For those who have recently reached retirement age, staying occupied, and keeping the brain healthy are two significant concerns. Thankfully, multiple studies have connected taking up a hobby with increasing and maintaining brain health.
Starting a new hobby is also a great way to fill that free time, get in touch with a new community, gain a feeling of accomplishment, which is all an essential part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
So, if you’ve recently retired and finally have the time to take up a new hobby, here are some suggestions.
Exercise
Keeping the body healthy keeps the mind healthy, but don’t worry, you don’t have to take up marathon running or any extreme sport. Spending just 20 minutes per day doing something that elevates your heart rate can have a significant impact on your mental health, and the strength of your bones and muscles.
While gyms might look intimidating, for the most part, they are welcoming offering a great way towards getting a little fitter. Moreover, the staff is always on hand to guide you through how to use the equipment.
Yoga
As a variation on the exercise theme, taking up yoga is a great way to stay flexible. The benefit of yoga is that, unlike running or going to the gym, there are yoga classes for all ranges of physical ability.
Since part of yoga involves breathing exercises, meditation, mindfulness, and self-actualization routines, it can also be an excellent way to combat stress.
Cooking
If a busy work schedule, and the inevitable exhaustion that follows a hard day at work, stopped you from cooking as much as you would have liked to, then retirement is a great time to get busy in the kitchen again.
Not only is learning how to cook a great way to expand your palette, but it also provides benefits for your physical and mental health. Cooking a full meal requires the use of your memory, fine motor skills, and critical thinking, helping you maintain brain healthy while also treating your sense of smell and taste.
Languages
While it’s true that it gets more challenging to learn a new language, the older you get, that just means it’s harder, but far from impossible. Successful language learning is a product of time and commitment, and you’ve got all the spare time you need.
Learning a new language is also a great way to join a new community of both language learners and those who speak it as their native language.
Computer Programming
While it might sound daunting if you’re not too tech-savvy, basic computer programming is on a difficulty par with basic maths or starting to learn a new language. One of the benefits of taking up programming as a hobby is that there is a vast range of subjects you can turn your attention to.
Traditional computer programming might see you creating simple Python programs that can help you calculate compound interest. Programming for Andriod and iOS has really taken off in recent years, with millions of programmers producing hundreds of millions of apps that help people with a huge variety of tasks every day.
When you start, you’re going to be a ways off from producing a mobile gaming phenomenon like Fortnite Mobile, Flappy Bird, or Zoom Poker, but you can certainly start creating small but useful apps like the one that helps you measure your morning pour-over coffee, or track rounds in a game of Bridge.
Crafting
When it comes to creating things as a hobby, there are a vast number of options available to you, but they all have the same essential benefits. Most crafting involves planning and fine motor skills, which help to keep your brain healthy.
You might choose to take up wood carving, model kit making, origami, embroidery, painting, scrapbooking, or any number of other craft-based hobbies. The trick is to find something that excites you and then go with it.
As you can see, there is a wide variety of exciting activities you can engage in to have fun during your retirement. Pick one of them and start a new hobby today.
I agree that maintaining fine motor skills in retirement is just as important as it is in infancy. Hobbies are cools, I love to do hand-made.
I just carried over the same hobbies I was already doing. Tennis, running, fishing and hiking. We did add pickleball. For purely mental exercise I kept serving on a college board of trustees, an engineering academy at my university and chairing a healthcare foundation. I also consult a few hours a week, mostly negotiating agreements for large companies, that’s fairly complex brain exercise. I think if you had a balanced life before retiring you don’t have to add much. I had a demanding job but I still always made time for fun.
I agree Cubert, keeping the brain active as well as keeping fit are important, use-it-or-lose-it applies equally to both and I’ve witnessed a few people giving up on one or the other. You offer some good tips there regarding mental exercise especially language, I’ve taken to learning Chinese characters which can be mind stretching at times particularly with regard to recognition and remembering. We have also taken to tackling prize crosswords with some success, here there’s the added bonus that you might win a bit of dosh too. Our current fave is the UK Guardian ‘Genius’ crossword which we usually manage to finish but have yet to win – never mind. The other great mental stimulus comes from reading of course and plenty of it, or writing something for somebody else to read – both are excellent ! Important to keep thinking and questioning, you may have stopped work but that’s no excuse to stop learning.