Why Ambitious Women Need a Hobby (and How to Find One You’ll Actually Love)
Somewhere along the way, a lot of ambitious women stopped doing things for no reason. Everything became purposeful, productive, optimisable. This is Shannon's case for doing something that is entirely, unapologetically yours.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of ambitious women quietly stopped doing things for no reason. Everything became purposeful. Productive. Optimised. And if it couldn't be monetised or added to a portfolio or turned into content, it felt vaguely like wasted time.
I know because I did it too.
This is for the women who have forgotten that they're allowed to do things simply because they bring joy. Not to be good at them. Not to turn them into a side hustle. Just because life is better when there's something in it that's entirely, unapologetically yours.
The hobby that changed things for me
For a long time my life revolved almost entirely around work. I was chasing a version of success I thought I was supposed to want, and I was tired and disconnected and uninspired in a way I couldn't quite name.
Then (partly because the pandemic forced a kind of stillness I'd been avoiding) things shifted. I left my job, started freelancing, launched High Flying Design, and finally joined the adult ice skating school I'd been eyeing for years without ever quite giving myself permission to go.
Skating became my reset. About six hours a week where my phone is off, my mind slows down, and I'm fully present in a way I rarely am anywhere else. I'm not good at it in any impressive sense. I don't need to be. That's exactly the point.
It showed me something I hadn't quite understood before: you don't have to earn everything you do. Joy can be a strategy. And choosing pleasure over performance (even for a few hours a week) changes more than you'd expect.
Why it matters more than people think
We talk about burnout constantly in the founder space, but the conversation tends to focus on doing too much. Sometimes the exhaustion comes from something different - from doing too little of what actually lights you up.
Hobbies create space for parts of yourself that work simply can't reach. The research backs this up: regular non-work activities are linked to lower stress, better sleep, improved creativity and stronger social connection. But honestly, you don't need a study to tell you that. You already know what it feels like to do something you love for no reason other than that you love it. You've just probably stopped making room for it.
There's also something specifically valuable about movement-based hobbies for women who spend most of their day living from the neck up - thinking, planning, reacting. Skating reconnected me with my body in a way that sitting at a desk never could. I felt stronger and clearer, not just physically but mentally. You don't need to be athletic. You just need to be curious.
And the social side surprised me too. My skating circle doesn't talk about business strategies or growth metrics. We talk about music and routines and the occasional dramatic fall on the ice. It's the kind of friendship that doesn't require you to perform anything, and that's rarer than it should be once you're past your twenties.
How to find one you'll actually stick with
The hobby lists you find online are almost always too broad to be useful. So instead of a list, three questions worth sitting with:
What did you love before life got busy?
Childhood interests are surprisingly revealing. The things we were drawn to before we started optimising ourselves for external approval tend to be the things that actually stick.
What do you find yourself watching or reading about for no reason?
Not to learn something useful, just because it interests you. That small pull of curiosity is usually pointing at something worth following.
What would you try if you genuinely didn't care whether you were good at it?
That last condition is the important one. The best hobbies for ambitious women tend to be the ones with no audience and no performance metric. Just you, doing something, for the sake of doing it.
Start with one class or one afternoon. Treat it as an experiment rather than a commitment. And resist the urge to optimise it.
The most interesting women I know aren't only building successful businesses. They're building lives that feel genuinely good to live - and they've usually got something in their week that has nothing to do with their work and everything to do with who they are.
Sometimes that starts with something as small as giving yourself permission to enjoy an hour doing something completely pointless.