I spend way too much time looking at screens.
To be fair, a lot of it is unavoidable. I run an online business. I work on my website, answer emails, create social media content, take pictures and videos, and do approximately 367 other things on my phone and laptop every day.
But then there are the other hours. The ones where I pick up my phone to check one thing and somehow find myself still scrolling 45 minutes later. You know the drill.
Lately, I’ve found myself craving more things that happen in the real, physical world. Things I can make with my hands. Things I can grow. Places I can walk. Ways I can move my body. Things that don’t need Wi-Fi, an algorithm, a subscription, or another damn app.
Apparently, there’s a name for a lot of these things: analog hobbies.
I’m craving that. The way life used to be before social media, reels, Tik Tok and AI became the main focus of everything.
The five analog hobbies on this list aren’t things I found while researching an article. They’re things I actually do: crochet, gardening, walking in nature, painting, and hula hooping.
They’re all completely different, but I’ve realized they give me something similar. Instead of sitting there consuming whatever a screen decides to show me next, I’m actually creating something wonderful and expressing myself. These so-called “analog” activities help me feel calm, grounded, and focused. They put me into a “flow state” where my mind quiets and I can just think only about the thing I’m doing. All the noise just…goes away.
It is so nice.
Analog Hobby #1: Crochet
I learned to crochet years ago, like waaaay back in the day. I started crocheting actually about a year before I started making hula hoops. (Oh yeah, if you’re new here, I’m a hula hoop maker and teacher and have been for the past 14 years; more on hoops on #5!)
Crochet, though, is one of those hobbies I’ll put down for months, or even years, but always find my way back to.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about sitting down with a ball of yarn and watching an actual thing slowly appear in your hands. When you first start, that thing will be a wonky little square that was supposed to become something else…hehe. But as you progress, you’ll start making beautiful scarves, dish towels, hot pads, blankets, sweaters, and anything else you can dream up.
And crochet has one major advantage when I’m trying to spend less time on my phone: my hands are busy. It’s considerably harder to mindlessly scroll when both hands are occupied with yarn and a crochet hook.
Not only can I not scroll my phone but I also cannot mindlessly eat junk food. For me that’s another big win.
I also love that it forces me to slow down. There’s no algorithm feeding me something new every three seconds. It’s repetitive and tactile, and sometimes a little frustrating, but that’s part of the appeal. I have to actually pay attention to what I’m doing. And my brain gets trained to just chill, bro.
That’s something we’ve really lost in 2026 and it saddens me. So I’m making sure I take purposeful action to get it back for myself.
Sure, I occasionally need to pull up a pattern or tutorial online. I’m not trying to live like it’s 1850. But once I know what I’m doing, I can put the phone down, pick up my yarn, and spend an hour making something instead of consuming something.
And I always feel better afterward.
Analog Hobby #2: Gardening
Gardening might be the ultimate antidote to spending too much time online because nature absolutely refuses to operate on internet time.
You can plant a seed today, but you can’t refresh the page and make it sprout tomorrow. You have to water it, wait, pay attention, and trust that something is happening down there in the dirt.
I love planting something tiny and watching it eventually turn into this big, ridiculous explosion of color. I love noticing the first new leaves, waiting for buds to open, and wandering outside just to see what’s changed since yesterday.
And gardening gets me outside without requiring me to have some grand plan for what I’m going to do outside. I can pull weeds for ten minutes, water my flowers, move some mulch around, or just stand there admiring something that finally bloomed.
Yes, sometimes I take pictures with my phone. Sometimes I look something up because I have no idea what the heck my plant is doing. But mostly, gardening gives me a reason to put the phone down, get my hands dirty, and pay attention to something that’s growing at its own pace.
Breathe in the fresh air. Enjoy the way the sunlight is hitting the scenery around me, and notice the way it changes as the day goes by.
In a world where everything seems designed to make us want the next thing immediately, there’s something that feels really good about having a hobby that makes you wait.
Analog Hobby #3: Walking in Nature
Walking is probably the simplest hobby on this list, which is part of why I love it. I don’t need supplies. I don’t need to learn anything. I don’t even need to be particularly good at it. I can just put on my shoes and go outside.
And while I enjoy walking anywhere, there’s something different about walking in nature. Give me a dirt road, a wooded trail, a mountain view, or even just a quiet place where I can hear birds instead of notifications, and I’m happy.
I think one of the reasons walking works so well as an offline hobby is that nothing has to come from it. I don’t have to turn it into a workout, count my steps, track my pace, or prove that I accomplished something. I can wander around, look at trees, notice wildflowers, and let my brain be wherever it wants to be for a while.
