I’m always looking for new hobbies. I love hobbies. Especially ones that are designed particularly for men. There’s a certain camaraderie that occurs when it comes to engaging in things that men do and I don’t think that should be taken lightly. Men have a lot in common with one another and finding activities that bring us enjoyment, brings us only closer together. In a world that’s seemingly tearing itself apart, we men need to stick together.
For the purposes of this post, I think I’ll consider a hobby as an enjoyable activity that one can engage in for a sustained period of time. Perhaps it’s never ending. It’s a “thing” that we can nibble away at, study, and get better at. Or learn more about. Of enjoy more and pass on to others. You get the idea.
My Manly Hobbies List
I’m not going to do as so many others before me have done. I’m not going to list hobbies that may be good for men in general. I’m going to list my hobbies. The ones I’ve grown to love. The ones I’ve enjoyed for years and years. I can’t speak for other activities, but I certainly can speak from experience and that’s going to be much more valuable to you than me sitting here making things up. Let’s get to it.
Playing Guitar
If you would like to get into something that you’ll never, ever learn to completion, you should learn how to play the guitar. Or, at the very least, learn what the guitar is all about and attempt to learn how to play the guitar. I began learning years ago and I practice very regularly. Like, every night regularly. And at this point, I’m only marginally good. I honestly have no idea how these guys out there on stage have gotten so good because learning how to play the guitar is an extraordinarily tough thing to do. But once you get over the hump of learning what things are and what they do, you may just become good at it. This is a rewarding hobby that’s pretty limitless. It’s also fun to show off to friends when the time is right.
Writing & Blogging
I write all day, every day. I don’t know where I’d be without my writing. Some of what I decide to write is absolutely wonderful and some is obviously pushed out because of a deadline. There’s more to writing than simply sitting down to write. And then writing. There’s a thought process that comes with it and if it’s done enough, it’ll become part of life. I like to write all different types of articles and blog posts. When it comes to blogging, it’s really a part of life. I can blog about almost any activity I partake in. Any thought I have might easily become a blog post. Blogging is all about doing things and then sharing those things through the world. If you wanted to, you could even blog about blogging. It never ends.
Reading
If you’re a real man, you read and read often. It’s said that the smartest men on the planet read the most. I like to read for pleasure as well as to learn new things. I particular enjoy reading self help books in the financial arena. I also like fantasy and science fiction books and there are enough of them already in existence that it’ll take me the rest of my life to read just a tiny fraction. How’s that for a never ending hobby? Every man should have at least one good book at his side at all times.
Smoking a Pipe
Have you ever looking into pipe smoking? If not, I suggest you do. It’s a fascinating world. Back in 2012, I purchased a stunning Randy Wiley tobacco pipe along with a nice tobacco sampler from Milan Tobacco in Virginia and have loved smoking ever since. If you look through YouTube, you’ll see a giant world of pipe smokers out there. It consists of 99.9% men, but there are some ladies thrown in too. There are even pipe smoking competitions over in the UK. Those guys take it seriously. And the different types of pipes are just as endless as the types of tobaccos you can buy. It’s so cool.
Making Money
Every man should be very concerned about making money. Not only from working, but passively in the stock market or from other activities you’ve found yourself enjoying. Right now, you should be scouring Amazon for some good books that teach you how to make a passive income. Right now, you should be reading about the stock market and finance. Making money should be on your mind from when you wake up early in the morning to when you go to bed late at night. Money should make your world go round. You can also think of it while smoking your pipe and drinking a nice glass of wine, which brings me to my next manly hobby.
Drinking Wine
Both men and women love wine, but it’s the man who orders it when he brings his lady out to dinner. Learning about, writing about, and drinking wine is an activity I’ve enjoyed for years. My tastes are definitely for the darker reds, but it doesn’t matter what you decide on as long as you commit to discovering where your wines come from, what makes them special, and how they make you feel. Every time I sit down for a glass of wine, I think about all these things. They’re right there in my glass. What a great hobby to get into.
Puzzling
There is nothing like putting a challenging puzzle together. For me, the bigger, the better. I actually have a table dedicated to my puzzling. I like White Mountain Puzzles as well as Ravensburger. Those are some of the best I’ve come across. I like to turn on some music, pour some good red wine and spend a few hours at night to find those pieces that put my puzzle together. And the best part about this hobby is that it’ll last well into my old age. The elderly love putting puzzles together for good reason.
Collecting Music
A while back, I discovered the joy of hunting for and collecting rare and somewhat unknown 80s music. I began ordering CDs and vinyl and haven’t looked back since. The music world is huge and seeing my media sitting on a nearby shelf is just awesome. While I do love playing the music, what I love even more is the discovery of hearing something I never knew existed and then trying to find it to buy. The internet has been my friend in this regard, but it’s just as much fun flipping through music in a real music store. I’ve actually considered visiting London, England just to go to a few of their stores. Men and music go hand in hand.
I know there are a few more awesome hobbies for guys that I’m into and as they come to mind, I’ll add them here. I get excited just thinking of them, so this is a really good post to be writing. If you’ve got something to share, please do down below. As I said above, I love new hobbies and I’d love to read about what makes you tick.
I’ve seen many lists that include manly hobbies for guys on them, but so many of the lists aren’t really accurate. I tend to think of hobbies as personal things that men and boys can do alone, not with a group. For instance, I just saw a list that included martial arts and ballroom dancing. While these are fine activities to engage in, that’s exactly what they are – activities. To me, a hobby is something like record collecting, stamp collecting, or coin collecting. Or something that builds the brain of a man. Things like woodworking, gardening, and restoring a classic car. Or any car for that matter. Hobbies are all about sitting at a desk and studying things creatively. I like the puzzling one you mentioned because that’s challenging, takes time, can be done alone, and can expand the mind if the puzzle is challenging enough.
