Hobbies Matter: Why Wellbeing Needs a Place in Your Diary

For a long time, I thought hobbies were what you did once the important things were handled. A reward, saved for a version of the week that rarely turned up.

I don't think that anymore.

Most mornings after school drop off, when the tide cooperates, Freya and I end up at Beachmere.

There's a dog park there that opens straight onto the sand when the tide goes out. A huge stretch of it. Freya, eighteen months old and still very much in training to be my companion dog, tears off after the water. Chases the tiny fish left behind in the shallows. Loses her mind with joy over something so small.

And I just stand there, occasionally throwing the ball as far as I can into the shallows, watching the splashes as Freya bounds after it.

There's no score in that game. I throw, she runs, the water sometimes takes the ball back before she gets there, and none of it matters even a little. For those few minutes, nothing I do needs to produce anything at all. Not managing anything. Not responding to anyone. Not solving a problem or holding space for someone else's big feelings. Just a woman and her dog, on a beach, being part of something bigger than either of us.

Turns out there's a reason it works on me the way it does, and it's not just in my head. It's actually in my brain. Walking brings down cortisol, the stress hormone that's running the show when you feel wound up or overwhelmed. Movement increases blood flow to the brain, which helps it recover and function better, not just in the moment but over time. And something like watching water and a ball disappear into the shallows asks very little of your attention. It doesn't demand you focus, the way a screen or a difficult conversation does. It just gently holds it. Psychologists call that soft fascination, and it's one of the only things that lets an overworked, overstimulated brain actually rest and reset.

That's not woo. That's neuroscience. And it's happening every single time Freya chases that ball into the water, whether I notice it or not.

There's actually a name for what happens between us out there too. When a dog and their person hold eye contact, both of you get a hit of oxytocin, the same bonding hormone that surges between a parent and a newborn. Dogs are, as far as we know, the only animal that's evolved to trigger that response in us on purpose. Every time Freya looks up at me mid-chase, tail going, we're not just having a nice moment. We're running on biology that's been building between our two species for around 15,000 years.

When the tide isn't cooperating, it's a smaller version of the same thing. Addy gets dropped at school, Freya rides along in the car (ears out the window, taking it all in, she genuinely loves it), and we find a patch of grass instead of a beach. Either way, before I start on the day's tasks, there's this. A rhythm I didn't plan to build. It just became part of my wellbeing toolkit on its own.

There's something else I've noticed, though, and it took me longer to see than I'd like to admit. It's not the mornings the rhythm holds that teach me the most. It's the mornings it doesn't.

A day gets busy. We're running late. I decide the dog park can wait, just this once, because there's a deadline or an appointment or simply too much crammed into too little time. On paper, nothing has changed. I've still had a morning. Addy still got to school. Freya still got walked, eventually, later, at some point.

But I notice it. By early afternoon I'm shorter with Addy than I mean to be. Smaller things feel bigger than they should. I'm less patient, less present, and if you asked me why, I probably wouldn't connect it to a missed walk on a beach. I'd blame the deadline, or the traffic, or just say I was "having a day."

That's the part worth paying attention to. Not just building a rhythm, but noticing what happens to you when a piece of it quietly drops out. Because the rhythms that hold us together are often invisible while they're working. We only really see them in the gap they leave behind.

You've probably heard the saying: three days to notice, three weeks to build, three months to make it stick. It's catchy, and it's not exactly wrong, but it's not quite what the research says either. The real number, from a well-known UCL study, sits closer to 66 days on average before a new behaviour starts to feel automatic. And that's just the average. Depending on the person and the habit, it ranged anywhere from 18 days to well over 200.

I didn't consciously build the Beachmere mornings over 66 days, or three weeks, or three months. I just kept showing up, one ordinary morning after another, until one day I noticed it wasn't a decision anymore. It was simply what we did.

Which is probably why it stings more than it should when a morning gets missed. It didn't build itself overnight, and it won't stay standing by accident either. Rhythms like this need the same thing they took to form in the first place: showing up again, especially on the mornings it would be easier not to.

Showing up is one thing when you already know something is there for you to protect. It's a different kind of showing up when you haven't even noticed there's something worth protecting in the first place.

What I've Been Missing

Here in Queensland, school finishes at 2:30. For a long time I didn't think much of that. It was just the time on the calendar I needed to be at the gate.