My phone usually comes with me, of course. I’m a woman walking around in the woods, after all. But it can stay in my pocket.
Sometimes the best thing I can do after spending hours staring at a screen is go somewhere that reminds me of the beautiful, magical world I actually live in.
Analog Hobby #4: Painting
Painting is another hobby I keep coming back to because it gives me permission to make something just because I want to make it.
I’m not a professional artist. I’m not trying to become one. Sometimes I have an idea in my head that turns out beautifully, and sometimes what ends up on the canvas looks absolutely nothing like what I pictured. And that’s okay. That’s good!
When I’m painting, I have to pay attention to what’s right in front of me: mixing a color, deciding what I want to vibe of the painting to be. Sometimes I just let the paint flow on the canvas and go wherever it takes me. I love the feeling of just going with it and not trying to force the paint to conform to the idea I have in my head.
And unlike so much of what I create digitally, a painting is physically real. I can hang it on my wall, give it to somebody, or walk past it six months later and remember making it.
I think adults sometimes forget we’re allowed to make art without needing to be good at art. You don’t have to sell it. You don’t have to post it. Nobody has to like it. You can buy some inexpensive paint, sit down at the kitchen table, and make something that exists simply because you made it.
That’s a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon that could’ve been spent doom scrolling.
Drumroll, Please…
Analog Hobby #5: Hula Hooping (My Favorite)
You already know hula hooping was going to make this list! You’re on a website dedicated to hula hooping for fun, fitness, and just overall health, both mental and physical!
I picked up my first adult hula hoop in 2013, and I had absolutely no idea that this ridiculously simple plastic circle was about to become such a huge part of my life.
One of the things I still love about hula hooping is how wonderfully analog it is. There’s no screen required. No app to download. No battery to charge. No wifi needed. No algorithm deciding what I should do next. It’s just you and a hoop, and you can do as much or as little with it as you want.
You can put on your favorite music and waist hoop in the backyard. You can learn tricks. You can dance with it. You can spend an afternoon trying to figure out one move and feel ridiculously proud when it finally clicks. And because you’re actually doing something, you may suddenly realize you’ve been moving your body for an hour without thinking of it as exercise.
That’s a big part of why I’ve stuck with hooping for all these years. It gives me something that screens rarely do: I lose track of time doing something OTHER than scrolling through endless videos of crap.
And if your last experience with a hula hoop was trying a tiny kid’s hoop and watching it immediately crash to the floor, don’t assume you can’t do it. Adult beginner hoops are larger and much easier to learn with. I’ve spent more than a decade teaching adults who were convinced they couldn’t hula hoop, and I’ve seen that assumption proven wrong over and over again.
If you want to learn more, start with my 60-second free hoop finder quiz.
There’s also a beautiful community of hula hoopers out there in the world. And we meet up, in real life, and guess what? Nobody is sitting around staring at their phone. We usually absolutely forget about our phones for an entire weekend when we get together. I actually have to force myself to get my phone to take pictures so I can have those snapshots forever. But, it’s pretty hard to find any type of community experience these days where people are actually present and engaged. It is so, so enjoyable and comforting.
I make hula hoops right here at my shop in North Carolina, and we do retreats just about every summer.
Hula hooping feels like the perfect analog hobby to me. It’s playful. It’s physical. It’s creative. And underneath everything my business has become over the years, it’s still just people picking up plastic circles and playing.
Analog Hobbies Matter More Than Ever
I don’t think technology is bad. Obviously. I run an online business, I use social media, and I admit my phone makes my life easier in some ways.
But I also don’t think we’re meant to spend every spare second being entertained by a screen. I’ve begun to deeply resent that we all do that, actually.
The moment there’s nothing happening, there’s this automatic urge to reach for our phones. Standing in line? Phone. Waiting for dinner to cook? Phone. Five quiet minutes before bed? Better see what 300 strangers are doing. Ugh. I’m just sick of it.
Crochet gives my hands something to make. Gardening gives me something to nurture. Walking gets me out into the world. Painting lets me create something that didn’t exist before. Hula hooping gets my whole body involved.
None of these things are revolutionary. In fact, that’s exactly what I like about them.
They’re simple. They’re tactile. They’re a little old-fashioned. And they remind me that I don’t need to fill every empty moment with scrolling on my phone.
So until the robots take over and kill us all…you can find me in my rocking chair, crocheting some granny squares, or in the wildflower meadow, hula hooping my heart out!