Americans' Obsession With Productivity Has Infiltrated Hobbies, Historian Says

The desire to make the most of one's time, a concept deeply embedded in the American psyche, has extended beyond work and into personal hobbies, according to historian Gary Cross. This pursuit of productivity, while feeling contemporary, has historical roots in the nation's Protestant work ethic, which viewed labor as a divine calling. As industrialization took hold, the emphasis on productivity intensified, leading to time outside of work being perceived as potentially wasted.

When labor movements secured more leisure time for Americans around the turn of the 20th century, this productivity-focused mindset transitioned into how people approached their free time and hobbies. Author Jenny Odell, who explores the concept of time in her books "Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock" and "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy," observed that this constant pressure to perform and optimize leisure can lead to exhaustion.

Odell suggests that a key to reclaiming the enjoyment of hobbies is to resist the urge for relentless quantification and optimization. She notes that while adults often seek out hobbies for the opportunity to learn, a distinctly American cultural pressure can turn this learning process into a performance metric. "What starts out as wanting to learn something turns into something that you’re giving yourself a score on, without your ever having decided to do that," she explained.

To counteract this tendency, Odell recommends adopting a more playful and experimental approach to hobbies. Drawing from C. Thi Nguyen's book "The Score," which examines how games involve adopting and then shedding values, Odell suggests that engaging in games or cultivating a playful mindset can help break the cycle of optimization. For writers, for example, a metric like "words per day" can become a trap, overshadowing the quality or significance of the words produced.

Failure, often seen as negative, can also play a crucial role in rediscovering the joy of hobbies. Odell argues that as adults, opportunities for safe learning and failure are limited, especially in an era of visible social media. She advocates for embracing failure as a valuable part of the learning process, finding it to be "fun to be bad at something." This perspective reframes the reason for engaging in an activity, shifting focus away from achievement and toward the intrinsic value of participation.

For those who feel they have over-optimized their hobbies or lost touch with their initial enjoyment, Odell suggests intentionally introducing obstacles or exploring the hobby from a new angle. This could involve trying different contexts, new methods, or engaging with different people to relax the grip of perfectionism and rediscover the inherent pleasure in the activity itself.