‘MIT Monk’ shares his VIBE method for choosing the perfect adult hobby |
A survey found that about 15% of adults have no hobbies to speak of. The same survey found that people overwhelmingly agree that having hobbies is important, and also, that they wish they had more time for them.
Anecdotally, those numbers feel low. It’s rare to find someone juggling career, a household, kids, pets, family, and friends who still manages to spend time daily in the woodshop or quietly crocheting.
“MIT Monk” says hobbies matter more than ever
Hobbies still exist, of course, but we have less time for them. Another study found that time spent on socializing, hobbies, and offline activities has decreased over the last few decades while time spent on TV and phones has shot up.
That’s a trend that severely needs reversing. It’s a simple calculus. Doing real things is good for your brain. Screens are not.
“The most successful people fiercely protect their seemingly useless hobbies,” says Sandeep Swadia. “That’s their best defense against brainrot.”
Swadia goes by “MIT Monk” on YouTube, a reference to his time spent both in Himalayan monk training and receiving his MBA from one of the world’s most prestigious Ivy Leagues. He’s also a technology executive and investor, so he meets a lot of high-performing people. His unique background makes him not only an expert in “success,” but also in inner peace and happiness.
Swadia says all of smartest people he meets have at least one frivolous hobby that they make time for. And not just CEOS and billionaires, but Nobel Prize winners too.
Perhaps even more importantly, hobbies are fun. They bring us joy, satisfaction, and a sense of accomplishment that’s difficult to recreate on an app or a website. Plus, they’re great for our health.
But a lot of people simply don’t know where to start when looking to take up a new hobby, even if they’re willing to make the time and put in the effort.
The “VIBE” framework for choosing the perfect hobby
Swadia says you don’t have to just hope you have a passion for something. A hobby can actually be a way to improve your life in the very specific ways that it’s lacking.
But you have to pick the right hobby for you. And Swadia says in order to pick the right hobby, you need a framework. He calls his VIBE.
“Are you running on empty? Then pick a hobby that gets your heart rate up,” he says.
It can be fitness and exercise directly, as in implementing a workout routine at the gym or taking a group fitness class. Or you can enjoy active hobbies that have a physical side effect, like hiking.
Vitality hobbies are something fun, challenging, and non-digital to do, and they have the added benefit of improving your physical health and energy levels.
“Are you easily bored? Then pick a hobby that forces you to be a beginner again.”
Swadia suggests learning a new language, picking up chess, or taking a formal class on just about anything. Crucially, being a beginner as an adult requires courage. It requires you to fail and face your shortcomings head on. But that’s exactly why being a beginner again is so powerful.
“Your brain doesn’t adapt or grow when you’re comfortable,” Swadia says. “A hobby allows you to struggle, to be surprised. It forces your brain to upgrade.”
If you have a lot of acquaintances and distant friends, you may need to find activities that help you find deeper connections in your community.
“Try a hobby that weaves you into a tribe,” Swadia advises.
Anything group-centered works here: a book club, a running group, volunteering, etc. Anything that’s fun, challenging, interesting, or meaningful that you do specifically with other people will bond you to them in surprising and profound ways.
“Do you consume more than create? Then try a hobby that pulls something from inside of you and puts it out into the world.”
These are the classics: creating and the arts. Woodworking, painting, photography, pottery. Even cooking can be a form of self-expression.
You don’t need to be good at something in order to use it to express yourself. And getting better slowly over time is a huge part of the fun.
You don’t need one hobby per category, Swadia reminds us. Many hobbies can fill multiple needs at once. Joining a running club, for example, can improve your vitality and your sense of belonging all at once. Depending on your starting point, it can also make you feel like a total beginner (Inquiry) again.
It’s hard to go wrong when picking a hobby
VIBE is just one framework, and it can help you identify what’s missing from your life and figure out how a new activity can challenge you and make you feel more whole.
Psychology Today notes, however, that hobbies don’t have to be challenging or designed to stimulate and rewire your brain. They can also be mindless and relaxing, like coloring or reading “trashy” novels.
More important than picking the right or perfect hobby is picking one at all. Unless there are huge costs involved, you can always try something else down the road if the first one doesn’t work out. What matters is taking care of yourself in order to be at your best.
“Our 24/7 culture tells us hobbies are selfish. They’re extra. It’s time stolen from work or the people that need you,” Swadia says. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60 countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today.
