5 Hobbies You Can Take Up to Improve Your Business Ability

Free time is a valuable thing. Focusing your entire life around running a business isn’t healthy or productive and only leads to unhappiness and strife. Taking the time to relax and do something you enjoy is a great way to recharge and realign yourself. Beyond that, however, hobbies can actually be a major indirect help to your business, too. As an example, here are five hobbies you can take up to improve your business ability.

1. Golf

As many have said, the most important business you’re party to is likely to happen out on the golf course. Playing through 18 holes with others in the industry is a great way to network while enjoying a slower paced activity to break up the routine. It’s also an effective but low-intensity form of exercise, something you’re probably overdue for given how much time you devote to work. And if golf isn’t your thing, mini golf is more popular and fun than ever, something the new breed of casual business owners and young executives is likely to appreciate.

2. Gardening

It’s hard to understate how good gardening is for a person. Gardening is a relaxing activity that helps to reacquaint the gardener with the joy of nature. Soak up a little sun, get your hands dirty, and let your troubles fall away as you tend to your plants. Not only will this time away leave you feeling a lot more ready to tackle the problems you face in day-to-day business, managing your garden is a fun and stress-free way to roleplay your management tasks. Minor as it may be, you might even be able to cut down on some food expenses if you try growing some fruits and vegetables while you’re at it.

3. Crafting

Making small crafts can be a therapeutic activity for the more creative out there. Engaging your mind and body in small, complex tasks like knitting, weaving, origami, or similar practically forces you to forget about your troubles and responsibilities for a little bit. If you’re good at what you do, you might even be able to sell your creations for a small side profit or gift them to employees or the office to raise morale.

4. Acting

Learning to act is a rewarding skill with benefits far too numerous to list. Whether it’s a class here and there, joining a theater troupe, or just messing around with some friends and a camera, acting allows you to momentarily become someone new and leave behind the life you’re accustomed to. Not only that, getting good at acting necessitates good public speaking and the ability to read a crowd as well as improvisation skills, all things that can greatly help you when running a business.

5. Travel

Traveling is a great way to experience the world outside your tiny slice of it. For many, being able to travel is a major goal of working so hard at their small business. This specifically doesn’t include work-related travel; flying somewhere for a meeting and flying somewhere to relax and experience the local culture are two totally different things, after all. Not only will you return to work with a renewed vigor and new perspective, you might even be able to find something on your journey that inspires some new idea or innovation in your work.

All work and no play does terrible things to even the most devoted of entrepreneurs, so try to take time for yourself away from your small business with any of these five enriching activities. You might even get something out of them that can help your business, too.

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