Today’s fast-paced and highly competitive corporate world often leaves little time for rest and leisure activities for business leaders.
However, as the saying goes: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
While prioritizing your business is essential for its growth and success, your entire life shouldn’t revolve around it. Doing so makes you more vulnerable to burnout, impairing decision-making and creativity.
Thus, for many business leaders, the benefits of having hobbies go beyond personal enjoyment – they also contribute to their professional success.
What are the benefits you’ll get from having hobbies? Let’s find out.
Improves Your Work-Life Balance
One main benefit of having hobbies is a healthier work-life balance.
Hobbies help you form stronger boundaries between your business and personal life, allowing you to unwind and avoid burnout.
This gives you a much-needed mental break to clear your head so you can make better decisions for your business when you dive back in.
Additionally, hobbies like painting, model-building, or dancing improve your mental health by offering a meditative experience that reduces stress and anxiety.
Helps Keep You in Shape
Besides keeping you mentally healthy, pursuing your hobbies can also keep you in good health.
For instance, sports, hiking, and yoga give you a much-needed workout, helping you remain resilient against the ill effects of stress on your body.
Even something as simple as taking a daily morning jog can help you feel energized before going to work.
If you like baking or cooking, you can make your own food instead of eating processed or instant food. This helps you avoid consuming too many harmful artificial ingredients and preservatives.
Opens Up Networking Opportunities
Networking events aren’t the only place you can go to grow your network.
Hobbies provide a much more relaxed and informal setting to meet new people, helping you form genuine and lasting connections.
These connections give you fresh perspectives on your current problems, provide opportunities for collaboration, and open new business opportunities.
Aside from in-person events, most hobbies have online groups you can join to connect with even more people worldwide.
Teaches You Valuable Career Lessons
Sometimes, hobbies can teach you more about being a better leader than any seminar or lecture could.
Take sports, for example. Team sports like basketball or volleyball emphasize teamwork, communication, and having an adaptive game plan to succeed.
On the other hand, single sports like chess teach you patience and forward thinking.
Additionally, starting a new hobby teaches you the value of humility and perseverance.
Remember, everyone starts somewhere when trying a hobby and it’s alright to make mistakes, so long as you learn from them. Sounds familiar?
Boosts Your Creativity
Today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business world demands constant innovation.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to be creative on demand. There will be days when you’ll encounter creative blocks and no matter what you do, your brain won’t produce any ideas.
Fortunately, one of the benefits of having hobbies is it fosters creativity and innovation.
Many hobbies encourage critical thinking and problem-solving, helping you think outside the box to solve your current problems.
Work Hard, Play Hard
For some people, hobbies are a frivolous distraction from achieving their career or business goals.
However, as the points above show, the right ones can be very beneficial to a business leader.
Struggling to find time in your busy schedule for your hobbies? If so, what you need is a virtual personal assistant to help streamline your operations and free up your time.
If you’re looking for virtual personal assistants who can do that for you, Remote Staff is here to help.
Click here to see our list of candidates for this and other virtual assistant roles like admin assistants. We also have candidates for roles like data entry clerks and virtual receptionists. Good luck!
John Carlo Pagsolingan is a carefree yet hardworking writer with aspirations of becoming a teacher in the future. He believes that remote working isn’t just a substitute; but is a legitimate alternative to face-to-face work. Learn more as he writes about the advantages of remote work and tips for aspiring remote workers.
