Do you all have any tips on activities to do yourself, instead of consuming content all the time?
Do you all have any tips on activities to do yourself, instead of consuming content all the time?
I'm pretty sick of my content addiction, like watching youtube or netflix all the time. I would rather be spending my time otherwise so figured fun things are the best to start. Do you have tips for fun things to do? Or how I could search for them?
Some I came up with myself:
- Learning some magic tricks
- Learning some origami
- Thrift shopping
Everything is welcome!
Edit: thank you for the huge response!
I'll list some hobbies at the end but for me, I struggled feeling motivated after work to do anything but eat and be entertained. It got pretty bad until I decided I needed to figure out something different. I thought I was just missing hobbies but even as I picked some hobbies up (usually on weekends) I wouldn't do them during the week.
Most of my issues revolved around stress (from work), turns out.
I still struggle with this so don't expect a magic solution, but what I found was that my job was actually a lot more stressful than I thought. To the point where I'd wake up in the night thinking about work problems that for sure weren't a big deal and that for sure wouldn't be solved half asleep. So now I try and be more productive at work to make sure I avoid deadlines getting tight, and towards the end of the day I make sure my tasks are simple, if possible. I also try and take lots of breaks and I check in with myself "am I relaxed right now?" "would a break make me more productive" - and I unfortunately found that media isn't a good break for me at work. Somehow the stress stays, while also adding in cravings for more dopamine-inducing activities. Good breaks for me include walking, actively listening to music, daydreaming, planning stuff (holidays, dinner, my upcoming evening, weekend), reading (pretty much anything), and learning new stuff (I'm studying Spanish and chess right now, recently learned all of my PLL algorithms on a Rubik's Cube). I'm a software engineer for context.
The largest stress benefit for me has been biking to work. Yeah, I almost get ran over sometimes which is scary (even with bike paths 90% of my route, you still gotta cross roads, and even with a walk sign cars still won't see you), but driving during rush hour is stressful (there are studies on this but I'm too lazy to link any). Biking is just fun. I even bike in winter (studded tires and poggies/bar mits). Since not everyone has the luxury of biking, exercising immediately after work is something to consider. It for sure helps me separate work from home. There's plenty of studies on exercise lowering stress.
And if your job isn't too stressful, there's another issues with not committing to hobbies... For me, it was that I was/am addicted to media. Once I get started with some dinner and YouTube, it's hard not to lose a couple hours. Best advice for easing out of it is audiobooks make it easy after eating to do chores/walk/not get more food. But other than audiobooks, avoid consuming media while eating. Also avoid media served by an algorithm. It's so easy to watch a great video, and refresh the recommendations to look for another. Then you're watching sub-par videos just hoping for a good one... Wasting tons of time. I use an extension to hide video recommendations. I can still search, and browse my subscriptions, but it saves me a lot of time (extension is called unhook I believe).
My username is actually centered around the idea that the more passive an activity, the less valuable it is to you. I personally want more active hobbies in my life. It is weird to me that so many fulfilling hobbies exist, but I regularly waste evenings on YouTube...
If you can have low stress and minimal cravings for YT/Netflix, here's some hobbies:
- Get a dog (huge commitment, consider a cat if you're too busy) but mine forces me on 3 walks a day, and I've love training her
- Learn something on your bucket list (I mentioned Rubik's cubes, chess, and Spanish already), cooking has been mentioned by others
- I enjoy free diving (diving with goggles, but you hold your breath instead of scuba). I enjoy training my breath hold, and everyone thinks I drowned when I first go underwater at a lake or something (I can only dive for around 40 seconds but that impresses people (this includes swimming)). I can also dive pretty deep which is fun. It's also a bit surreal to be deep underwater with good vision and be comfortable
- I recently dipped my toes into making music, I have a guitar, trombone, and someday I'd like to learn piano
- Having/riding a motorcycle is a great hobby. Seems like it wouldn't be, but in summer I'm often looking for excuses to go ride.
