Everyone has hobbies, whether they recognise it or not. For example, workaholics who don’t seem to have any “normal” hobbies might be really into, say, writing slick SQL queries. Code golf is a hobby too. By definition, a hobby is something you do for pleasure when you’re not working. And for the record, writing slick SQL queries isn’t work.

Some hobbies are better than others, though. Examples of not-as-good hobbies include motorcycling (dangerous), graffiti painting (illegal) and doom-scrolling social media (depressing). A benchmark for hobby quality: ask whether your mom would like it. So, which hobbies would your mom like?

Some hobbies naturally lead to the formation of good habits. For example, a big NBA geek is more likely to pick up basketball. If you’re into cooking, you might start meal-prepping healthy food. An interest in interior design could motivate you to tidy your room every weekend. Some hobbies when done regularly become good habits in themselves. A maybe-useful name for such hobbies: habbies. Think meditation, managing one’s personal finances or journaling.

There are also practical considerations. The ideal hobby is cheap, requires little equipment and can be done anywhere. In this sense, hiking is better than golf and crocheting is better than photography.

Hobbies are also expressions of individuality. Playing the saxophone doesn’t map to a good habit in an obvious way. In fact, since practising is so time-consuming, it may very well prevent you from building some good habits. However, if you play the saxophone as a hobby, you’re a saxophone player. Contrast this with the hobby of scrolling Reddit; it doesn’t make you a something.

Other hobbies help build career capital. Take coding, for example. The ability to write simple scripts – or to debug LLM-written scripts – is useful for most knowledge workers. Other examples of career-building hobbies include learning languages and doing science olympiads.

But many good hobbies seem perfectly useless. Recall the definition: hobbies are activities done for leisure. Does the hobby allow you to recharge? “Productive hobbies” may not be as productive as they seem. Painting, watching Netflix and playing boardgames might be terrific hobbies from this perspective.

Back to our original question: which hobbies would your mom like?

To compare hobbies X and Y, you can use the above criteria, asking whether the hobby is a habby, if it’s practical and so on. But rather than making pairwise comparisons between hobbies, I prefer thinking in terms of hobby portfolios. Ideally, you’d have one sports-related hobby, one idiosyncratic hobby, one work-related hobby and one relaxing hobby. Obviously there can be overlaps between these categories. For example, playing soccer can also be relaxing, in that it takes your mind off work. There may very well be other categories of hobbies worth investing in too.

Anyway, there are both personal and professional benefits of having a good hobby portfolio. While we cannot choose some of our hobbies – I’ll always be a sucker for books on behavioural economics – surely we should try optimising our hobby portfolios, at least a bit. After all, having a good hobby portfolio seems like a key part of living a good life.

Thanks to Isaia Gisler, Stanislas Nicolau and Abhinand Shibu for a valuable discussion on this topic.