Written by: Lin Chiang
Artwork by: Jiyoon Lee
It’s 2:00 AM on a school night. You turn off the lights and hurriedly run back to your sanctuary: underneath the blanket. Underneath the pitch-black blanket, you delightfully take out your phone and scroll through Netflix. Just then, you see that your favorite show has a new episode, and you frantically tap your screen to click the “skip intro” button. Finally, you hear the voices of your favorite characters echoing through your room, and you turn your phone horizontally for the full cinematic experience. You chuckle through the night and completely forget about the ticking time, realizing only at 3:00 AM how weary you will be at school tomorrow. In hindsight, you acknowledge the consequences of your action, and hastily force yourself to fall asleep. This is an example of an unhealthy cycle with hobbies. After all, we all have hobbies and are all enthusiasts of something, whether it is playing video games, watching Netflix, playing sports, reading books, and more. However, having a hobby to an excessive degree to the point it uncontrollably distracts you from other necessities, is when hobbies can bring out an ironic effect of becoming detrimental. Therefore, to what extent can hobbies be considered healthy, and what can we do to prevent ourselves from being distracted?
To begin with, hobbies have an uncountable number of benefits, and they grant us an opportunity to explore our deepest passions and best interests. First of all, hobbies improve our mental health by providing us with a sense of liveliness and fulfillment, as they have the ability to fill up empty time with a sense of enjoyment. This factor also connects to the second asset, as hobbies also keep us productive, which functions as a cure to relieve stress and let us temporarily forget about the hardships we are facing. Moreover, hobbies are known to boost our self-esteem as there is a sense of achievement that follows with getting something done instead of staying in bed all day. Overall, hobbies uplift us and give us something to look forward to each day.
However, these merits are only granted if you are able to maintain an adequate work-life balance, which is, “the state of equilibrium where a person equally prioritizes the demands of one’s career and the demands of one’s personal life”, according to the Business News Daily. This balance is the key to preventing yourself from being overwhelmed and eventually losing yourself to stress. Now, how can you achieve a work-life balance? From my experience, the best solution was to keep track of your priorities, either in a to-do list or a calendar, and use a time management technique, such as Pomodoro, to reward yourself in between the workloads. If you have a tendency to still go off-task, you can use the help of another person to monitor you or even use applications such as Website Blocker to prevent your access to other websites.
In all, hobbies are only healthy if you are able to manage a work-life balance to finish all your tasks, but still, be able to reward yourself to enjoy what captivates you. It is impossible to always have a perfect work-life balance, yet it is essential to put in an effort to achieve this balance so that hobbies do not become a cause of your unhealthy lifestyle. Make sure to use your time wisely!
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