Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 378. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about how to balance your hobbies when you are a multi passionate person. What to do when there are so many things that you love doing and you don’t have enough time to do them all. How do you balance all of your hobbies and interests? How do you enjoy all of your multiple hobbies and interests without burning out? Sometimes I get so overzealous in signing up for things that my calendar gets so filled with great, fun, exciting stuff, but I no longer have the energy to enjoy them. So that’s what today’s episode is about.

In the meantime, I would like to invite you to check out the Beauteous Me Podcast, if you head over to http://HollyWorton.com/beauty that will redirect you to the podcast where I was a guest last Friday (when I think it came out). So I spoke with Jamilly Whitfield about blocks and overcoming blocks to your success. It was a really enjoyable conversation about mindset and how to release the blocks to achieving our goals. So that that is http://HollyWorton.com/beauty – and I will link to that in the show notes as well so you can find it there.

New Blogs

Also before I get into this week’s topic I wanted to share with you some blogposts that I have written and published recently.

I wrote one on get-outdoors-to-improve-time-management-and-reduce-stress – and this is kind of an add-on from one of my most popular blog posts from all time, it was one of the first blog posts I wrote on this website about how to improve time management and reduce stress. And I really believe that getting outdoors, and doing outdoors activities, is one of the biggest factors in helping me manage stress and also improve my time management and focus.

I also did one which was a request from a listener and friend called hiking-in-mud-top-tips-and-best-shoes-for-running-and-hiking-through-mud – we are now entering into the mud season, I was kind of slipping and sliding on my run this morning and ran through some very deep puddles last week as well and I slid down an Iron Age hill-fort, last Friday, so don’t do what I did and prepare in advance if you know it is going to be muddy and read my blog post.

I also did a post called the-best-backpacks-for-hiking-and-travel – that was a very fun post to put together where I list most, but not all, the backpacks that I own. I have a problem with backpacks, I own too many of them. So I list all of them and what I use them for, why I think you don’t need all the backpacks that I have and what you might need; but I find it really useful to see examples of what people have, not just in terms of backpacks, because I don’t need an excuse to buy a backpack, but other types of products. and if you have any questions please let me know but that is my backpack post.

I also did another one on tips-for-traveling-alone-solo-female-travel-tips – I have been thinking a lot about solo female travel and a lot of women are really afraid to go off and travel on their own and have their own adventures and so I would really like to encourage, everyone listening to this, but also especially women, to get out there and travel, whether it is near to home or further abroad.

Next, allergic-to-social-media-here’s-what-to-do – allergic to social media is one of the top searches that people use to arrive at my website and, I have written a lot about this in the past, but this is kind of a roundup post where I gathered together a bunch of podcast episodes and blog posts that I have written on the topic.

Finally running-the-downs-link-how-to-plan-and-crew-a-downs-link-adventure – I was so excited to post this! So as you may know, I walked the Downs link in I think it was 2016 or 2017 and wrote a book about it and I will be updating that book, possibly next year, but it is a trail that I really enjoy, it is 37½ miles, but it has been rerouted a little bit since, then so it ended up being about 60km. And I did it in three days and made a whole outing of it and stayed overnight at places and then a couple of Sundays ago now my husband ran it all in one day! It was this weekend that we had terrible weather, it was a storm, it was pouring rain the entire day, it was cold, it was miserable. He started running at nine in the morning and finished at five-thirty in the afternoon and I am so proud of him. And I crewed for him, so I met him at three different points along the way, filled up his water bottles, gave him new gels and took his old gel trash and sent him on this way and so the blog post is about how to plan to run the Downs Link and how to help someone run the Downs Link. So a checklist of the things that you need to bring, and the things you need to ask to make sure that they are okay, I really loved writing that post because I love helping people to see these trails in different ways. So I walked the trail in three days, I would like to walk it in one day and see how that goes. I know walking it in three days was really challenging for me back when I did it but I have now learned not to walk in the summer and I think if I go either in the winter or early Spring, I think it is do-able for me to walk it all in one day, if my husband could run it in a day, I think I could walk it. And it is probably going to be one of the things that I walk as I plan for my two walking-ultras that I am doing next year; so I have got a 50k, and a 100k, so it sounds perfect to me!

So those are my blog posts and let’s get into today’s topic.

