The Top Four Benefits of Tracking Your Hobbies
What Sparks Your Curiosity?
We’ve been creating productivity tools for years. From the classic lined notebook, to the perfect work planner, to the desktop accessories that tie it all together, our products are designed to help you organize your days. Whether it’s drafting your everyday to-do list, blocking out time in your schedule, or brainstorming complex projects, the right tools can be a game-changer to help you excel at work, school, or simply lead a more organized and peaceful life.
At the end of the day, productivity gives us more time for the things that matter most to us, freeing up our schedules for hobbies, time with family, travel, and more. This is why we created the Activity & Habit Log—a brand new guided format designed to help you document the everyday activities and hobbies that bring you joy.
This log offers just enough structure to plan, track, and reflect—no matter your hobbies or interest. Whether you’re a film buff, avid gardner, woodworker, or at-home chef, writing and recording your interests on paper can deepen your connection to these vital activities that provide meaning and purpose in your life.
Today we’re sharing the top four benefits to tracking and recording your hobbies. Get ready to unlock your potential—one page at a time.
1. Recall the most important details
Imagine this scenario: it’s your first time baking a loaf of bread. You pick a recipe, buy the ingredients and supplies, and get to work. After many hours of kneading, rising, and shaping, your beautiful loaf emerges from the oven and despite not getting quite the rise you envisioned, still tastes delicious.
Two weeks later you repeat this same recipe, but this time your loaf turns out totally different. It not only rose to perfection, but also has a slightly different color and flavor. Maybe the room was a different temperature, or you left the dough to rise slightly longer than last time. But without recording key details, you have no way to compare your processes to figure out what works.
Tracking the details of your favorite hobby or activity is a great way to retain what matters most, and compare across activities or projects. It can also help you recall and implement new skills as you learn them.
2. Achieve your personal goals
The very first step to goal setting? Write it down. Step two? Write down the clear, actionable steps you can take to make that goal a reality. And the reason it works? That is a little complicated. Study after study shows that you’re more likely to remember something if you write it down. But goal setting goes one step further. Not only are you getting the visual cue of seeing your goal written down, but the act of writing and visualizing the details and action steps that make up that goal will encode it in your memory, allowing you to unlock the drive to get it done.
It’s easy to relegate personal goals to the sidelines of your life. Writing down the goals that are just for you is a step in the direction of self care. Whether you want to run a marathon, get more comfortable in the kitchen, start a vegetable garden, or learn to paint, having a dedicated space to write down and explore your goals will help you finally make them a reality.
An entry spread of the Activity & Habit Log dives into the details of a pour-over coffee experiment.
3. Reflect, plan, and improve
When you finish a project, taking the time to review what you’ve tracked and reflect on the highs, lows, and everything in between can help you identify patterns, make adjustments, and plan for next time.
Let’s say you have a goal to read one book per month. You begin tracking every book you read, taking notes about your impressions and key details along to way. At the end of the quarter, reading through each entry can help you identify what genres or qualities captured your attention most, or help you identify patterns in your own habits. Maybe you find that you breeze through certain author’s writings, but the books that take a bit more effort and time leave a stronger impression.
Whatever your takeaways, reflection can unlock even more instrospection and enjoyment of your favorite hobbies and activities.
4. Celebrate your accomplishments
Whatever your aims this year—learning to knit, expanding your reading list, or reflecting on your joyful experiences—we want to help you celebrate them. When you put pen to paper in pursuit of the hobbies and activities that keep you going, you’re not only building healthy habits, but actively celebrating your everyday accomplishments.
We hope that taking the time to focus on what matters most to you, however small it might be, will reap dividends of joy.
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