- Bike commuting is great fun. Get some saddle bags to pick up groceries and enjoy the weather when you run out of eggs
- Mountain biking was the easiest hobby for me to dive completely into. Spent loads of money, built my current hardtail part by part. I'm even thinking about traveling south to bike in the winter cause I miss it so much. I live in a place with good trails close to home. Easy for me to go riding before or after work.
- Camping, Fishing, Backpacking, Hiking, Snowshoeing, Back-country skiing/snowboarding, all great fun. Make great weekend trips too. Go explore your state
- Check out letterboxing. It's a bit like geocaching but no GPS, just clues/puzzles. My letterboxing journal always makes people ask questions
- My wife and I like getting hotels in small towns nearby (within 2 hours). We'll walk the town, get food, and have a lot of free time to read or play board games, or other adult activities
- Read. I try and read a book a month. I find that reading before bed helps me sleep WAY better. If I go to bed early and stay up late reading, I think I sleep better than if I went to bed somewhere in the middle without reading.
- Write. I love writing. Sometimes don't know what to write about, but even typing out how I'm feeling today and what I'd like to get done - and then deleting it - lifts my mood
- I'm into software, I run a homelab. Huge time suck. I love it.
- Video games. Might seem super passive, but I think I actually play less than I want to. For sure different than watching YouTube. Some games are challenging even. I have a huge backlog. Tons of fun to play with friends. My wife and I just started Baulders Gate 3 together
- Exercise can be great. I love running in good weather. Some friends of mine got big into cycling. My wife likes the gym. My favorite workouts are to run to the college track and then do body-weight exercises there (and practice my handstands) before running back. I also enjoy Yoga, but do a lot less than I'd like
- Board games/Card games - I enjoy Magic, but the company has made it hard to be a fan (same for DND). Flesh and Blood has been fun, but I haven't played a lot of it. On the board game side; Starwars the deckbuilding game, chess, dominion, and cosmic encounters are all good. You'd be surprised how many people want to play board games. In the few game nights I've hosted we barely got to play anyone's games they brought.
Adventure is out there. Don't waste your youth. Some of these might not seem like ideal after work hobbies, but most are totally doable in an evening.
Here are my hobbies/interests that simultaneously get me off Social Media/Content Streams while giving me something to talk about/post about/watch about when I'm back. I may also have podcasts or youtube on in the background if the activity permits
Group A, the "touch grass" activities:
- go on a walk
- do some cleaning/organizing
- spend time with people irl
That last one requires a lot of effort and rarely has immediate payoffs if you don't already have a friend group bigger that one or two friends, but it's so important and requires putting time into it and developing social skills. In fact, 2+3 both benefit from learning skills and shortcuts and habits; therefore they require just as much time and energy as any hobby.
Group B, the "what I do for fun"
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"hacking" — pentesting computers and VMs, whether on HackTheBox, TryHackMe, Vulnhub, or someones one-off github-hosted machine; and of course so many online CTFs
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"tinkering" — I like messing with the physical part of electronics too. Or mechanical devices. Or anything that I can dissect and modify
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active listening to music — taking the time to listen and be carried away by music, maybe even start to analyze it. I know it's still technically "consuming content," but I consider it to stimulate a different part of the brain than, say, watching a random youtuber bring himself one mukbang closer to an embolism.
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playing music — the world's shittest bassist. I'm not trying to be good, just have fun and improve my ear and dexterity and musical intuition
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foreign language learning — good for the brain, good for someone who wants to travel good for jobs and making genuine human connections. Not fluent in anything besides english yet, but I'm always acquiring new vocabulary words when I can
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Creative writing — Most of what I do anymore is just drafting elaborate shitposts to post online later, but I've been known to crank out parts of short stories and terrible poetry
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Activism — I won't say where, when, who, nor why, but that doesn't matter. The important part is that there are few things in life more fulfilling than coming home after a long day of doing outreach/aid/[redacted]/fundraising for a community and/or cause you care about.
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coding — of freaking course I'm also learning to program. You thought I was done with the electronics, but of course I had to sneak this in. You expect me to learn binary exploitation without having a strong understanding of programming? You expect me to do DIY hardware projects without coding the firmware? You've been absolutely HAD.