Today’s Topic

How to balance your hobbies when you are a multi passionate person? This has been something that has been on my mind a lot lately as I put together my yearly planner and as I get ready to do my own yearly planning myself, which I usually do at the end of October. I am super-excited to release this planner and you will hear more about it probably in the beginning of November when it should be ready. I took my time requesting that my cover designer start working on it, so we are not going to be able to work on it until the end of October, but the interior is already designed and laid out and I am super, super, excited to share this with you. So planner will be coming soon!

In the meantime, how to balance your hobbies when you are a multi passionate person? I have three main kind of hobbies, physical fitness activities that I partake in, running, trail running now, apparently I am getting into that, hiking, camping, backpacking, and that kind of thing (I kind of lump those all into one category) and kickboxing, which I still love.

How do I balance all this? I am not at a point where I can work out twice a day yet, I haven’t reached that level of fitness, I really want to so that I can fit more things into my day, but, in the meantime, I have kind of been doing one thing a day and having some days off. So I usually end up working out five days a week, or six days a week, and that is what I have been capable of doing, but I find it really hard to balance. I have only been going to kickboxing twice a week, I really would like to step that up and go three times a week. I have only been running twice a week, but I would really like to step that up and up to three times a week. Hiking, it is the kind of thing that is going to happen on special occasions when I have an outdoors course, or when I go camping and that kind of thing. I am really struggling to fit all this in, and I have some ambitious goals for myself in all of those areas next year and I really want to be able to prepare for them. So that is why I have been thinking about this a lot, how am I going to fit this into my schedule? I have to run a business; I have client work to do. That stuff is super, super, important and my hobbies are an extra and I am not at a place where I can make them the focus of my life.

Now yes, when I go and I do a day trip, like I did last Friday, and I visit hill forts and that is research for a blog that is kind of work because it will give me a blog post when I am finished with it, it is also really a hobby. So I really struggling to think how I am going to fit this all into my schedule and I know this will become more clear once I do my planning process, and once I get my year scheduled for next year. In the meantime, I have got this on my mind.

Here is how I plan to do this. I have these three big things that I love and of course writing is another thing that I love but that is kind of my business, rather than my hobby, but there are all these other things that pop up from time to time and I think, oh I would love to do that! Whether it is a workshop or a weekend retreat or an extended course. I keep coming across things and think I would really love to learn that, or I would really love to do that…and I just don’t have the time. So I am starting to say no to things because I just don’t have the time.

So how to balance your hobbies? Start out by making a list. I have got my list of non-negotiables or must-haves and my non-negotiable are trail running, kickboxing and outdoors stuff and by outdoor stuff I mean hiking, camping, backpacking, I lump those all into one category because that is different from my running, because my running requires a different kind of training, so those are my three non-negotiables.

My ‘nice to haves’, nice to have it is hard to delegate things to this list because I have got things like my ethnobotany course next year, which is like a nine-month programme which is going to be quite intense, I think it is nine weekends throughout the year, plus a lot of work that we have to do at weekends. I am not making any progress on my Druid stuff and I would like to, maybe it is not the time yet, but I have got that. That is important to me, but it is not a non-negotiable, it has been delegated to a nice to have, and so many other little one-off workshops that I keep coming across. I also have my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship, kind of the second level of that, which was supposed to happen this year, it got cancelled and I haven’t heard anything about it for next year and I am kind of afraid that I am going to hear about it when it is too late and I have got my calendar booked, but there we are.

Then we have got activities that you can declutter from your life, all the ‘shoulds’. So anything extra that is not really juicy, or exciting to you, the stuff that you feel that you should do. So make a list of those three separate categories, the non-negotiables, the nice-to-haves, and the shoulds, the stuff that you can declutter. I think it is important to take an honest look at your life and your activities and your hobbies and see what is important to you.

So I talked last week in episodes 377 about how to priorities your hobbies and how to make your hobbies a priority in your life to make sure that you do that. This is more about prioritising amongst your hobbies, so out of all of your hobbies, which ones are the most important, which ones are great, that you can do without. I have so many hobbies that are nice to have, painting, I used to paint all the time, I love painting and I haven’t painted in years. I miss it, I really miss that form of creative expression, but I just don’t have time, so something has to kind of fall into that secondary hobby group.

