How to Distinguish Between a Passion and a Hobby

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Examining Your Time Use

When you are driving, trying to fall asleep, or exercising, notice what you think about the most. If you find yourself constantly thinking about an activity when you aren’t doing it, that may be a passion.

Hobbies generally only occupy your mind when you are doing them, or on occasion otherwise. Passions stick with you all day and you’re always thinking about some aspect of them.

If you are always looking for garage sales and thrift shops, checking your online seller accounts, and trying to find buyers, buying and selling used goods is a passion of yours.

Pay attention to what you do during a given day or a whole week. Notice what you do most frequently or for the longest amount of time in each session. The activities that you spend the most time on are likely to be passions rather than hobbies.^{[1] X Research source}
For example, let’s say in the course of a week you play guitar every day, shoot baskets twice, write bits of poetry four or five times and play Xbox once. Guitar and poetry are top contenders to be passions, while basketball and gaming are hobbies.

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After you do an activity, check whether you looked at the clock recently. When you pursue a passion, you don’t notice that a lot of time goes by. You’re so engaged that time passes quickly. If you check the time a lot, it’s probably a hobby.
For example, a half-hour of basketball is plenty, but two hours of picking guitar strings passes like minutes because it’s a passion.

Look at your work and home responsibilities and see if anything consistently gets in the way of them. If you tend to pursue a certain activity over other things that feel like work, it’s because you’d rather do your passion.

Say you are working on a research project. Instead of reading up on the topic, you spend an hour taking the perfect picture for the presentation. Photography is your passion.

If your dirty dishes pile up for a week because you spend an hour practicing drums, it’s because you’re passionate about playing.

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Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Checking Your Attitude

Start doing the activity and after you’ve been at it a while, gauge how you feel. If you’re enjoying yourself and feel calm, you are probably pursuing a hobby. If you feel almost upset, or at least a bit tense or focused, you’re working on a passion.^{[2] X Research source}

This may seem crazy, but passions tend to cause you a bit of suffering. You care a lot about it, so pursuing a passion is not usually a calming experience.

Hobbies are enjoyable and pleasant, so you should feel pretty at peace when you’re engaging in a hobby.

For example, head out to your woodshop and start building something. If you are in deep concentration and feeling on edge, you’re passionate about woodworking. Otherwise, you’d feel relaxed.

Do the activity a little more frequently than you usually would. Pay attention to whether you are working hard to get better at it or if you are simply doing it for the enjoyment you get in the moment. You work harder on passions than on hobbies.^{[3] X Research source}

You work to be the best at a passion, but you are satisfied with having fun with a hobby.

For example, if you are always cooking new recipes that challenge you, it’s a passion. If you like to cook chili and cinnamon rolls repeatedly, that’s more of a hobby.

EXPERT TIP

"We live in an amazing time where nearly any hobby can be developed into a financially sustainable career."

Adrian Klaphaak, CPCC
Career Coach
Adrian Klaphaak is a career coach and founder of A Path That Fits, a mindfulness-based boutique career and life coaching company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also an accredited Co-Active Professional Coach (CPCC). Klaphaak has used his training with the Coaches Training Institute, Hakomi Somatic Psychology, and Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) to help thousands of people build successful careers and live more purposeful lives.

Adrian Klaphaak, CPCC
Career Coach

Make a list of values you have about life, society, or your faith or belief system. Then make a list of pursuits that you think might be passions. If any of the activities line up with values you hold, those are passions.

This takes some abstract thinking, so give yourself time to look over the lists.

For example, you might list hiking, singing, and gaming as hobbies. You might list being adventurous, staying healthy, admiring beauty, and unplugging from technology as values. As you can see, hiking aligns with those values, so it’s a passion.

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Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Putting Your Hobbies to the Test

Pick something you think is a passion, and talk to a friend about it. When you’re done talking, ask them if you seemed intense or casual about it. If you talk for a long time and they say you were intense about it, that’s a sign it’s a passion.^{[4] X Research source}

When you are talking about your passion, you will probably speak louder, faster, and more. You’ll get worked up talking about it. You’ll sound excited and won’t want to stop talking.

If they say you didn’t seem to know very much, or you kept a pretty even tone, it’s a hobby. You’ll feel much more excitement talking about a passion than you will talking about a hobby.

Choose something you do every week, or every few days, and stop doing it. If you think about it daily, miss it, and don’t feel like doing anything else, you’ve found something that’s a passion. If it doesn’t bother you to stop doing it, it’s likely to be a hobby.

If you typically play ultimate frisbee every Wednesday, skip it this week. If you fill the time with something else and barely think about it, it’s a hobby.

Take a break from editing the film footage you are always shooting. If after two days you can’t think straight because you want to be at the computer, you know it’s a passion.

Get an opinion besides your own from a set of standardized questions. Be honest about your feelings on the activity. You’ll be able to learn how much it means to you from a set of questions and not just your own thoughts.^{[5] X Research source}

A quiz like this can’t tell you without a doubt whether something is a passion or a hobby. However, it forces you to be more objective about the activity than you are on your own.

The websites of Clarity on Fire, Goodnet, and Paid to Exist offer different types of quizzes that help you gain a better idea of what hobbies could be passions.

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