Life becomes much more interesting once we realize how much there is to enjoy beyond our screens. If you do as I did and spend just one week off your phone, you might find yourself searching for alternative ways to fill that time. And once the week is gone, you will feel changed and will likely decide that keeping yourself in the real world could be just as fun as the online world.
Sooner or later you might want to try having hobbies and you will explore all sorts of options: craft hobbies you could turn into a business, creative slow hobbies that make life cozy, unusual hobbies nobody has heard of, or bookish hobbies that make a reader’s heart beat a bit faster.
But what if you get invested in the idea of growing your grey matter through hobbies? Because yes, it is possible to become smarter in certain areas of your life by simply practicing a hobby. And I have a list of 12 unique and fun hobbies that will get you there.
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How Does a Hobby Make You Smarter?
I spent some time reading about different ways a hobby makes you smarter, and here is the simplest explanation that I can offer to you. Any hobby you pick gives you the opportunity to learn a skill. Every skill you master makes you smarter in the area related to that hobby.
Meaning, if you decide that lock picking is your next thing, you will start to understand how locks work. If you take up genealogy you will get good at digging through old records. Learn bookbinding and book restoration and you will learn about paper and books.
And this isn’t just a guess, research supports this idea. In this study people who practiced quilting or digital photography for 16 hours a week showed improvements in memory. The same study showed that people who stuck to the usual social activities and didn’t challenge themselves showed no improvement of memory. The idea isn’t just to do something, but to do something that gives you skills you don’t have, information you haven’t come across before, or a challenge that takes time to master.
With that in mind, I have picked 12 hobbies that take time to develop but will help exercise your brain in return.
Hobbies: Words and Knowledge
The following category of hobbies that make you smarter helps you get better at finding and learning facts, understanding language, and checking sources.
1. Reading Books
This would probably be the one hobby you’ll find mentioned in absolutely every similar article online. Do I need to explain why reading will make you smarter? Regardless of what type of literature you decide to read, it will help you develop better information processing skills and give you knowledge and bits of information about different subjects. Even the weirdest type of romantasy novel will open a new world before your eyes and give you something you’ve never heard of or read before.
2. Wikipedia Editing
Checking facts and resources and diving deep into editing of Wikipedia articles can help you become smarter and improve your attention to details. By reading the articles you want to edit you also gain knowledge about the subject they cover. You get to explore a wide variety of topics there, so maybe keeping a journal or spreadsheet to keep track of what you learn is a good idea.
3. Proofreading Books for Distributed Proofreaders
I never really knew this hobby exusted until I accidentally stumbled upon it a few days ago, in a Reddit discussion. Distributed Proofreaders is a website where volunteers can register to proofread public domain books that are then turned into e-books. As a volunteer, you recieve a page to proofread that then gets proofread once again. After various checks the new e-book gets added to Project Gutenberg and becomes available for free.
It sounds like a fun hobby that could also give you the opportunity to learn new things, exercise your attention to details and contribute to something bigger, one page at a time.
4. Keeping a Book of Interesting Facts
Our beautiful world is filled with curiosities and facts that make us go “Wow!”. For example, did you know that the world’s oldest dog lived to 29.5 years? The oldest cat lived for 38 years and three days. Also, Mount Everest isn’t the tallest mountain when measured from base to summit. Mauna Kea which is a massive volcanoe in Hawaiiis taller than Everest when measured from its underwater base.
Fun facts like these could turn you into the most knowledgeable and interesting person in the room in just a few short months of collecting and reading them.
You could turn this into a collection of interesting facts or simply write in your book when you stumble upon something curious. In the beginning, your book will be a thin journal, but with time, it will grow into something you will be proud to show family and friends, and to leaf through on a cozy Friday evening.
5. Going Down Educational Rabbit Holes
This hobby is slightly similar to the previous one but instead of collecting a bouquet of random facts, you choose a topic and get immersed in it as much as possible.
Here’s how it works:
- Start with a small question you have about your chosen topic and find a reliable source for the answer.
- Once you have your answer, look for something new it makes you wonder about.
- Follow the trail and keep going for as long as you’re interested.
- Keep a journal for excerpts and thoughts.
Hobbies: Puzzles and Games
Puzzles and games are often the most recommended hobbies for becoming smarter, but why? It is because they help you plan ahead, think analytically, spot patterns and improve yoir spatial reasoning. So, here are my suggestions for hobbies that involving puzzles and games.
6. Making and Cracking Ciphers
When I was a child I came up with my own alphabet. Of course, my nie-year-old self followed the normal alphabet and just cut a few lines out of each letter, but it still kept me busy for a few days. Then, my cousin and I exchanged letters written in that alphabet for months. It was so fun to try to decipher what she wanted to tell me and it wasn’t about the information but the process of finding it out that made it so entertaining.
Cracking ciphers and codes can become your new most favorite thing to do. It can improve your problem-solving skills and logical thinking. It will surely keep you busy, sometimes for months, and it is one of the most unusual and fun hobbies you could have. Becoming smarter is just a bonus here.
7. Playing chess
No surprise here. Chess players are some of the most interesting people you will come across in life. They tend to take a problem and see it from so many angles that you will stop counting at some point. It just makes sense to play chess and solve chess problems because doing so could help you see your own life troubles from many different perspectives.
8. Juggling
Hold on, I am not joking with you here. There is a study (right here) that that shows that juggling can improve ability to process complext visual motion, which means you will be able to follow things that move in tricky ways much better. It literally causes changes in the physical structure of your brain. So, learning a fun skill you might only show off at parties or in front of your kids could actually help improve your brain’s abilities.
Hobbies: Detective Work and History
Research, evidence and logic are the skills you wil excel at by taking up the following hobbies.
9. Genealogy
This hobby might not be for everyone. However, if you have the chance to build up knowledge about your own family and ancestors, you might discover interesting family secrets. Alternatively, you could go down the rabbit hole of another family and trace lineages, ancestors, and descendants over generations.
10. Heraldry and Family Crests
Take genealogy a step further and explore the nobility of your country. Create your own book about the history of the nobility and knights in your country, and print out images of their unique armorial bearings. This hobby would give you interesting insights into history and medieval art, meaning you will become knowledgeable on the subject.
Hobbies: Collecting and Old Objects
11. Collecting and Researching Hisctorical Postcards
I have a stack of vintage postcards from WWII and it is always fun to pull a few out and read what people have written on their backs. That is how I remembered that there are people who collect and research historical postcards. You can focus on a decade or historical event (such as wartime) or you could look for postcards featuring a specific region or person.
12. Building a Cabinet of Curiosities
If you love thrift shopping, this hobby idea is perfect for you. Next time you visit a thrift store, pick the weirdest vintage object you can find but can’t identify. When you get home, do a deep dive into what that object is and when and how it was used. Write everything down on a small index card and keep the object (plus the card) in a special box or drawer. This is how you start a collection of curiosities.
Final Thoughts
These were my 12 picks for hobbies that make you smarter. I want to emphasises one important thing: these aren’t the only hobbies that make you smarter. Any hobby can help you develop new skills and knowledge if it’s something that makes you step outside your usual routine, learn something new, and challenge yourself over time.
So, with that in mind, I hope you pick a hobby that balances challenge with enjoyment, so you stick to it for as long as possible.
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