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Worshipping the dark goddess [redacted] at the temple of [redacted] — a healthy spiritual aspect to your life has far reaching benefits that scientific medicine and psychology are only just beginning to scratch the surface of. Of course you don't have to start with worshipping [redacted], it can be as simple as cultivating a healthy appreciation for the beauty in every aspect of the natural world around you and the mystique of existence itself. Then later you can move onto the [redacted] sacrifices to make [redacted] [redacted] so [redacted] may once again [redacted] the earth.
Group C, the "dangerously close to consuming content" group, but still technically separate activities/skills
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Armchair philosophy — we all do it, but I'm the only one who was smart/lazy enough to list it as a hobby. Unfortunately this does ocassionally learning about others' philosophy and the topics you're bullshitting about, which is why I say it's "dangerously close"
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Media analysis — see previous... Okay, I got my degree in Literature + Language, I really enjoy deep analyses of media, and sometimes make my own. The act itself doesn't require consuming anything more than you already have, but if you haven't consumed any media in awhile...
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reading — okay, I know, this is literally just back to consuming content, but... You don't learn how to do any of the above without some reading. It helps you learn a language if you read a story in your target language. it's the format most philosophy was originally recorded in. It's the medium writers have to learn to be good at their craft. It's what format most electronic/software documentation is in. It's how music was recorded for centuries before audio media. It's also just a fun activity that engages different parts of the brain and trains your imagination even when it's "just" fiction.
I built a homelab.
Basically you buy some old enterprise server hardware (or, if you are smart unlike me, you build low-power machines from scratch!) and then you can run your own services.
Some fun stuff includes:
- Plex or Jellyfin or Emby - stream your own video library
- HomeAssistant - Control and automate all the smart things with little to no cloud connection!
- TrueNAS - file server storage for large share drives and local backups
- Grocy - Inventory management for groceries/supplies. Includes special features for batteries, chemicals/food with expiration dates, shopping list generation + barcode scanning, chore tracking (with automatic inventory of supplies like dish soap and laundry detergent), and recipes based on what you have on hand. Integrates with HomeAssistant
- PiHole or AdGuard Home - DNS-based adblocker. Any device connected to your network has a ton of advertising blocked at the network level, no plugins or installation required; devices simply can’t find the ad servers to connect with. (Can break stuff like Paramount+ or Hulu, etc but you can add exceptions)
- the “arr” suite - Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr/prowlarr - fill up your Plex library with ahem legal backups of legitimately purchased media automatically over the internet.
- OPNSense - free, professional grade firewall with support for network-wide VPN clients. Put your entire house behind a VPN, allow VPN access inside your network from anywhere (get the benefits of PiHole on the go!), block shady IoT devices from seeing anything else on the network (Chromecasts, shady smart switches, etc), the sky’s the limit with this one
- Fediverse instances - Run your own personal Lemmy or Mastadon instance!
And tons and tons of other stuff. It’s not cheap, it’s time consuming, and the wife hates the power bill. But if you’re into doing shit with computers, it’s a damn interesting rabbit hole
Learn Blender! I'm not joking, it's full of cool things to do if you're into computer graphics. Anywhere from hand-sculpting, to 2D animation, visual effects, 3D printing...
Hiking.
a few ideas:
Learn:
An instrument
A living language
A dead language
A fictional language
A programming language
A new sport
A craft
New recipes
Bodyweight exercisesGo:
To Hell (Hell, Michigan)
Hike
Powerwalk your local mall
Cross country skiing
To your local arcade
To the coffee shop
On a road trip
Walk all the streets in your city
Test drive something interesting
To a movie
To your local library
To a concert
To an art gallery
To a museumKnitting is super fun. I used to do it every day until I started my masters. I keep thinking I should restart this hobby. As long as you don't buy ridiculously premium yarns, it's super cheap too. I used to find boxes of yarn at yard sales or thrift stores.
