Hobby vs Interest
Hobbies and interests are words that would seem like synonyms or at least interchangeable to most of us. Most of us have varied interests in life, in addition to the job we are doing. When filling up forms for a post in a company, we see a column asking about our hobbies and interests. Hobbies and interests are pursued in one’s pastime. For most people, hobbies and interests are the same, and they talk about them in the same breath. However, there are differences between a hobby and an interest that will be talked about in this article.
Hobby
A hobby is an activity that is pleasurable and people take part in such an activity, in their spare time. For example, some people like to take part in some adventurous outdoor activity whenever they get some leisure time. A hobby is one activity that makes people happy as they are able to forget tensions of their lives for some time. Many people listen to music in their leisure time and are lost in their musical world forgetting all about their worries and problems for the time being. There are others who collect stamps, a hobby that is called philately. Many collect coins of different countries and have a huge collection of old and rare coins of various countries of the world. This is a hobby that is referred to as numismatics. Of course, hobbies can be varied, and there is no limit to the types of hobbies people can have. For some dancing is not just their hobby, it is a passion that they cannot live without dancing. They take to dancing in their spare time, and get inner satisfaction and pleasure out of indulging their favorite activity.
The important thing to remember is that a hobby is pursued for fun or pleasure and not for remuneration. Thus, an activity ceases to be a hobby as soon as it becomes a profession or a source of livelihood for an individual.
Interest
Interest is defined as curiosity or the feeling of an individual for a particular thing or activity. If a subject arouses the interest or curiosity of a person, it is said that his interests lie in that subject. When talking about a man, we often say he has interests in share markets or in sports, whichever may be the case. There are areas of interests for people and there are often questions pertaining to one’s interests in life when facing an interview board. You may be interested a lot in football but still do not play it on the ground actively. This means you read a lot about football and also watch it on TV and stadiums as you are interested in the sport. Similarly, you are not yourself a politician but interested in politics and watch political news and current affairs programs on TV avidly.
What is the difference between Hobbies and Interests?
• Hobby is an activity that one pursues in for fun and pleasure whereas interest is a broader area
• One may not play football but watch and read a lot about the sport as his interest lies in it
• One may have an interest in politics without that being his hobby
• Hobby remains for fun and recreation, and an activity ceases to be hobby when it becomes a profession for someone