It was only recently that I actually sat with what that means. A 2:30 finish gives me a whole extra hour in my day with Addy that a lot of families simply don't get. An hour that isn't homework time or dinner-prep time or anything time. Just time.

And I've been taking it for granted.

Not wasting it, exactly. Just not noticing it. Letting it slide past the way you let a familiar view slide past a window you drive by every day.

Noticing works in both directions, though. Sometimes it shows you what you've been overlooking. Other times it shows you exactly what's missing.

I love to garden. Properly love it, hands in the dirt, watching something grow because I tended it. There's something in that act I don't think I fully understood until I lost access to it. The slow, unglamorous proof that showing up for something, day after day, actually changes it. Right now I'm living in a caravan, and not having even a small patch of soil to potter in has been harder than I expected. It was never really about the vegetables. It's about needing something to tend, in a season where so much else feels temporary. So I've started planning something smaller. A few raised pots. Herbs I can actually use when I cook. Maybe some lettuce I can walk out and grab for a salad. Not a garden in the way I used to have one. But something rooted, in a life that currently isn't.

I always assumed gardening would show up in a cortisol study the same way walking does. Turns out the evidence is more mixed than that. The psychological benefits are strong and consistent, calmer mood, more life satisfaction, but the physical stress-hormone changes are harder to pin down. Which tells me something too. Maybe not every form of wellbeing needs a hormone to prove it's real. Sometimes "I feel better when I do this" is evidence enough.

And then there's the smaller stuff. I genuinely love finding a new coffee shop. Nothing deep about it, except maybe it is. A small, low-stakes way of staying curious about the world instead of just getting through it.

Learning something new does the same thing for me, when I let it. Not the kind of learning that comes with a deadline, an assessment, or a certificate at the end. Just picking something up because it's interesting, with absolutely nothing riding on whether I get good at it. There's a particular kind of relief in being a beginner at something on purpose, with no one watching and nothing to prove.

**Hobbies Don't Need More Time. They Need a Place in the Diary.**

I looked up where the word "hobby" actually comes from, half expecting something dull. It isn't.

"Hobby" started as a pet name, a shortened, affectionate form of "Robert," the way we might say "Rob" or "Robby" today. Somewhere along the way it became the name for a small pony, and then, by the 1500s, a child's toy: a stick with a carved horse's head on top, the kind children would straddle and gallop around the yard on, going absolutely nowhere, thrilled about it the whole time. A hobby horse. By the 1600s, "hobby" had come to mean anything a person rode with that same enthusiasm, purely because they loved it. Not to get anywhere. Not to win anything. Just for the ride.

That is, quite literally, what Freya and I are doing on that beach.

Here's what I think we get wrong about hobbies and wellbeing. We treat them like extras. Things we'll get to once everything else is done. Things that would be nice, if only we had more hours in the day. But the word itself was never about getting anywhere. It was about the ride.

And here's where it meets the habit conversation from earlier. A hobby is something you choose, because it delights you. A habit is something your brain eventually stops needing you to choose at all. The two aren't opposites. A hobby, ridden often enough, becomes a habit, the same way a child's toy horse turned into a word for anything you'd happily ride in circles, for no reason other than it makes you feel alive.

But look at what's actually sitting underneath each of these. A ball thrown into the shallows with nowhere to be. A pot of herbs that doesn't need to feed anyone. A coffee shop with no purpose beyond being new. Something new to learn with no one grading it. An hour with my daughter that was already mine, every single day, and I nearly let it pass unclaimed.

None of it produces anything. None of it was ever meant to.

That's the part worth sitting with. Wellbeing rarely asks us to find more time. More often, it asks us to notice the time we already have, and to choose it on purpose instead of waiting for permission to stop being useful for a while.

The point is that a beach run, a pot of herbs, a new coffee shop, something new picked up just because, an hour with my daughter I nearly missed, these are not the reward for a wellbeing practice.

They are the practice.

Hobbies and Wellbeing Reflection Question

What's already woven into your day, right now, that you've been taking for granted? Not something you need to add. Something already there, waiting for you to actually notice it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

💙 Rachel Smith

The Educators Well

Wellbeing First • Empower Through Learning • Lead With Purpose • Lift Each Other Up