Which hobby do you think is most diverting and pleasurable? | Hacker News Reader

Which hobby do you think is most diverting and pleasurable?

21 pointsikelos38 comments

Which hobby do you think is most diverting and pleasurable? What is the most unexpected benefit you’ve experienced?

I enjoy reading, both in digital and physical mediums.

I visit different libraries in my city 2-3 times a week just to stroll through and open random books. I hope this always remains an option, because there is just something beautiful about opening a book, feeling the pages and even the smell when it is a particularly old book! LOL

In pre-AI days, I'd spend hours each week reading Wikipedia. There are so many topics about so many things in our wonderful world to learn about. Some are really tragic, some hopeful, some are about animals or plants in places I may never be able to visit, and so on.

Currently, I'm enjoying using AI to take me on "journeys" not only around the world, but through time and "dimensions" as well. For fictional works, I can engross myself into their world with a AI and "feel" like I'm there.

Reading is a neat distraction. Before I go to sleep I learn about something cool and interesting and when I have follow up questions, I am able to satisfy my curiosity.

Anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319082

It is really amazing :) Cheers!

When I'm by myself, I mainly read; I read various types of books, see other people's lives and their perspectives on problem-solving, which helps me understand the world from more perspectives.

Then when I'm with my wife, we mainly relax by playing chess. This includes Gomoku, Chinese Weiqi, Chess, and Chinese Chess. We have a lot of chess sets at home!

I love a good quotation, and when I come across one I will often write it up in my own rudimentary and imperfect calligraphy, usually on a 4x6" card. I enjoy creating the cards, and actually end up flipping through them pretty often. On the back of a card I will write the date, along with some notes about how I came by the quote and what seemed compelling to me about it when I wrote it up.

Trail running - without anything electronic. Outside, in nature, alone with your thoughts, slightly uncomfortable, watching the seasons change, random encounters with wildlife, travel opportunities, fun with friends, most of the benefits of exercise, meditative.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The most unepxected benefit was making a bunch of new friends and obtaining a third place to not only train, but also hang out and chill.

I’ve never had a more pleasurable experience than snowboarding. It really sharpens the senses and requires that you focus on the riding, ie don’t ride while imbibed or high, listening to music, etc.

Just you, on a plank, pointed downwards.

My unexpected benefit was wanting to live near the snow, which meant thinking really hard about if leaving the big city was worth it. Living in the rural countryside next to a mountain is amazing.

I'd caution against "most diverting and pleasurable", thats really subjective.

For me woodworking or similar DIY projects making things with my hands (i.e. not 3d printers - not that there's anything wrong with that but most of the creation there I think is on a computer). I took architecture drawing classes in high school and I like the pencil and paper element of that for projects. With wood, its very malleable so if you make mistakes you can really easily adapt and keep going.

The unexpected benefit I found is when you make things for other people, they really appreciate it and tell you as much. They almost think its magical like when you fix their computer but they are much more appreciative because there's a physical thing there they use, maybe daily, maybe others comment on it and ask where they got it.

2 for me: scuba diving and welding (not at the same time). scuba diving is such a surreal experience and incomparable to anything I've ever done. It's unfortunate that there are no decent diving sites close to where I live. Welding is an incredibly rewarding hobby that makes you forget about everything else because it requires a lot of focus. Being able to join 2 pieces of steel according to your own imagination almost feels magical.

A good morning walk stretches the legs and clears the head. Walking is always pleasing to me.

I love hobbies where you create something. Sewing, leatherworking, woodworking, stuff like that. You can also take this and add more hobbies on top. Embroidery, leather or wood carving for example. Those hobbies are at there core very utilitarian (you get exactly what you want to have. The exact wallet or shirt or chair or whatever) but they allow for artistic freedom and expression as well.

I personally prefer to go as hand tools as possible. I don’t like loud noises. A sewing machine is the most I want to deal with. There is no noise in leather crafting that doesn’t come from straight up elbow grease. I’d not enjoy woodworking with power tools all weekend (which is why I haven’t picked that up yet. I haven’t figured out what I can expect to get done wir hand tools).

There are more hobbies than that of course. More garment / fiber stuff like weaving, knitting or crochet, making jewelry, welding, black smithing all with various degrees of resources required to get started. Another benefit as a man is that most of the time our trends are much more minimalist so you generally get away with larger and simpler items in those women dominated hobbies like sewing (except formal wear. Suits can fuck right off) so it’s not actually that hard to start one of those hobbies very casually and just end up with something you can use for the next decade and be fine. Like, rings, wallets, shirts, pants, sweaters are probably all gonna be text book „how to make an x“ without much details and be in fashion for the next 20 years.

