One of the goals I made when I turned 40 was to take more time to explore hobbies.
I often feel compelled to turn something into a side hustle, but I’m really trying to explore hobbies just for fun and personal enjoyment to see what sticks.
I’m also trying not to overthink things too much. I’m taking on activities and projects until I don’t want to do them anymore. If I decide to pick something back up later, that’s fine.
Even though I just said I don’t want to overthink things, I am going to rate the hobbies I try using a probably-overly-complicated-and-questionable rating system. I call it the Hobby Rater.
What is the Hobby Rater?
The Hobby Rater is a survey that spits out a value for how much you like a hobby on a scale of one to ten.
Here’s a link to the Hobby Rater Form. (Interestingly enough, creating this form was one of my personal projects — I coded it using help from Gemini!)
Using this form will give you your average level of satisfaction with the hobby based on the following scoring metric:
1 – Terrible fit
2 – Not a good fit
3 – Probably not good for you
4 – You’re not that interested
5 – Mixed feelings
6 – It’s pretty okay
7 – You like it!
8 – You really like it!
9 – You love this hobby!
10 – Bruh, you know this is the best hobby ever!
Why rate hobbies?
Is it an exact science? No.
But is it helpful anyway? Also, no, not really.
Okay… But it’s fun, right? Yes, at least I think so. I think it is interesting to think about the responses and sort through what you liked or didn’t like in a hobby or project. Maybe you’ll discover that you can fine tune things to adjust for aspect your don’t enjoy.
I also think it’s interesting to see a comparison of hobby and project scores.
Should you rate your hobbies?
If you want to, yes. If you don’t want to, no.
My mom used to say to us kids, “You are the captain of your own ship.”
My suggestion to anyone is that if you want to try something out (that’s moral and at a risk level you are willing to accept), you should do it.
If you want to keep track of the hobbies you try and how much you like them, keeping a uniform rating system might be fun for you.
The Ideal Time to Rate a Hobby
Every activity you are eager to do will generally have a honeymoon phase.
The honeymoon phase is when you feel excited that you are doing something new. Your excitement masks some of the details that may not be as euphoric as you first thought. Only after the initial excitement wears down do you start to realize that some of this activity is not so glamorous and may actually require difficult, challenging, and even unpleasant work.
For instance, when you get married there is literally a honeymoon. Once the honeymoon is over, you have to go back to normal life. Only now you are living with someone who squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube instead of from the bottom. Then your spouse realizes that you are a person who, for some weird reason, gets all worked up about how someone else squeezes out toothpaste.
I’m not saying that’s what happened in my marriage. I’m just using that as an example of the honeymoon phase.
Admittedly, sometimes I get concerned that I only stick with hobbies until the honeymoon phase is over.
But, again, I don’t want to overthink it too hard. It’s not like I owe a duty to a hobby to become a world-renowned expert in it.
The point here is that it may be a good idea to wait to rate a hobby until after you’ve tried it for a while. Then again, it may be even more interesting to rate it right out the gate and then after the honeymoon phase is over.