Reading is hard. It wasn’t always, but now, it is. You know that feeling: you finally sit down with a book you’ve heard great things about—Song of Achilles, for example—and then it hits you. Your brain doesn’t work the same anymore. You’re no longer that wide-eyed child, eagerly tearing through books like they’re a bag of candy. Your brain has been trained to skim, scroll, and hop from one thing to the next.
So, each night ends the same way. You reach for your phone, scroll mindlessly for forty-five minutes, and fall asleep while wondering where your curiosity disappeared off to.
Don’t worry; this isn’t a moral failing. It’s inherently a wiring issue, a flaw in your current design. One that runs on, “What have I been training my brain to do all day?”
The good news is that the same science that explains that smooth-brain instinct to reach for your phone can also help you reach for something more nourishing, like books. In his YouTube video, “How to Read More Books,” user Ali Abdaal outlines ten rules to gently retrain your mind to read again. We’ve outlined them below.
Over the last twenty years, the number of adults who read for pleasure has dwindled. It’s fallen by 40%. It’s reported that today, only about 16% of Americans even pick up a book on any given day.
At the same time, we have never had more content at our fingertips. It’s ironic, isn’t it? We are constantly consuming words: emails, Instagram captions, text messages that are nothing more than veiled scams. Only now, words arrive in bite-sized formats and notifications instead of chapters.
But the research also tells us this: just six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%. That’s more than music or a walk around the block. Reading quietly, even for a few minutes, can lower stress, sharpen memory, and improve emotional well-being. In other words, reading builds the kind of cognitive endurance that doomscrolling erodes.
Som why do you keep avoiding it?
Here’s a secret. Most people who “wish they read more” (a.k.a. all of us) do not lack interest. Nor willpower. Our brains have been trained to operate in overstimulation mode, always expecting novelty, speed, and interruptions. It’s a far cry from the stillness, focus, and flow that reading requires, certainly. These ten habits work because they help reduce the mental effort it takes to begin reading. They can feel almost like a gentle kind of magic, slowly making it easier and more comfortable to stay with a text just a little longer. Enjoy.
Rule 1: Put the book where your brain is tired
Place your book or e-reader on your nightstand tonight. Charge your phone in another room.
That’s it! That’s the whole rule.
Behavioral scientists call this micro-shift “choice architecture.” Developed by economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, this theory demonstrates that small, subtle changes to your physical environment can profoundly alter your behavior, with little to no impact on your freedom. It requires little conscious effort. You are making the easiest option also the most nourishing one.
By bedtime, your brain is running on automatic habit mode. It reaches for whatever’s closest, most familiar. Over time, that tiny swap makes reading feel like the natural way to end the day. Your brain begins to associate printed words with rest and comfort, not effort.
Rule 2: Make your home screen a little library
The average person picks up their phone dozens, if not hundreds, of times per day.
Phew. Each glance at your screen, every flash of artificial LED light, represents a mental crossroads.
If the first thing your eyes land on is a social app, your fingers will go there before your conscious mind even checks in. However, if the first thing you see is your Kindle, your brain gets a different cue. Research refers to this instinct as “habit stacking” and “cue design.” The idea is to take something your brain already does (picking up your phone to scroll) and sneakily insert reading, gently redirecting the automatic cue. This way, each idle moment—waiting in line, commuting on public transit, a quiet moment in the morning—becomes a reading window.
So, your favorite reading app deserves prime digital real estate—the middle of your home page—while distracting apps are buried away in a folder, two or three swipes away.
Rule 3: Let audiobooks borrow your most boring moments
Commuting. Washing dishes. Dusting the annoying decorative trim at the bottom of the walls.
These moments are tedious, irksome. But they’re also perfect opportunities to treat your brains to the worlds of Tolkien, Woolf, and García Márquez. This represents habit stacking at its purest. The technique, pioneered by behavioral researcher BJ Fogg and popularized by James Clear’s Atomic Habits, exploits the brain’s existing neural pathways. Since the anchor habit (commuting, exercising) is already wired into daily routine, the desired behavior (listening to a book) simply rides in on the coattails of the existing habit.
Plus, it’s a great way to devour literature: if you spend even half an hour a day listening to audiobooks, you can easily finish 15–20 books per year.
Rule 4: Serve your brain a reading menu
School taught us to be faithful, monogamous readers. One book at a time. Cover to cover, start to finish. And no switching. Too bad adult brains don’t work that way.
The reality? Your energy shifts. Your focus changes. Some days, your mind craves ideas and changes. You want nothing more than to read about how basketball can help........