One of my goals as a 40-year-old is to take more time to explore hobbies. I feel compelled to always try and turn something into a side hustle, but I’m really trying to just try out hobbies just for fun and personal enjoyment to see what sticks.
I’m also trying not to overthink things too much. I’m just trying out things 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 just a Google Form survey that spits out a value for how much you like a hobby based on a set of criteria based on a scale from one to ten.
Actually, it’s not just a Google Form. You can’t compute the score using a haptinc scale in Google, for some reason. To do that, you have to use a separate program. The one I found is Formfacade (plus the addon Scorecery). These apps allow you to assign points to each number on the scale and then return the average score.
Here’s a link to the Hobby Rater Form.
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.
I guess it’s helpful in the sense that it is fun and interesting to consider aspects of hobbies that I like or dislike. Going through the rating is useful in sorting through thoughts and thinking over issues.
It’s also interesting to see the average score of the hobby.
I’ve thought that perhaps I will keep track of my ratings and stick with the top three rated hobbies. But that’s probably overthinking it.
Again, my goal here is just to have experiences and try activities out without having to worry about whether I’m going to stick with it, make money from it, or become some great talent.
It’s just for fun, curiosity, and personal fulfillment.
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.
When Should You Rate a Hobby?
Every activity you are eager to do will generally have a honeymoon phase.
The honeymoon phase is when you just feel excited that you are doing something. 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 back to normal life. Only now you are living with someone who squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle instead of from the bottom. Then your spouse realizes that you are this person that 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 any 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.