- Cooking / Baking
- Crochet / Amigurumi
- Gardening
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Learn a new language
- Take a course
- Try out recipes to cook from the internet. Thats an easy way to learn and in the end you can improvise.
- learn an instrument. Easier said than done really, best is to find a group and make fix appointments
- find a cool sport to do. Really, going out is sooo important. Dancing, martial arts, athletics, swimming, climbing, cycling. There is so much.
- learn another language that people actually speak in your area lol. For example signing! Signing is so useful, next to english, spanish, mandarin and russian maybe. Integrating deaf people is sooo important and it needs hearing people that can sign to translate.
Nature photography, post results on iNaturalist for IDs, compare against what's in your area, try and catch them all, Pokémon-style.
Whatever you do, make it a challenge to do it every day (or as often as possible) for a month. If at the end you still look forward to it, you found a new hobby.
It might help to set some fixed times in your week for hobbys so you don’t get into the situation where you need to decide between that or Netflix. The drug always wins.
If you need to buy some things first, get it used or even just lend it but try to find something that’s not rubbish. You can later invest more money but you don’t want to waste it on something you end up not liking.
Hobbys that stuck with me:
- cooking
- running
- hiking
- gardening
- golfing
- reading
- jigsaw puzzles
One option that is kind of a middle ground is to learn a craft. Knitting, crochet, making fly fishing lures, sculpting. There are lots of things you can do with your hands while listening to a podcast or audiobook, so while it still involves content consumption it also engages your motor skills and creativity and you end up with something to show for it by the time you are finished.
Rock Climbing/Bouldering. It’s great exercise, I throw in my earbuds, do my own thing, it’s a lot of fun. Don’t worry about being out of shape there are routes for all skill levels
Here's a few of mine:
-Skateboarding
-Writing (books, plays, puppet shows, greeting cards, etc.)
-Learning Linux
-Writing and performing rap
-Petting cats
-Repairing video game consoles and controllers
-Decorating (using things you own or spending very small amounts)
-Cooking, baking, etc.
I also enjoy putting on some music when I have to do stuff that isn't fun, like laundry, washing dishes or cleaning.
If you're addicted to content, try walking but listening to audiobooks at the same time. Bonus if dog too
I picked up bouldering, and I highly recommend it! Its a great way to have fun while doing something active, and is fun solo, with a couple of people, or a larger group.
Woodworking!
lockpicking
Painting miniatures, 3d printing to make it more affordable in the long run
Playing (optional) single player board games - picked that one up during the pandemic. I enjoyed some free print and play (or basic playing cards) games like:
Utopia Engine (both parts or expansion, whatever Beast Hunter is) - pretty much an exploration rpg? Very simple to setup and learn.
The Quiet Year - a map drawing game that gives you prompts to expand the map and lore of a small commumity/civilisation. Very peaceful.
Gridcannon - a single player puzzle/tactic game played with a standard deck of cards. Been a while but I enjoyed it a lot in pandemic times.You can also play games like Gaslands or even Warhammer by yourself if you're into that sort of stuff. I enjoyed gaslands by myself the other day :)
I like building things and being alone and woodworking is my go to activity. It involves working with and learning about wood and tools to work with wood, project management for more complex projects, tons of spatial thinking, drawing, research, prototyping. I spend a large amount of time drawing.
Permanently Deleted
If you played old PC games from like 1990s, dip your toes into that. Even if you didn't, still go check out the old PC gaming scene.
Hit up GZDoom with mods, Duke Nukem 3D, X-Com Apocalypse, SimCity 2000 and 3000 Unlimited, Shadow Warrior, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, OpenTTD, etc.
cooking! finding out about good ingredients and how to make them even better! fermenting too...
If knitting/crochet is not metal enough for you, make chainmail instead! It's so easy that you can let your mind wander while doing it. So it basically doubles as active meditation!
I got into lockpicking recently
Learn to solve a Rubik’s cube. Couple of weeks and you’ll be able to do it in around a minute or two.
Painting by numbers is chill.
Walking is fun.
Learn an instrument.
