Hey, so as the title says: How do you guys balance gaming and other hobbies in your freetime? :) Aside from Gaming i also like many other things like Reading, drawing, coding, … But usually when i get home from work I just turn on my PC and game until going to sleep. I really wanna read more books and so on but usually i cant motivate myself and then just game all the time.
Any tips how you guys keep the balance between hobbies? :)
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I usually mix them together in someway. Usually it helps that they mesh well together. It also helps having friends though that help motivate me to get out of the house and do the stuff i can’t do over computers
Most of my gaming is tabletop these days. Since it requires scheduling is regulates itself.
Other hobbies?
I play single player games, and play them when I have the urge to play them. Many of my other hobbies come with commitments; gaming is one that I try to make commitment free.
I game very little, I can’t be in front of screens anymore as that’s what I’m forced to do for work. I fish and golf mostly now. 10% gaming
I find different hobbies come in waves and it’s best not to fight it. I have a racing simulator that I haven’t used in months, but that’s totally ok, because one day I’m gonna have that urge to jump in and I’ll probably be obsessed with it for anywhere from a week to a couple months. I have a modular synthesiser that I haven’t touched in a while, but it’s there for when inspiration hits. I haven’t done any capture the flags since my last Linux install on my main PC, but the other day I had the urge so installed burpsuite and had a lot of fun with that for the evening. Go with the flow.
My advice is do what you want to do, don’t try to force a hobby because in my experience that will kill any enjoyment so fast.
Another option if you really want to do another hobby but you’re just not getting to it, is schedule time for it. Plan an evening where you have free time to do that thing. If you’re spending most of your nights gaming because it’s easy and convenient, but you want to read, plan a Friday night around reading, say from 7pm-10pm. Make sure all your chores are done by 7pm, you’ve had dinner and you have no responsibilities for that time, make sure you’ve got a book pre-selected and prepare for it, get excited for it.
I play games when I want then get interested in another hobby and get involved in that until I lose interest and go back to gaming and so on.
Its supposed to be fun and not work with a schedule so I just play if I want. Don’t if something is more interesting.
Outside of building my PC, gaming is the cheapest of my hobbies so it’s easy to pick over the others!
My other hobbies include automotive (I have a spare motor I’m rebuilding, and a motorcycle I’m fixing), firearms (sport shooting and modifying/accesorizing), and self-hosting (4 separate physical servers with multiple VMs or Podman/Docker totaling over 200TB storage)
Gaming can also take slices of time here and there, the others require more money and larger windows of time.
Don’t play live service software as a service game. They’re designed to suck as much of your time as possible.
Don’t chase leaderboards in multiplayer games. There will always be a bigger fish that is better than you. Maybe do a few ranked games just to see where you fall on the bell curve of players.
Do spend more time playing your single player games. They usually end. And then you can move on to the next story or hobby.
Hobbies don’t have to be constant. Take a break or don’t, just do whatever and don’t feel bad about it.
For you specifically I’d maybe try just choosing a day where you don’t turn on the computer. Try and stop yourself from that first step and see what happens.
I think most of the comment nailed it. Hobbies are supposed to be something you enjoy and it’s okay to take seasons with them.
I plays a lot of games for a months, then a lot of tv/movies, then programming or writing, then 3D printing.
It shouldn’t really matter so long actually you’re actually enjoying whatever free time you have.
You shouldn’t feel pressured to do things in your free time you don’t wanna do 🤷 Hobbies are supposed to be things you enjoy and don’t require motivation.
Try different genres? My favorite genres are fighting games, action games, and shmups: all fun to play in short bursts and give me many more natural stopping points than an RPG would, for example.
Other hobbies? I don’t understand.
Balance? I don’t understand.
If you game too much you can get burnt out. Sometimes you need to take a break from your game by playing a different game. I believe this is the balance they are talking about /s.
Try to plan beforehand what you are doing with your freetime, otherwise we tend to default to what we do the most, in my case is watching YouTube videos.
