Why We Should Pursue Our Personal Passions

15 Jan Why We Should Pursue Our Personal Passions

Technology has transformed the way we pursue personal passions. A decade ago personal hobbies might have been seen as amateurish pursuits. Hobbies tended to encompass crafts such as woodworking, candle making, or sewing. Today the internet and the development of digital technologies have made the number of hobbies that are easily available grow rapidly.

Digital technologies have also made our hobbies much more professional. Most importantly technology allows us to connect with others who share the same personal passions as us from anywhere in the world.

It means that communities can grow up around our hobbies with members sharing values, and a social goodwill to collaboratively build something that matters to them. By participating in these types of hobbies we are making a contribution, connecting with others and participating in something with a wider and bigger value than just our hobby itself.

While once a hobby might have had some negative connotations, a distracting activity that was not productive, and even today with the Instagram culture of always wanting more hobbies can be seen as a waste of time which could be spent on generating more economic wealth.
Thankfully though there are many others who see spending time on personal passions as vitally important. Today there is arguably a new golden age of the hobby.

Because it’s so much easier to connect with others and because ideas multiply much faster online, it’s much easier to make a contribution to society when we’re not at work.

For example Wikipedia is the result of 5,000 people working collaboratively, and driven by a passion for sharing knowledge. It’s now a resource used by over a billion people. Most contributors don’t work at Wikipedia, they work on it, on making it better alongside thousands of others.

Hobbies are important because the way we spend our time, reflects what is really meaningful in our lives. Today’s hobbies can also become something much bigger. Have you found an online community that matches your personal passions and lets you make a contribution to something bigger?

When you are doing something you love, you want to work on it more. Passion is a driving force for learning. When you can combine doing that with other like minded people who share the same passions as you something magical can happen!