Code some tools to help you do things that bore you.
My suggestion would be to reframe your thesis. Rather than consuming content, change your perspective to one where you are appreciating art.
The world is vast and full of amazing things, you don't need to feel like you're wasting time when you dedicate that time to appreciating art that you love. There are books, games, movies, short form video essays, podcasts, and all sorts of things that are real expressions of the human experience from different angles, which is what art is, and there's nothing wrong with appreciating that art, learning something from it, and growing your understanding.
Unless you're harming yourself or others by enjoying the art you enjoy, just keep on doing it.
That said, if you really want something else, gaming is (IMO) a great way to spend some time, tabletop or video. Learning a programming language is another one and can lead to very fulfilling paths where you can make things that you enjoy and easily share them with others.
Anything you enjoy that you could improve on!
Currently I'm spending more time learning guitar.
I think as long as you're genuinely interested, learning things becomes a lot easier.
I started with crochet about two months ago (my 53'rd attempt at a new hobby) with the idea of wanting to make Amigurumi. But it kind of (d)evolved into just experimenting blindly with different stitch combinations and turning them into bracelets for myself. But I'm still having fun with it :)
It's relaxing, relatively cheap (for what I do with it) and I feel motivated to slowly try to improve myself. I still feel anxious trying to complete any major project though, but that's just me. There's a sad unfinished amigurumi monster in my drawer, waiting for me to work up the nerve to stitch him together :)I like building models. Gunpla or wargame minis currently, but I’ve also recently taken up 3d printing as a hobby. Not the cheapest hobbies unfortunately, but ones I enjoy.
I got into designing crosswords for a while. It was pretty fun to manually lay out a sheet of answers and think up clues for them. Also, reading theory.
I went back to school. You can find tons of online courses in just about any subject, and some will count for real college credit if you ever want to turn it into a degree. Many are free, but some will cost you and most are worth it. A way to make your addiction productive.
I always recommend roleplaying games like DnD or pathfinder as a hobby since it has a built in social and private element to it. You can join a group at most local game stores or by looking for organized play. Both Pathfinder and DnD have organized learning sessions where you can learn to play. Both allow you to start for free.
The good part is there is a regular scheduled social element usually weekly and between time you can do things yourself. That includes reading rules, making minis, practicing voices, writing modules, reading old source book, watching live streams, making maps etc. You don't have to do all of those but you can really go in depth or as shallow as you want. All of the things you do my yourself will enhance the enjoyment of the group which is a great as well.
Sewing is a nice thing to learn because you can always touch up your own clothes and if you like you can buy a cheap sewing machine and do your own shirts, pants etc
going outside, musing around, gazing at the clouds and plants and all
Fun ways to spend your time:
Walking, running, hiking, cycling, transitting to a nice spot in town you've never been. Fairly cheap, and fun way to get out and forget the rest of your problems for a bit.
Sports and Yoga, cooking and baking, sewing, learning an instrument like guitar, piano/keyboard.
For things that aren't mindless fun but useful long term: Try learning a new language! It's kind of difficult but it's cool when you start to figure out tiny tidbits of other languages.
You didn't rule it out, so my first thought is: play video games! It's certainly on the line between consuming something and learning to do something. Some individual games can be a whole skill to study and hone for years (eg, learning a fighting game or a speedrun, etc etc)
Spirit of the question though, that would probably be considered content.
Other ideas, most already covered by other comments: art, photography, music, writing, programming, cooking, woodworking, or learning a new language.
Instead of playing video games, I'm leaning frontend programming. I'm making a chatGPT movie recommendation assistant right now. Finishing projects supplants the dopamine hits I got from gaming.
The 'fun' adjective means everyone's answers will be different! For me, exercising is good even if many times it ends up being a VR adventure or workout.
I enjoy growing a small garden! You might not xD
Pick up some acting classes and volunteer down at the local theatre to learn more about yourself, your expression to others, learn the intricacies of a great classic story and make new friends!
Really, just pick something and go to the moon with it
I do a lot of creative writing. Remember that what you write doesn't have to be "good" in order to be worth the time you spent doing it.
