My friend Beth kept saying she wanted to learn watercolour. For two years. The paints sat in her spare room, still wrapped in plastic, while she spent her evenings doom-scrolling Instagram and feeling guilty about it.
Then she tried something different. Not a massive overhaul. Just twenty minutes after dinner, three nights a week, phone in another room. Six months later she’d filled two sketchbooks and genuinely looked forward to Tuesday evenings in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
The gap between wanting a creative hobby and actually doing one usually isn’t motivation. It’s logistics. Where does it fit? How do you start without buying hundreds of pounds worth of equipment? What happens when you’re exhausted after work?
Pick an Evening Anchor Point
The research on habit formation keeps pointing to the same thing: new behaviours stick better when attached to existing routines. Your brain already knows what happens after dinner or after you’ve put the kids to bed. Adding something creative to that sequence works better than trying to carve out time from nowhere.
Beth chose the slot right after loading the dishwasher. Dishes done, kettle on, painted out. Same order every time. The dishwasher became her trigger—she didn’t have to decide whether tonight was a painting night because the routine decided for her.
If mornings work better for you, that’s fine too. Some research suggests late evening actually suits creative work because mental fatigue lowers your inhibitions and makes you more open to unusual ideas. But honestly? The timing matters less than the consistency.
Start With Embarrassingly Little Equipment
One artist I know taught herself portrait drawing using nothing but a pack of blue Bic biros from the corner shop. When students asked what special pens she used, they expected some obscure Japanese brand. Nope. Multipack. Two quid.
Buying loads of supplies before you’ve even started is a trap. It feels productive but it’s actually procrastination wearing a shopping costume. You don’t know yet whether acrylic painting will grab you or bore you senseless. Watercolours might be your thing, or maybe you’ll hate how long they take to dry.
Borrow if you can. Buy the cheapest version if you can’t. A basic set of acrylics costs about eight pounds. A sketchpad and some pencils, maybe six. If three months later you’re still doing it, then upgrade. If not, you haven’t got a cupboard full of expensive reminders of abandoned hobbies.
The 75% Cortisol Drop Nobody Talks About
There’s a study that measured stress hormone levels in people making art—not professional artists, just regular people doing creative activities. Around 75% of participants showed significantly lower cortisol afterwards. The interesting part? Prior experience didn’t matter. Complete beginners got the same stress reduction as people who’d been doing it for years.
That’s worth sitting with for a moment. You don’t have to be good at this for it to work. The benefit comes from the doing, not the result.
Beth’s early watercolours were terrible. Muddy colours, weird proportions, paper buckling from too much water. She kept them anyway. Looking back now, they’re proof of something—not skill exactly, but showing up.
Block Your Distractions Properly
Saying you’ll put your phone down is different from actually putting it somewhere you can’t easily grab it. The average person checks their phone over 150 times a day. That habit doesn’t switch off just because you’ve decided to spend thirty minutes on pottery.
Put it in a drawer in another room. Or give it to someone else for an hour. Whatever creates actual friction between you and the screen.
Same with the telly. If it’s in your eyeline, some part of your brain will keep registering it. Facing away from screens helps. Creating a small dedicated space—even just a corner of a table—signals to your brain that this area is for making things, not consuming things.
Twenty Minutes Is Enough (Really)
The instinct is to think you need a proper chunk of time. An hour at least, probably two. Otherwise what’s the point?
But twenty minutes, three or four times a week, adds up to something real. That’s how Beth filled two sketchbooks in six months. Not marathon sessions. Consistent small ones.
Some nights she barely touched the paints before feeling tired and stopping. That still counted. The goal isn’t producing masterpieces—it’s maintaining the habit of sitting down to create. Once that habit exists, longer sessions happen naturally on days when energy allows.
Find Your Sibling Skills
Getting bored with your chosen hobby doesn’t mean you’ve failed at hobbies entirely. Sometimes it means you’re ready for something adjacent.
Knitting leading to crochet. Watercolour leading to gouache. Drawing leading to graphic design. Each jump carries over some skills while introducing new challenges. You’re not starting from zero, and the novelty reignites interest.
Beth moved from painting to making illustrated cards after a year. Still uses watercolours, but the format changed. Fresh enough to feel exciting, familiar enough not to overwhelm.
The Freelance Writing Angle (If You Want One)
Not everyone wants their hobby to become anything else. Painting for painting’s sake is completely valid.
But if you do feel like sharing what you’ve learned, lifestyle writing has an interesting entry point right now. Personal experience pieces about hobbies, wellness, daily routines—publications actively look for those.
A colleague of mine started documenting her pottery journey in short blog posts. Nothing formal, just observations. Eventually she pitched to a few sites accepting guest contributions. Noodle Magazine has a write for us lifestyle section specifically for this kind of content—wellness, self-improvement, practical advice grounded in real experience. She got published there after three rejections elsewhere, and that single credit opened doors.
Writing about your hobby isn’t for everyone. But if you’re someone who processes by putting things into words, it adds another layer to the whole experience.
What Actually Happens Over Six Months
Beth’s progression went roughly like this:
Weeks one to three felt awkward. She kept second-guessing her colour choices and comparing herself to Instagram artists with decades of experience. Almost quit twice.
Months two and three got easier. The routine stuck. She stopped expecting each painting to be good and started expecting each session to be calming. Different goal, much more achievable.
By month five she could see genuine improvement. Not professional-level work, but noticeably better than month one. That felt meaningful.
Month six brought something unexpected: she started looking forward to it. Not in a forced way. Genuinely. The hobby had become something she wanted to do rather than something she thought she should do.
The Permission Thing
Lots of people carry around creative ideas they never act on. They’ll mention it casually—always wanted to learn guitar, should really try life drawing—then immediately add a disclaimer. Too busy. Too old. Not talented enough.
These aren’t unreasonable concerns. Time genuinely is limited. Imposter syndrome hits everyone.
But the fitness industry is saturated beyond belief, and new voices still break through constantly. Same applies to whatever you’re considering. Your specific perspective doesn’t exist yet. Only you can make that version.
Starting badly is fine. Expected, even. The point isn’t immediate excellence—it’s carving out a small piece of your week that belongs entirely to you, doing something that exists purely because you chose it.
Twenty minutes. Phone in another room. See what happens.