While searching around (right now) I just saw another activity that was labeled as a hobby. Barbecuing. Really? In my opinion, that’s not a hobby. That’s something you do on Sundays with the family. Now if the man was learning how to cook and studying all the finer details and then presenting those learnings to a group in the form of a barbecue, then that’s fine. Otherwise, it’s just another thing to do.
Here are some of the better hobbies for men that I pulled from the list. As you’ll see, they’re all personal in nature, just the way a hobby should be.
Programming
Knitting, Sewing (yes, even for men)
Drawing, Painting, Art
Blogging
Model Rockets
Remote Control Cars
Engine Restoration, Car Repair
Learning a Language
Magic
Cooking
Photography
Chess/Checkers
Birding
Collecting Vinyl Records
Woodworking
Model Railroads
Writing
Metalworking
Antiquing
Learning (classes)
Building an Aquarium
Aquascaping
Pipe, Cigar Smoking (and learning)
Corresponding, Letter Writing, Pen Pals
Model Building
Collecting
Learning a Musical Instrument
Reading
There are probably so many more, but I took what I liked from the list and then added a few ideas of my own. The hobbies that are my favorite on this list are aquascaping, model rockets, collecting, and model railroads. I remember a few of these things from when I was a kid and they seem to strike a chord. I’ll add more as they come to mind.
Growing up, I remember not seeing a lot of my brother. He’s the creative type and he was always off building something, even as a child. At seven years old, he probably knew more than most adults did about architecture and carpentry. Most of what he was up to when he was “missing” had to do with the building/construction of his train set in our attic. In my house, we had a huge unfinished attic that had bedrooms and everything. None of them had any walls, so it was a perfect place for him to hide out and put together two huge pieces of plywood for his layout. Through the years, he’d add to the train set until he finally called it complete with lakes, bridges, forests, and just about anything else you can think of. He loved that train set and I did too. I didn’t even have anything to do with it, but I went up when he wasn’t around, just to look at that thing. Such detail and many, many trips to the hobby shop. My advice for any dude out there who is bored, perhaps you’d like to take a look at creating a model train landscape. I’m not even sure what a call it these days. A cursory Google search has led me to “model train scenery.”
Another thing my brother did was collect stamps. To this day, he’s got a huge stamp book with all sorts of collector’s items in it. I actually have no idea what the particulars are, but I do remember him working on it constantly. I also have no idea where he got any money for the stamps he collected through the years. It’s there though and he seemed to love what he was doing. If it were me today, I’d probably get into coin collecting over stamps, but that’s just a personal preference. I’ve never had a love for stamps, but I really do like coins. And to learn about the history of so many of them would be interesting. With Amazon and Ebay at my fingertips, I’d be in heaven.
Two more hobbies that I feel might be good for a guy’s head are financial investing and letter writing or emailing. You can never learn too much about investing and with today’s commission free trades, there’s really no excuse not to. You could easily read, watch videos, learn, and then make small investments online that may help financially in the future. And if you approach the activity as a hobby, it’ll be fun.
The art of corresponding with worthy individuals is all but dead in this world of ours. I would be exceptionally proud of a man if I heard that this was one of the hobbies he enjoyed. Not many men would ever get into something like this and I would find it so unique and interesting. If I were conversing to such a man, I’d ask him all sorts of questions. I think it’s a great hobby to get into. It would bring some class back to the United States of America.
I’ve been looking for a good hobby for some time now. I’m very attracted to electronics, but I can’t seem to pull the trigger on buying a book and a starter kit. The thing that’s holding me back is that I can’t, for the life of me, come up with a reason why I would get into this. When I was a kid, a few of my friends were into electronics and I thought it was pretty cool. We had remote control cars and one of my friends was always soldering things together. It seemed like he could fix anything. The reason I’m attracted to it in the first place is because I enjoy working with my hands. It seems like there’s a decline in electronics though, which is a shame. I spoke to my father about it, who’s into electronics as well, and he said that these days, “you just change the entire board.” Well that’s no fun. I can’t find the desire to get involved with something that’s got no purpose. I would love to learn. There are great beginners books and very cool kits, tons of parts, and many great websites and videos about the hobby, but I’ve yet to be convinced. I hate the point I’m at because I feel like this thing is dangling right in front of my nose.
Is anyone into hobby electronics? If so, can you please tell me the purpose of it? Can you build things? Is it useful? Can you still fix things that break around the house, like stereos, microwaves, and all that? I’d really love a reason to get going with this. It looks like a lot of fun.
I used to be into aquariums when I was in my teen years and early 20s. I enjoyed that a lot. My very first fish tank was a tiny five gallon and I worked my way all the way up to a 75 gallon. That one was beautiful. I ended up moving, so I had to take it all apart and sell everything. I loved it though.
I’ve dabbled with tropical fish, but I never liked the idea of having to keep a heater on all the time, so I went with cold water for a while. I think I like that best. In the 75 gallon, I had a crayfish, a white frog, minnows, a few sucker fish, and lots more. The best part about a cold water tank is that you can get the gravel from a place that sells landscape supplies. I showed up to one of those places with two five gallon buckets in my hand once and the guy gave me the gravel for free.
Anyway, with most hobbies, one of the best parts is buying the equipment and gear you’ll need. Electronics is great because there are lots of small items and tools that’ll help out. Aquarium building is the same way. You can spend hours online shopping. I love all the plants and rocks and fish to choose from. I actually think I’m going to be setting up a tank soon, so I’ll be writing a lot more posts on that if I do. Awesome hobby!