Last week I outed myself as a strong believer in granny hobbies for health. (I like to keep my domain purchases close to the vest, but I’ve quietly held grannyhobby .com for a while too.) A lot of people seemed to resonate with my confession, so Twitter then forcibly showed it to 2 million people.
The same week there were two related New York Times pieces (related because granny hobbies overlap a lot with the world of leisure-crafting): One profiled Happy Medium, a newco opening casual “art cafes” in NYC. The second was all about the brain benefits of handwork.
The sketch-feature quoted the founders & guests:
“We really missed making things with our hands without this pressure to perform or make it perfect or to sell it on Etsy.”
The latter piece had many resonant excerpts:
Studies have found that a whole range of hands-on activities — such as knitting, gardening and coloring — are associated with cognitive and emotional benefits, including improvements in memory and attention, as well as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms ... The researchers who looked at coloring, for example, speculated that it might promote mindfulness, which could be beneficial for mental health. Those who have studied knitting said something similar. “The rhythm and repetition of knitting a familiar or established pattern was calming, like meditation.”
Researchers want to know if its the hand movement that’s beneficial or other attributes of tasks involving your hands — e.g. concentration and mindfulness. I don’t think it matters which exactly, but it’s probably both. (I suspect concentrating hard on a digital knitting game isn’t as good as knitting in real life. And just mindlessly pushing some button in real life without paying any attention or care to it isn’t all that good for well-being either.)
What they don’t touch on is the benefit of the act of creation and awareness of it. I’ve talked about my belief in small scale creation as a kind of therapy, and “art therapy” is an even purer form of this. Sometimes it’s therapy meant to resolve a specific kind of trauma by self-expressing and processing through creation. Regardless of the specific indication, art has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety and improve mood — and that’s a pretty strong endorsement for anything.
II
Selfishly I was happy to see these two features in mainstream media because they validated something I’ve been theorizing for a while. I’m convinced that granny hobbies are a big unlock for day-to-day happiness and hence your overall mental health. From personal experience, I also think they’re one of few accessible and active antidotes to digital overload (the new-gen mental health monster).
Most granny hobbies are what I call hands-on, thumbs-off. Hands-on because, well, you’re doing things with your hands. Maybe it’s just wielding physical objects (e.g. while reading or writing) or maybe it’s actively manipulating and creating with your hands (e.g. cooking or crafting). Thumbs-off is a metaphor for being offline and definitely not on social media, swiping or scrolling with little aim.
So here’s my non-exhaustive list of granny hobbies: reading, knitting, gardening, crafting, cooking, baking, board games, drawing, sewing, birdwatching, painting, puzzling, photography, playing cards, making tea. Mine personally, you ask? I’m already deep in crafting and board games, and cooking and gardening are my emergent loves.
I call these granny hobbies for a few reasons (and I’m not the first person to do this). For one, these low-intensity hobbies that you can do virtually anytime, anywhere are just historically associated with grandmas. They don’t require you to be in peak athletic shape or risk bodily injury.1
Some people don’t like the “granny hobby” label, but I find it charming. I find the paradox of prescribing supposed “old people activities” to young people to be the point. What old people can do and hence will do tends to be what’s timeless. And this isn’t the reason to embrace them, but I’m also confident it’s becoming culturally cool.
So I prescribe this: pick up a granny hobby and do it at least twice a week.2 Let’s call it the granny hobby protocol. (If Andrew Huberman can co-opt “protocol” for his particular lists for optimizing biophysical health, then so can we. The granny hobby protocol isn’t as tyrannical, but I’d bet it does you as much good.)
Not all granny activities are granny hobbies of course. Some aren’t crafting-oriented but they bring you into the present and even get you exercise: daily walks with friends that live close by, swimming lessons for joint-friendly cardio. These are meditative and good for the body and the soul but don’t involve creation. And I think creation offers some bonus healing benefits that exertion alone doesn’t.
So if you have enough time I’d prescribe the pro granny protocol. Pick a granny hobby for meditative creation and pick a granny sport for mild exertion. Do them with friends. Bonus points if they get you outdoors. Oh, and wear the comfiest clothes you have, ideally a colorful and mildly tacky sweater.
III
Since I’m a person who thinks about building things and businesses, I can’t ignore the thought that there’s a lot of entrepreneurial opportunity here too.
Young founders tend to chase the sexy new technology or hyper-scalable enterprise. But when everyone zigs, you should zag right? (especially in this high entropy state of the world where tech and its meaning is evolving so rapidly).
There aren’t many good examples in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Most in these “verticals” are focused on content, e.g. a niche UGC platform to birth a new class of cooking creators. It’s rarer that people build a business around the hands-on itself.
One standout is Kevin Espiritu’s Epic Gardening (an amazing now 10+ year effort). Another is Happy Medium (the newer company profiled by The New York Times above). There’s also this crochet kit business that was featured on Shark Tank. The point being there are a range of businesses, even if not the flashiest, from e-commerce to in-person to hybrid that can serve the granny hobby economy.
I don’t like top-down market sizing, but no doubt there are some “billion-dollar” granny hobby niches.3 Which isn’t to say you need to go after all of it. These days I’m more into going after a small slice of something that makes you happy.4 Of course if a hobby becomes a business, it’s no longer just a hobby, and that means you’ll have to find a new one — good thing there are plenty to choose from.
P.S. Three things: 1) I really want to know what your granny hobbies are! 2) If you have or end up starting a business that’s around one of them, I’d love to know (and help if I can) and 3) what should I do with grannyhobby.com? I might write a short follow up :)
There is probably a smaller, non-overlapping set of things that are historically “grandpa hobbies” (though the gender split isn’t really needed). What would be on this list? Probably the likes of golf and fishing and other outdoor leisure skills or sport.
I would say to do it daily, but I know that’s aspirational more than practical. Granny hobbies can tend to be time-consuming too because of their low-intensity, meditative nature. I also bet there are smaller things, little hands-on rituals, that could get you there easier. Even just making your own breakfast or coffee or tea, if done mindfully, tends to involve creating with your hands and gives you some of the same benefits.
You won’t find granny hobbies specifically on a VC’s market map, but you will find things like “IRL social” and “modern wellness” and these are just sexy umbrella terms.
I’ve written enough about my belief in staying small and self-financing especially for businesses that you expect to be small relative to most venture-scale ones. I bet many a “smart,” motivated person in Silicon Valley could build a million-dollar granny hobby business, even as a side project, in 24 months if they were seriously dedicated to it.
magazine collage and any kind of scrapbooking or mood boarding underrated, going to add to my list!
My go-to hobby is cooking indeed.
I like cooking for my family (and I also like eating so it's a win win).
Plus, I hate most restaurants because they can never cook as good as me 😅