3 Reasons to Have A Few Low-Tech Creative Hobbies
One thing that’s interesting about reading books from the 70s – or watching TV shows from that era – is that you’ll notice just how many people are depicted having all kinds of interesting and relatively “low-tech” hobbies.
It’s not exactly surprising, considering that what’s “high-tech” today didn’t even exist back then, and that what was considered high-tech back then is now considered more or less caveman technology.
All the same, it’s true that more and more of us these days are prone to getting lost in purely passive forms of entertainment, usually courtesy of things like TV and the Internet.
Here are a few decent reasons to grab a pair of safety boots and pick up a few “low-tech” hobbies.
- It puts you in touch with something primal and satisfying that many guys are missing out on these days
Playing a videogame can be plenty fun and engaging, no doubt. But there’s a certain kind of ancient and primal itch that you scratch when building or fixing something with your hands, that you just don’t get from overcoming obstacles in a fantasy world.
For the vast majority of human existence, the average person spent a lot of time interacting with material objects in a direct and visceral kind of way.
It makes sense to assume that we are “built” for those kinds of “primal” tasks, on some level, and that doing these kinds of tasks can lead to a kind of fulfilment that it’s difficult to get otherwise.
Cal Newport – himself a computer scientist – argues in his book “Digital Minimalism” that these kinds of activities are actually essential for remaining properly healthy and balanced.
- It’s a great way of working through some of your own thoughts, instead of just distracting yourself
If you’ve got a lot of things on your mind – and especially if some of those things are significant problems that you’re grappling with – anything you can do that can help you to gain a bit of perspective without having a breakdown is a plus.
Often, however, when we are in that sort of situation, what we ultimately do is distract ourselves with forms of entertainment media such as Netflix and videogaming.
The famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said that all truly great ideas came about while walking. And there is a common consensus among many people that doing some kind of physical activity really helps with generating new ideas, and with problem-solving, too.
Working on low-tech physical hobbies, such as woodworking, allows your thoughts to play and jump around, half in the background. This can be an excellent state to be in for working through issues.
- It’s likely to be more useful than a lot of the ways you could spend your free time
It’s always good if what you do as a leisure activity also has the added benefit of being useful in some way, and not just being an entertaining time sink.
Many “old-school” hobbies are fundamentally creative in one way or another, and so can add something to your life, as a whole, beyond just helping you to relax.
Of course, you don’t have to be perfectly productive at every moment of every day. But it’s nice when you get to kill two birds with one stone.