Five reasons why everyone needs a serious leisure pursuit

Serious leisure includes a broad spectrum of hobbies, amateurism and voluntary activities requiring perseverance, commitment, and significant personal effort. Serious leisure is different from “casual leisure” because it is usually challenging in one way or another and requires long-term dedication and special knowledge or skills. Popular indoor and outdoor hobbies such as knitting, birdwatching, bonsai growing, and pottery are just a few examples of a long list of serious leisure activities. Research over the past four decades, including my research at CSU during recent four years, shows serious leisure participants enjoy numerous personal and benefits, which I categories into five clusters: cognitive wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, occupational wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing. In this talk, I provide evidence and examples for each type and illustrate how we can incorporate serious leisure into our daily life. I also explain how serious leisure can help us be more resilient and purposeful in dealing with various life challenges, especially during the current COVID pandemic.