The art of creative leisure is a critical component of success.
Entrepreneurs are a special breed of people. They are ambitious, bold and dreamers. However, even the most motivated entrepreneur needs to take a break from time to time. Spending every second of your day on your business is stressful and you will lose your momentum very soon. If he wants to stay energetic and ready to take on new challenges at work, hobbies are what he needs.
Furthermore, hobbies can also help entrepreneurs develop new skills and perspectives that can lead to new opportunities in their business endeavors. If you’re not sure where to start when choosing a hobby, try these five hobbies!
Travel
Whether you’re exploring new countries or just taking a quick getaway, traveling is one of the best ways to broaden your perspective and spark new thoughts. When you’re out of your comfort zone and surrounded by new sights, sounds, and people, you’re more likely to have those “aha” moments that could lead to big breakthroughs in your business.
Manjit Minhas, co-founder and CEO of Minhas Breweries, attributes much of her success to her love of travel in a blog post. “Traveling keeps your mind sharp, and in a new environment, you may find that your creativity really soars,” she wrote. Exposure to new cultures, foods and environments has inspired many of her beer and spirits products. For example, her trip to her father’s ancestral home in India sparked the idea of retrieving her family’s whiskey recipe.
Koel Thomae, the founder of Noosa Yoghurt, also had a eureka moment during a trip. In 2004, he made a trip back to his native Australia and tried a new type of yogurt there. In 2009, he turned that recipe into Noosa Yoghurt, a brand with US$220 million in sales in 2017.
As well as stimulating new ideas, traveling also gives you the chance to see how businesses work in different parts of the world. By looking at the way businesses in other countries work, you can gain insights to improve your own business model. Also, traveling is a great way to relieve stress and learn more about different cultures, making you a more well-rounded and interesting person.
learning a new language
Anyone who has tried to learn a new language knows that it is not an easy task even for the most intelligent people. In addition to memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules, you must also learn to think in a new way. So why would anyone want to get into that trouble? Well, it turns out that learning a new language has quite a few benefits, especially for entrepreneurs.
First, being bilingual or multilingual can give employers a significant advantage. You can open new markets and help build relationships with international customers or partners. Also, learning a new language can help improve cognitive skills, such as problem solving and multitasking. Also, he shows that he is willing to go the extra mile to learn something new and challenging. This kind of dedication and perseverance is essential for any successful entrepreneur.
As a result, it’s no surprise that many successful entrepreneurs can speak multiple languages:
- Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group, says that learning English is one of his keys to success;
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, picks up Mandarin to communicate with his wife;
- Paul Bulcke, former CEO of Nestlé, can speak Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish fluently; Y
- Marissa Mayer, co-founder of Sunshine Contacts, took German and Spanish classes at a very young age.
So, if you’ve wanted to learn another language, don’t wait any longer! It could be the best decision you’ve ever made for your business.
Photography
Now that everyone walks around with a smartphone with a high-quality camera in their pocket, it’s easier than ever to take up photography, and it’s a great hobby for entrepreneurs. Photography requires you to think outside the box and come up with new and innovative ways to capture a scene or subject. This type of thinking is essential for entrepreneurs who need to be able to come up with new ideas and solutions every day.
Also, photography can teach you to be patient. To take the best photo, you have to wait for the right moment and think strategically. You also have to be more observant to notice small details and interesting compositions that others may miss. All of this requires patience, which is an important virtue in entrepreneurship. After all, success doesn’t happen overnight and patience trains you to spot opportunities others might miss.
Plus, photography will help you hone your visual storytelling skills. In today’s social media driven world, being able to tell a compelling story through visuals is a valuable skill for any entrepreneur.
playing an instrument
Anyone in a band knows that being a musician is about having excellent listening skills, experimenting, conquering repeated failure, cooperating, and compromising. All of these are equally essential in a successful business venture.
Not surprisingly, many accomplished entrepreneurs are also active musicians. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Silver Lake Partners and Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee are some of the big names moving both in the business world and in the music world. Allen released his debut blues-rock album everywhere at once in 2013 at the age of 50 years; McNamee was a member of the band Flying Other Brothers from 1997 to 2006 and now plays with another band, Moonalice.
If you’re looking to maximize your business potential, grab a musical instrument and start playing!
Cooking
Many people see cooking as a chore. But for some, cooking is a relaxing yet rewarding hobby. Cooking helps instill important qualities, such as creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness, in entrepreneurs.
At some point in your kitchen journey, you’ll want to create your own dishes or add a personal touch to your favorite recipes. This is a great opportunity to train your ability to do something unique that you are proud of, much like what is on the mind of an entrepreneur.
When you cook, you don’t always have what you need at hand when you cook. So you have to be resourceful and use whatever ingredients you have to produce something delicious. Entrepreneurs often face challenges that require making the right decisions, from giving off-the-cuff answers in a business pitch to dealing with emergencies like shipping delays. To handle these situations, you need to be resourceful and find solutions on the spot.
Even if you’re not particularly good at cooking right now, don’t be discouraged; practice makes perfect (or at least palatable)!
Of course, many other hobbies besides these five can also help entrepreneurs maximize their momentum. Any hobby can do wonders if you like it and it brings you joy. So the next time you feel burned out, pick up one of these hobbies and kick start your entrepreneurial drive.
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Header image courtesy of Freepik