Focus your leisure time

Commit enough time and resources to your hobbies to truly make them fun

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to focus your leisure time. If you have
something you like to do for fun, you will find

(00:25):
life more satisfying if you go deep, committing enough time
and resources to make your fun as meaningful as possible.
Today's tip, like some others this week, comes from my
book One hundred sixty eight Hours. That book was first
published in late May of twenty ten, which means that

(00:48):
it is fifteen years old this month. A lot has
changed in the world since then, but we do, in
fact still have one hundred sixty eight hours in a week,
and so I am revisiting some of the tips in
that book that I think can still be helpful. One
of these is to focus your leisure time. In one

(01:12):
hundred and sixty eight Hours, I tell the tale of
a man with a corporate job who got into writing
country music. He enjoyed it, but rather than just dabbling
it a bit here and there, he decided to commit
the time to really get into it. He took voice lessons,
he hired a music producer to help him hone his

(01:32):
ideas into more singable songs, and then he recorded them
and sold his album online, with some tracks getting a
bit of local airplay. Now, he was not exactly going
to quit his job to attempt to become the next
George Strait, but having a real project of creating a
not terrible country music album gave his leisure time more

(01:56):
direction and therefore made it more meaning. This is certainly
something I have tried to do over the last few years.
I love to sing, but I know that if I
just tell myself I'm going to sing when I can,
it probably won't happen. So instead, I now sing in

(02:16):
two choirs. The weekly rehearsals and performances mean I learn
a lot of new works and I improve more swiftly
than I would otherwise. Plus it's really fun to be
part of a musical community, two musical communities. It gives
my leisure time more focus. As my kids get a

(02:38):
little older and I start to have more space in
my life and in my schedule, I am taking that
approach to other hobbies too. I love miniatures, so now
I am creating miniature scenes in my office. I signed
up for a webinar on the Thorn Rooms, and I
have a date on my calendar to attend the Philadelphia

(02:59):
Miniature Show in the fall. I've also talked to some
people in the field to get the names of artisans
to follow and some of the good places to shop.
I want to get really into this. What about you?
How could you focus your leisure time going all in

(03:20):
to make this time more meaningful. You could decide to
just play an instrument here and there, but my guess
is that you will have more fun joining or starting
a string quartette with some other musicians, or playing in
the pit for a local musical theater troupe. You could
decide to do some watercolor work at night when you can,

(03:41):
or you could sign up for classes at a local
arts studio, plus go to the open studio hours every weekend,
and commit to exhibiting a few works at a student
show in a few months. My guess is you will
do more painting in the latter case, and you will
probably have more fun too. If you have listened to

(04:03):
Before Breakfast for a while, you have heard me say
over and over again that leisure time is too precious
to be totally leisurely about leisure. This time deserves to
be taken seriously, but beyond that, When you go all
in and commit enough time and resources to make a

(04:25):
hobby meaningful, you change your story. We often tell ourselves
that we have no time. But if you are going
to a quilting bee twice a week, traveling around to
quilting shows, and exhibiting your own work at a local
community center too, well, you can't be starved for time

(04:46):
because you are doing all these things, and that can
motivate you to take a more expansive attitude toward time.
In general, you have time to do big and important
things when we are intentional. That is the message we
send ourselves in the meantime. This is Laura, Thanks for listening,

(05:13):
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

(05:40):
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