Leisure activity isn't just for fun, says Howard E.A. Tinsley, a professor from the University of Florida who has developed a scale that classifies hobbies based on needs they satisfy in people. The scale can help people find more personal fulfillment by giving them insight into what they really like. “The surprising thing is that activities you might think are very different have similar effects on people. Probably no one would consider acting to have the same characteristics as roller-skating or playing baseball, but People who act as a hobby report feeling an intense sense of belonging to a group, much the same way others do in playing sports.
And activities Providing the Strongest sense of competition are not sports, but card and computer game, he found. Participating in soccer satisfies our desire for a sense of “belonging”, and coin Collecting fulfills the need for “creativity”. With so many people in jobs they don't care for, leisure is a prized aspect of people's lives, Tinsley said. “Yet it’s not something psychologists really study. Economists tell us how much money people spend skiing, but nobody explains why Skiing really appeals to people.”
Fishing, generally considered an outdoor recreational activity, for example, is a form of self-expression like stamp collecting, because it gives people the opportunity to express some aspect of their personality by doing something different from their daily routine, he said.