Logging every workout, book and chord: why young people are turning hobbies into work

Bao Le, an 18-year-old living in Bremen, Germany, packs her days with hobbies. She does pole dancing, hits the gym and goes bouldering. She plays piano, violin and guitar, and dabbles in DJing. She sews, crochets, draws, paints, does nail art, and squeezes in chess and sudoku. She reads in her spare moments and pursues research as a pastime.

Le tracks nearly everything with numbers. After a run, she logs her results on Strava, the fitness-tracking app. She picks three hobbies at a time to prioritize and practices them daily, then rotates to the next three after a set period.

As young people like Le who juggle an extreme number of hobbies simultaneously have grown in number, the internet has coined a term for the phenomenon: "hobbymaxxing." The Washington Post reported Sunday (local time) on the trend.

Le herself admits the lifestyle is not entirely comfortable. "I keep going because of the feeling that I'm doing something productive, but honestly I'm not at ease," she said. "When I'm doing something unproductive, I feel like I'm wasting time."

Hobbymaxxing started as a genuine desire to enrich life away from work and the online world. But as the obsession with hobbies has grown — particularly among young people — observers say it now resembles an extra job more than actual leisure.

The phenomenon is not entirely new. Similar patterns have emerged during periods of national economic crisis or existential anxiety — the Great Depression, World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic among them. Hobbies have long served not just as a cure for boredom but as a way to manage deep-seated anxiety and unease.

The problem is that hobbies have a tipping point. Push too hard and they start to feel like work. Michael Inzlicht, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, said that up to a certain level, greater effort brings greater meaning — but beyond that point, the sense of meaning actually diminishes.

Author Jia Tolentino has argued that the internet and capitalism pressure people into relentless self-improvement. "Most pleasures ultimately become traps, and the demands coming from outside keep growing," she said. "The worse things get, the more people feel pressured to optimize themselves."

Tracking apps are fueling that pressure to optimize. Apps that quantify hobbies are already everywhere — Letterboxd for logging films, Goodreads for books, Backloggd for games, Beli for restaurants visited. Inzlicht said that the moment a metric is attached to something, people want to push that number up, even if the metric is ultimately meaningless or hollow.

The deeper problem is that these measurement tools gradually erode the enjoyment of leisure itself. "Ultimately, the hobby starts to feel like work," Inzlicht said. The moment a person assigns numbers to a hobby or shares their activity publicly on social media, they impose an obligation on themselves — and over time, their actual performance may suffer as a result.

Arden Yum, 23, a consultant in New York, has had a similar experience. Missing the structured syllabi of her school days, she created her own hobby schedule. "Every book, every chapter I read, I feel like I'm moving toward something," she said. "On the other hand, after an hour of watching TV, I feel guilty that I haven't done a single productive thing."

For Yum, hobbies are a series of challenges to complete. Finishing one earns her a reward — a meal at a favorite restaurant, a spa visit, redecorating her home or a night out dancing with friends. Of the six-week hobby plan she designed herself, she said: "I don't feel relaxed. But it definitely motivates me."