13 no-pressure creative outlets for perfectionists
Perfectionism sucks, but we persevere!
You’re reading Soft Hobbies, a weekly newsletter for artists in all mediums, with a special focus on writers. Here you’ll find resources to nurture your creativity, advice to overcome perfectionism, and inspiration to make time for art. I’m Auzin, a Seattle-based fiction and poetry writer. Feel free to visit my author website or check out my socials.
Greetings to the 1,417 softies who subscribe to this newsletter! Thank you for being here.
This post was originally published in February 2025. Life has conspired to keep me from writing for you this week, but I hope you enjoy this piece that seemed to resonate with a lot of folks last year.
Want to feel creative and artistic, but not be scared, pressured, or overwhelmed?
At this point, we all know that creative hobbies are really good for us. They help our brain health, relieve our stress, connect us with our communities, and may even prolong our lives. Hobbies make life less gray and uniform, so every day doesn’t feel the same. They give you something to point to and say, I made that. That was me.
It’s worth trying to create things instead of only consuming them. Especially now, and especially if you’re like me, a person who makes emotional purchases all-too-frequently. You’ll probably never create more than you consume, but that’s okay. It’s still good for you, your community, and the environment at large for you to try making things more often, especially if they’re made with materials or tools you already have access to. Time spent making is time spent not buying.
You don’t have to make things that are useful, or beautiful, or understandable. And your stuff definitely doesn’t have to be perfect. Creating is a human right that you were born with. Every person on this planet is an artist, but most of them had their art taken away from them at an early age. I had to learn all this on my own, and it’s a truth I will always hold onto.
Perfect is the enemy of done and perfectionism is the enemy of artists. I remember the first time I described myself as a perfectionist to my mom — I was probably in middle school or early high school. She was surprised because of how I appeared to her on the outside: a procrastinator who spent too much time on the internet and always took the shortcut to the end goal. “Half-assing” it, as she often described my homework and how I went about doing chores.
What she didn’t see was how insecure I was about my worthiness and abilities, and how inferior I felt to my peers. I wanted to be great so badly, but I knew that the result of my work would never measure up to what I saw in my head. And if that was the case, why put in the effort? If anything short of perfection is failure, why even try?
Perfectionism doesn’t always mean that you give 150% and keep going until your eyes cross. Sometimes it manifests as what looks like laziness or escapism on the outside. It can hurt extra that way, because while people might praise you for overworking yourself and thereby validate your perfectionist tendencies, far fewer of them will tell you “good job” for playing videogames while feeling guilty over not writing (me).
Perfectionism in any form serves very little useful function because it hinders and prevents creation, rather than supporting and inspiring. And you deserve the latter! This post won’t tell you how to overcome perfectionism because #1: I don’t know how to do that and #2: it’s probably a book-length topic — anyone have a recommendation? This post is for finding a new hobby, one that puts your perfectionism high up on a shelf, where it can occupy itself for a while while you have a good time.
You don’t need to learn any new skills for these! The learning will come slowly and organically. These hobbies are relaxed and chill for busy, stressed-out people with too much on their plates (me again…) and I recommend picking one or two that you loved doing as a kid. Maybe some of these seem childish and that’s a good thing because you know who’s generally not stressed? Children!
The hobbies:
Coloring with crayon, marker, or pencil. I prefer children’s coloring books over adult ones—the adult ones tend to stress me out a bit.
Play with clay (especially polymer or air-dry) in front of the TV.
Read below your grade level.
Lego or other building sets.
Write fanfiction or make fanart, family-friendly or otherwise.
Go for a walk and find leaves and flowers to press between heavy books. Use them as decorations, bookmarks, or additions to your paintings.
Pick 3 interesting-looking objects in your home and try to take the most artistic picture you can with your phone. Mess around with camera settings, lighting, and the angle you shoot from.
Make a blackout poem with a page from your favorite book and this tool. It’s super easy, I promise.
Grab a friend, a pen, and a piece of paper. Play Exquisite Corpse. A great time-filler when you’re waiting in line.
Collage! PLEASE MAKE A COLLAGE IT’S SO EASY AND FUN.
Scrapbooking or junk journaling. Just glue all the random stuff you’ve been keeping into a journal, so you can look at it later and remember your strange and wonderful life.
Puzzles, if you’re into them.
Make a bucket list or list of goals. Dream big. Maybe your goal is to do more hobbies? If so, please stick around!
I hope this was helpful. My comments section and DMs are open for you to yell about how much perfectionism sucks and what we can do to overcome it. I hope you can make something with your hands this week.
Softly yours,
Auzin
Thank you for this! I honestly read middle grade books all the time now; I struggle with reading in school (namely in college) and still do kinda in grad school so it's nice to read something short and fun without the pressure of deadlines!
Your definition of perfectionism really resonated with me, so thank you for this! It is truly awful that the human brain decides that instead of possibly achieving something less than "perfect" it is better not to try at all...in recent times I've developed a newfound love for the imperfect, because there is so much passion and care that goes into it. And in our current era there is a real need for human imperfectionism in art! That in turn helped me to be less harsh on myself (if I can appreciate the imperfections in others' work then why can't I do so for myself?) - so good luck to you in your pursuit of creative joy too ❤️ (also love the list! I got into writing fanfiction last year and it's genuinely such a creative and rewarding hobby, can highly recommend it to anyone)