I know it's common, but cooking is very relaxing to me and I find the results pleasurable. We all have to eat, you can either approach. It like a chore or make it into an enjoyable hobby.

As far as unexpected benefit, maybe it encourages people to visit me, because they know I'll have food here?

Reading books is the strongest dissociative which is what we crave. Longboarding and welding are also strong options. Hackathons when done right are my favorife social hobby but “done right” may be entirely dead.

calling friends on the phone is underrated.

What flavour of hackathon and what does "done right" constitute for you?

One hackathon project I did, we made a minigolf game what you play with your phone on a selfie stick. It was made of websockets and sshtunnels and the worlds worst python physics engine.

Another of my hackathon projects is now a company finishing up a bridge round, with our 510k equivalence paperwork submitted to the FDA a few months ago. It consisted, at time of judging, largely of powerpoint slides and burnt teraflops.

I would categorize the first as a hackathon done right, and the second as the astonishing incentives that whisper “don’t do this hackathon right”

One thing that is a bit more generalist that I enjoy is good natured investments in people.

Stuff like helping people I care about grow or handle challenges, connecting people who would likely get along well, creating or growing communities, being active and doing good stuff in my area, helping people do things like fixing their deck or whatever, a dab of local politics when it's worth it, just plain old keeping in touch etc.

It can be really rewarding and has some great long term benefits for everyone involved. It's not really seen as a hobby but it's certainly a "hobby" I'd love to see more people consciously participate in.

Learning to dance a social partner dance (not a choreographed dance). There are interesting analogies with grammar and syntax in how some of dancing works.

Most unexpected benefit (perhaps predictable to an outsider, but I didn't see it coming) was getting married and moving to Sweden :)

Playing a musical instrument. “Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”

It’s a hobby that simultaneously brings immense gratifying pleasure to oneself, while being able to share it with others to enjoy.

Incredibly fulfilling to get real time feedback of people smiling, swaying their bodies and nodding their head when playing random public pianos that I find, which is also a hobby of mine - seeking out public pianos and sharing music and sometimes even doing free repairs and tunings on them since a lot are in bad shape.

I get lost in flow state when making short films. I think it's the complexity, creativity, and in person-ness of it all.

Generate the idea, break it into scenes, shots, narrative, how to set up the shot, how to frame it, the edit, music, composition, publishing. It's a great hobby for me.

Many good ideas here. At 71, I've taken up two new hobbies: ham radio and Goju-ryu karate, both of which afford an immersive experience and can divert me for hours.

Reading good books.

Not unexpected benefit, but just knowing more things.

The books that you read, the more things you will know.

The universe is expanding, read and let your mind follow suit.

playing music, I have a different appreciation and approach to listening and finding new music. I also found myself supporting new artists and going to concerts more often :)

Judo. Unexpected benefits:

Learn some Japanese. Become less afraid of falling.

35mm photography. Complete opposite of sterile/computational photography. The colors are muted and warm and make everybody happy.

The colors coming out of modern Sony/Canon/Nikon SLRs are technically perfect but people tend to prefer their memories with rose tinted glasses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Manual computational photography. Use any random digital camera with a deep field of focus, take many photos from slightly different viewpoints, then use Hugin (the panorama stitcher) to manually align on items in the desired focal plane. Then use it to project all the images to the same virtual focal plane. Then a little python script to average the images into the output. Crop and see if there are adjustments needed, repeat.

Here are a few examples on my Flickr account: https://flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/7217772029791881...

The images that focus on the Wrigley Building or the Tribune Tower in Chicago have a virtual aperture of about 10 feet across. For most subjects it's more like 6-12 inches in diameter.

I used to do the manual picking of point pairs on the train while commuting to Chicago. It was quite relaxing.

Anything where you are out in a forest

Kayaking - growing confidence, self-knowledge, fitness, social connections. And dolphins.

paper based reading and writing, for the myriad of well known benefits

Yea, I wish I could do paperbacks but the books I want are often not available in my country and shipping is a hassle so I settle for e-books and it hurts my eyes.

But price to pay!

I find e-readers to be a pretty good compromise to reduce eyestrain. Older Kindles are pretty cheap here in the US at least and can side-load free ebooks (e.g. from project gutenberg.) (I guess Amazon may be removing that functionality in newer firmware so you may need to apply a jailbreak to prevent updates/prevent it from being removed.)

Sourdough baking

The problem with baking sourdough is that it is very hard to avoid adverse impact on your waistline.