I would say it is probably, unless you are retired and you have all the time in the world, you probably won’t be able to handle more than three non-negotiables, must-haves or primary hobbies, most people probably won’t be able to handle that many, depending on what your lifestyle is like. If you have got kids, if you have got a family, you are going to have less time, maybe you need to pick one that is non-negotiable. You will know what your life is like and you will know what you lifestyle can handle, and you will know what your energy levels can handle, because some people love being busy, busy, busy, all the time. I have a lot of friends who were like always super active in university, in all the clubs, and they were doing all the stuff and it just sounded so exhausting to me, I really need some time during each day and during each week when I can rest and relax and just not worry about having tons of stuff to do every single minute. So know what your energy levels are like, know what you can do, and it is going to be different for everyone.

Next, it might be worth writing down, alongside each hobby or activity, why that hobby or activity is important to you, what does it give you? How does it bring your joy? And what do you want to get out of doing it?

So for me, let’s look at trail running, because that is a fairly new things that I have gotten back into, what does it give me? For one, it gives me better performance in my hiking and my kickboxing, which is a really interesting and pleasant unintended consequence effect, that is really good. It also gives me that feeling of just stretching myself and stretching my limits and I know that helps me stretch my limits in other areas of my life. How does it bring me joy? It makes me feel so good, physically and the endorphins from running, those things are good. This morning I went out for a run and I only intended to run about 40 minutes, and I ended up doing 8km, I didn’t plan to do that much but it felt so good and I am so glad I did because I just felt fantastic afterwards.

What do I want to get out of doing them? I want to stretch myself and see where I can go and I want to start running races, not because I want to work on my time but because I want to have that kind of framework of having an official event as a milestone and train for because I think that will give me structure to my running and to my training. So that’s that.

What goals do I have? Or what goals do you have for each of your interests, hobbies, or activities? So for me, with my walking, I have got a couple of long distance trails that I want to do next year, and I want to take that to the next level by camping rather than staying at B&Bs. So that is my goal for my walking next year and I also have those two ultras that I am doing next year. I am doing a 50k and 100k those are my goals for walking. Running, I really want to do a half-marathon and a marathon next year. I have also got my black belt waiting and I don’t know when we are going to do that kind of grading. It might be next year, it might be the following year, but if I can do it next year I absolutely will.

And what do you want to get out of doing them? What do you want to get out of doing each of these activities?

Next ask yourself are there any upcoming events that you need to plan for or train for? For me it is with the walking ultras, the marathon and half-marathon, the kickboxing grading, those are things that only happen at certain times of the year and there are tons of marathons, running events, ultra-walking things, tons and tons of these events. So I could plan them for any time of the year but those are things that I need to get in my calendar and pay for them and train for the. So if you have any events like that you need to make sure you get the into the calendar and you have a training plan for them.

Then you need to prioritise your non-negotiables, make sure they get in the calendar and make sure that you have time and the space to engage in them, to partake in them, see if you can fit in any of your nice to haves, do you have time to do any of those secondary hobbies or activities?

Then next make sure that you have a list for all of your nice to haves, so I have a list of the courses, workshops, and retreats that I want to do, so I don’t forget them. There are so many things that I see that think, ‘wow that would be amazing’ and so I copy and paste the link into this Evernote page, and I have just got them there. So you can consult this list whenever you have spare time or money for something new and you can ensure yourself that you won’t forget about them.

So the other day I was going running and I passed by this sign for this woman who does basket-weaving classes in my area. I have had this weird obsession with doing basket-weaving all year really, because there is someone who I have been following on Instagram that is kind of in my area and then I found this woman and I went on her website and looked at the dates and thought, wow that would be so much fun! But I don’t really have time to do basket-weaving, so I popped the link into my Evernote. A wilderness quest, I have been wanting to do one for a few years now, that link is in there. Other bushcraft courses, herbal healing, and remedies, I have been wanting to do a ton of those kinds of courses, I have located several that I am really interested in and those are on the list.

So make that list of all the courses and workshops and retreats and all the stuff that you want to do so that you can have them as a kind of menu to choose from when you have some spare time. And you can also add things that aren’t formal events, like painting, it is kind of hard for me to forget that I enjoy painting, but I can add that in there as well. Maybe I will have a weekend coming up soon, I don’t know when or I have nothing to do and I want to take some time off from the computer and maybe I could pull out my arts stuff and paint, that would probably be really good for my brain, because I have been spending my weekends doing workcation weekends and writing and working on my projects and I think painting would be very good for my brain, so that is another thing you could add to your kind of menu of activities.

