Do you feel emotionally and creatively depleted throughout the school year? Do you put off personal hobbies and projects as an extremely busy college student? Rest assured, you are not alone.
When it comes to academic achievement in the short-term, intense focus and single-mindedness will be the number one key to success.
However, for most students pursuing long, intensive academic or professional trainings, having a multiplicity of pursuits is often a better strategy.
The benefits of this strategy are not only better mental health and increased satisfaction with life, but also increased academic creativity and innovation.
The most brilliant people of all history were the polymaths, the people with ever-changing, wide-ranging disciplines and pursuits. These individuals (think Leonardo da Vinci) were exceptional because they were multi-disciplined.
The various pursuits allowed them to see the world with unique and prolific perspectives, which spurred authentic innovation. Each discipline offered them a new lens or dynamic with which to view the world, and hence create accordingly. The future of the world is inter-disciplinary (but that is another tangent for another day!!)
Although most people in the modern world are intellectually and creatively diverse, it is incredibly hard to maintain the hobbies or pursuits that generate this creative diversity in the span of adult life that is undergraduate education.
Some undergraduate students resort to putting off everything that brings them personal joy until the “summer,” or whenever school is not in session. Others are unfortunately forced to work full-time jobs to sustain their studies, ending them up in another cycle of depletion via a different source.
And still, some accept the idea that it is unnecessary to engage in other activities besides academics, as it decreases from their time and energetic capacity, ignoring their personal passions altogether. And while this may be true to some extent, it bypasses the dividends of intellectual and creative expansion that casual hobbies bestow on the individual.
The key to escape this sad cycle is to not accept being a part of it in the first place. Being conscious or aware of the fact that this is an unfortunate psychological phenomenon that takes place will put you in a position of power to be able to look at it objectively and decide the extent of your involvement in it for yourself. Below lie the exact practical steps to do so.
1. Rock, Paper, Scissors
You can laugh at this heading, but in all seriousness, you must establish an order of priorities for the hobbies you wish to pursue. Thinking you will have time for everything you want to do or that you can pick and choose as the year proceeds is not only unreasonable, but foolish.
You must ask yourself the hard, boring questions that only you can answer. What do you enjoy doing the most? What restores your energy or lightens your load the most? What makes sense to practically pursue in addition to everything else you are formally committed to? Answering these questions is the surest way to actually be able to partake in personal pursuits as you encounter academic challenges.
If horseback-riding is the energizer of your soul, but you live in the heart of the city and cant’t get out to a ranch every weekend, then is that a hobby you can reasonably pursue during this time? (Speaking from personal experience). Based on this logic, choose 3-4 activities and list them in order of personal importance and practicality.
2. Tic-Tac-Toe
Again, you have my permission to silently chuckle and slap yourself in the knee. This step is about strategy. When choosing your desired hobbies to pursue as a college student, it is not only necessary to consider their value to you personally and their logical feasibility, but also their ROI (return on investment).
If you have taken a personal finance or business class, you have most likely encountered the magical exponential effects of compound interest. The right hobbies will provide you with an abundance of returns that you can either re-invest back into the hobby or invest in a different domain entirely (e.g. academics), for continual, compounding growth.
The question remains: what kinds of hobbies provide an ROI? I think the answer is infinite because an ROI in this sense is less fiduciary and more humanistic (although monetary ROIs from your hobbies as a student are definitely a plus). Everyone has different values, so hobbies will serve a different purpose for everyone. This is why it is important to identify what you value and what you wish to gain.
Pragmatically, what this looks like is choosing hobbies in domains that engage the multiple dimensions of life that you occupy as a human. I usually go with these three domains: athletic/physical, creative/innovative, and cognitive/intellectual.
The strategizing lies in choosing activities that you enjoy and are able to conveniently do, while also having them lie in different domains. The goal is to pick hobbies that feed your soul, sharpen your mind, and strengthen your body. In this way, your hobbies will not only entertain you and make you a more interesting individual, but also generate intellectual and creative reserves that you can then input into your academic or professional pursuits.
3. Wheel of Fortune
Whether you’ve watched the actual TV series or played some version of the game (Hangman) in real life, you know that so much guessing is involved. Often, the expert response to a guess is: “No, that’s not the answer.” Similarly, when approaching the topic of pursuing hobbies as a full-time college student, so much trial and error is involved.
It takes a laudable amount of introspection and reflection to learn what works for your lifestyle and what doesn’t, along with what maximizes your time for notable returns.
Like a game of hangman, sometimes the answer is a concise “No.” Sometimes, you have to say “no” to an activity, event, or hobby that seems reasonable in the moment, but doesn’t place on your list of importance, won’t work in the long-term, or won’t produce the returns you desire (in type or amount). In such cases, the game isn’t over. The “no” isn’t an executive decision to end the game, but serves as redirection. You simply try again. In real life, you pivot: try a different method of implementation, a different intensity of engagement, or a different hobby altogether.
Conclusion
Engaging in personal hobbies throughout the academic year as a busy college student is absolutely possible for you. You just have to go about it strategically and reflexively. That is to say you must be honest with yourself about 1) what is important, 2) what is practical, and 3) what is worth it.
When you give yourself time to think about these considerations and brainstorm viable ideas for your hobbies, you choose the ones that overlap in terms of fit in importance, practicality, and value add. With time and trial, you will learn what works and what doesn’t, what turned out to be too idealistic and what is just right for your lifestyle and interest levels.
Lastly, remember that “no” can in fact be a complete sentence. I encourage you to be generous in its usage. Narrow down your options and involvements to the things that matter to you the most and that generate the greatest returns on investment. This is how you can realistically have personal pursuits as a full-time college student.