Meta answer.
To me personally any sort of addiction is a symptom of feeling out of touch with life. It's a kind of rejection of what is and slapping a bandaid on that pain by constantly asking for more. More food. More content. More whatever.
It's a desire that can't truly ever be satisfied.
It's important to take a step back when you feel lost in such a stream of more. Instead of trying to change things, try to accept things as they are. You can always decide to change it later. For example when you wake up, just take a few moments to experience waking up, rather than immediately focusing on what needs to be done.
When it comes to doing anything, play around with how much care you put into it. Try doing it quick and badly and without any care. And try doing it with utmost care and perfection. Think of it like training your ability to control the number of fucks you give for any specific thing. That way you can let go of control by giving up your need for change, but also regain it for the things that really matter.
And then it's a matter of trying out many things to see what resonates with your personality. When you find something you can sharpen it by removing the things that don't really matter to you.
For example you might figure out that you enjoy painting. You'll probably come up with lots of unnecessary goals for yourself such as being able to paint realistic portraits with oil. Whereas actually you would have enjoyed art history more, or perhaps drawing childish looking animals with crayons.
If you had held onto the idea that you need to do oil portraits, you would've just saddled yourself with another thing that you only partially enjoy, and so you might just leave it laying around. It's just a disconnect from who you really are. You'd be imprisoning yourself again with a need for more, instead of realizing that you are free by nature and that it's alright to enjoy seemingly unimportant things.
I got into scratch/trash building and kit bash modeling crazy mechs and stuff last year and it’s been a blast.
Thrift shopping is great. Window shop at antique stores, goodwill, pawn shops, thrift shops. Even without buying things you can come across lots of interesting finds.
Find your local free community center. Your local library is a good start. There's bound to be countless free activities or events to join and also meet people at to make casual friends while doing new things.
music is life <3
List of things you would do with friends like going to a bar, to a movie, eating wings/dinner, driving somewhere fun, or going on a trip then do the list alone.
Is reading technically considered consuming content? Fun and it’s a pretty cheap hobby if you have library access or go to used bookstores!
Playing any musical instrument. The feeling of your practice grindings pay off, no matter how still mundane it is to compared to social media professional musicians, is a pretty good feeling.
Multiple times I have found satisfaction and joy in reading non-fiction or how to books about a certain topic and then deep diving. With a library nearby you can avoid spending any real money. Almost every book about a topic has other books as references or recommendations which leads you down a hole of information about things you can learn about and implement. I am currently deep into a research hole about plant identification, herbalism, wild food forging and permaculture. This is great since I can then implement these in my garden this spring but I enjoy the learning part just as much as the doing. Its a fun way to see what interests to you. It doesn't have to last forever but you will keep the knowledge
Life is pretty boring, which is why content addiction works... :/
Building things. Legos are super fun.
I've not been able to do any of these for a while with life doing its thing and being overwhelming, but I've enjoyed things like those "gem" mosaic pictures (apparently called diamond painting) and good old colouring books. I also got in to making stim jars for a while, then someone suggested I monetise them and I completely lost interest lol (though that gif is making me want one now)
Also tried indoor gardening for a while, but I just kill any plant that comes my way, so I've stopped that abuse now😂Go for out to an interesting place and take some cool photos.
Drawing and reading are both time consuming, cheap and good stuff that can make you grow too. Can flow over into painting and writing so watch out.
Chess is even cheaper (free online with matchmaking: lichess.org also a gazillion youtubes to get you running like chessbrahs or chesswibes) if you want to be humbled but also like tactics, strategies and history.
Origami I find fun, yes.
Have tried to learn to juggle several times, unsuccessfully.
Doing yoga I have learned to stand on my hands, learning a physical skill like acrobatics is so good for both mind and body.
Live music I love so much. Go see a show!
I guess it's a game too but Pokemon go has actually gained me some casual friends.
Video games might not sound like much of a change, but they’re more active than watching movies. It’s a small step away from that totally passive mode.