Then go into planning your year. So again I have this planner that I use, I will be making that available in a couple of weeks. Plan your year. I usually print out, I will include this in the planner, but I have got a one-page yearly calendar and I just highlight it with different colours and so ethnobotany course is green, my workcations are purple and I just colour code which weekends I have stuff and which weekends are free. So the races are going to go in there, all the stuff that is already planned is going to go in there and any upcoming events, so if I have a kickboxing grading, my races, my ultras, all that stuff is going to go in there.

Next plan your weeks and months, look at each week and each month, how can you fit your non-negotiable or primary hobbies in there. So for me, like I said, I have been kickboxing twice a week, I have been running twice a week, I would like to step that up, but it hasn’t happened yet. See what you can fit in and then re-evaluate your priorities on a regular basis because they will change as your life changes and as your interests change.

So for me, as I approach my kickboxing grading, that is going to become my number one priority because I will be preparing for that very big, very physically challenging, event. When my walking ultras are approaching I am going to be focussed on training for those because that is a big thing I don’t want to suffer through that, I want to really enjoy it. When any of my running events are coming up, same thing, I will be focussed on that. Prioritise your hobbies and activities based on these events which again will change based on anything that you have got planned.

Next remove distractions, so try to clear up your calendar as much as you can; reduce procrastination, reduce your time wasting activities, whatever that is for you, whether that is watching the news, whether it is watching television, maybe it is scrolling endlessly through social media, figure out how you waste time and try not to. Just remind yourself all the time that you waste scrolling through social media, watching the news, or whatever your time wasters are, could be time spent on your hobbies. For me in the past this has just been a matter of training my brain to notice when I am doing these things and make myself stop and make a different decision and I found that really to be like a muscle that you train over time and in the beginning it was really hard to pull myself away from these things but soon it became easy and I would recognise what I was doing and just stop, because I realised that wasn’t how I wanted to be spending my time and I could be spending it doing much more interesting things.

So as you are removing distractions it is also good to declutter your calendar. Get rid of anything that is a should that you really don’t have to do, learn how to say no to things even if they are interesting and remember just because someone invites you to do something doesn’t mean that you have to say yes. However be aware that if you keep saying, ‘no, no, no’, to your friends, your friends might distances yourself if you keep saying no without giving a reason. So if you are training for an event and that is going to be your focus for the next couple of months, be sure to say that and be sure to try to connect with them in other ways if that is important to you, but don’t just shut them out of your life. Be aware that you need to give a reason for why you keep turning them down, but it is okay, know that as well.

So make your plan for the year, make your plan for the upcoming months, and check in with yourself as you go along. So be aware that, even though you love these things, you might burn out from doing the things that you love, burn out isn’t always from things you dislike, it doesn’t always happen when you have got a job that you hate, or something else that is unpleasant. You can burn out from doing all the things that you love. So just be aware and check in with yourself on a regular basis and make sure that you are enjoying your multiple hobbies and interests and you have still got the energy to keep up with them. And again, re-evaluate your priorities, re-evaluate how much time you have to enjoy these hobbies and re-evaluate your daily, weekly, monthly, schedule and see how it fits for you because life changes, our priorities change, and our interests change as well.

Feedback/Contact

So that is all for now, I hope you found this episode interesting and useful, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought, you can email me at: [email protected], or find me online and get in touch there. I also love to hear from you if you have any topics or suggestions for topics for this podcast or for any blog posts. I really, really, enjoy it when people send me ideas because I know what questions you have that I might not have or had years ago and forgot it was a question. You know the hiking and mud thing; I am used to hiking in mud and I really enjoyed that because it made me think about what are my mud strategies and what happens when I don’t employ them, and I end up sliding down a hill covered with mud! So I find it really, really, useful to get topics from other people.

I have recently decided to start inviting more guests on the show, so again not really interview style episodes but kind of conversations, like I have been doing with Joanna, and I am really, really, looking forward to this. I have got two interesting people coming up and several more people that I invited but I haven’t yet booked in, but I am really looking forward to sharing their stories with you and sharing the conversations with you.

So that is all for now. Remember to visit: https://hollyworton.com/378 for the show notes on this episode, thank you.