Treating Life Like a Hobby: Hard Choices to Focus on Real Goals

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.

Wilted bonsai in pot — The full extent of my bonsai endeavors

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 Tweet

How 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:

Pie chart of daily activities — Your life, apportioned

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.

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.