling a tart or fresh off the tree.
And it only takes a few days before you get tired of eating plums at all. Soon, the remaining plums fall to the ground, to be carted off by squirrels and chewed up by the lawnmower.
Considering the value of my time, compared with the actual number of plums consumed, it was the most expensive fruit I’ve ever eaten.
Worse, every time I looked out the window, all I saw was a chore list: branches that required pruning, insect-chewed leaves that required spraying, squished masses of fallen plums that required cleanup. Caring for the plum tree became one more thing on an already full task list, rather than an activity that I looked forward to. A chore disguised as a hobby.
I finally cut down the last tree, years after launching a hobby that had long since morphed from a tasty candy bar to a bitter, difficult-to-swallow pill.
Are you going to play at life or get serious?
The hobby cycle in YOUR life
As I said at the beginning, the problem is twofold:
1. First, focusing on hobbies instead of pursuing important goals.
2. Second, when we finally get around to our important goals, treating them like hobbies.
Here’s how it looks in practice.
Getting in shape
The Compelling Idea
- Google “how to get in shape”
- Buy the book with the hottest-looking model on the cover
- Buy the hot model’s exercise video
The Exciting Launch
- Buy workout clothes, exercise mat and special weights/bands/equipment
- Announce your new commitment on social media
- Set up workout area
- Update social media with photos of your workout area
- Buy the advanced video because you are going to burn through the basic one right away
- Update social media with selfie of you wearing your new stuff and acting like you are about to workout (don’t workout)
- Set your alarm to workout first thing tomorrow morning
The Whimpering Death
- Snooze the alarm until it’s too late to workout (commit to working out tomorrow)
- Miss tomorrow’s workout, too, and decide to wait until the weekend
- Workout once on the weekend
- Post sweaty selfie to social media
- Reward yourself with a bowl of ice cream
- Put off next workout until after the holidays/vacation/mother’s visit
- Pointedly ignore your commitment to working out for weeks, then months
- Use exercise equipment to hang clothes
Let’s do another one.
Finding a better job
The Compelling Idea
- Become frustrated with your boss/pay/overwork
- Complain bitterly to anyone who will listen
- Talk to three friends at other companies
- Decide to jump ship
The Exciting Launch
- Update your resume with fresh lies
- Update LinkedIn
- Register on a job site and set up automatic notifications
- Let everyone on social media know you are “on the market”
- Tweak resume
- Register on three more job sites
The Whimpering Death
- Reject all potential jobs as being “not quite right”
- Decide your boss is not so bad after all
- Stop mentioning your job availability on social media
- Postpone your search until after holidays/vacation/bonus payment
- Complain slightly less bitterly to anyone who will listen
- Join the company bowling team
Have I made my point? I think I have.
Life is not a hobby. But most people treat it that way, to the detriment of their goals. Click To TweetVideo: The hobby cycle illustrated
8 minutes, 46 seconds | subtitles available
Breaking free from the hobby cycle
Life is well-known for containing parts that are hard and not very enjoyable (e.g. your job). Which is the opposite of how most people would define an ideal hobby.
How can you tell that an activity could be moving you toward your goals? Because parts of it are – wait for it – hard and not very enjoyable.
Sometimes, stuff is hard because you’ve picked the wrong thing (e.g. fruit trees). Your time is valuable; cut your losses and move on.
Other times, stuff is hard because that’s just how it goes when you’re making life changes. In that case, it’s time to buckle down and push on through.
And maybe lay off the social media until you have solid progress to report.
Until next time…remember: Think about it. A lot. Then do something.

Have you ever “hobbified” an activity that really needed more commitment to yield results? It’s OK, you can admit it…
As ever, Scott, a highly pertinent article. For me, writing can dangerously veer towards hobbying, when actually, it’s supposed to be the second most important thing in my life, right now.
However, I’m not quite sure about your final punchline.
“If you find that pattern (hard and not very enjoyable) showing up in a potential activity, you know you are on the path toward your goals and not frittering away your valuable time.”
Well yes…and no. If I were to take up, for instance, the hobby of building scale models of architectural landmarks out of matchsticks, I would undoubtedly find that hard and not very enjoyable. However, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t count as a life-improving activity (for me). Similarly, your orcharding project sounds hard, unenjoyable – and also not life-improving. Sometimes, stuff is hard because you’ve picked the wrong thing, not the right thing. However, it’s undeniable that anything that will yield worthwhile results is always going to require persistence to get through the tough bits.
A
Anna, thanks for writing. I love interacting with writers who have a good eye for details…and inconsistencies. I’ve actually updated the ending based on your feedback.
Thanks Scott. That slight inconsistency aside, the hobby-vs-commitment point was well made.