For some reason, I've always had a challenging 'hobby' to pass the time, even in highschool/uni, and now need a new one for employed life. There are only two requirements: there needs to be a way to evaluate progress (i.e. reading books wouldn't really count because you can hardly 'improve' at it), and the recurring mechanic needs to be fun in some way. This might sound very esoteric so here are examples of what I've done so far: -League of legends (peaked top 50 euw s2, master/challenger every season afterwards until...s9?) but it is pretty boring now -Bouldering (7b+ indoors after 6 months) but it is not maintainable because I used to go for 2-4 hours every other day, which is impossible while working full time. -Poker, studied and played until I was marginally profitable online and crushing live low stakes. Again, I can't do this while working full time because it is very time consuming, and you get bored of the game pretty quickly. The activity can be physical or mental, I don't mind either. I guess some obvious candidates would be chess and rubik's cube but I never found any of these fun enough to 'spam' until I got good at either. Any ideas?
Any martial / combat art: judo, taekwondo, karate, fencing, etc
Also learning to play an instrument: Hard - horn, violin, cello Medium - winds (clarinet, saxophone, flute), percussion, trumpet, trombone Easy - piano, string bass, guitar
Depending on where you live, skiing/snowboarding are challenging, there's clear progress, and you don't have to go that often
Science or math research. While you are at it you might discover something new as well
Yawn
Watch Anime called Dr stone
Leetcode 🤡
You can still play poker while working full time and it can be a very profitable side gig. 1/3 is like $25/hr if you are decent. And all you need to beat the live low stakes is pulse... it also provides you an opportunity to travel around the us Skiing is also really fun and that's something I've been doing for a while now
1/3 regs are no fun and I don't think the game is as fun anymore
Ohh yeah, they are miserable if they grind it for living. You still can find fun tables on weekends. There is also 2/5 which would usually have more interesting people
Brazilian jiu jitsu. Amazing. You get to choke people out.
Now we all know what you’re into... 🔥
Breakdancing
Learn a musical instrument
mma
tried krav maga for a year and it was mostly cardio and getting beaten up in full contact sparring. Is mma any different?
If you are looking at measuring progress beating other people is the most straight ward way. A good coach probably won't throw you into the cage for full contact sparring until you are physically and mentally ready