Why “Garage Time” (or Your Hobby) is Essential for Mental Health

To all my readers, I apologise for being inconsistent with writing more. I was caught up with a lot of work at my start-up. The baby was not keeping well after a severe bout of viral fever.

PS- On a side note, I just got promoted and became a ‘Co-Founder’!

As a Co-Founder who doubles up as the COO and CDO at a MarTech agency, my brain processes thousands of invisible data points a day. After 14 to 16 hours of Zoom calls, revenue spreadsheets, and client escalations, my mental hard drive is completely fried.

For the first year of my daughter’s life, my evening routine looked like this: survive until the toddler finally went to sleep, collapse onto the living room couch, and instantly pull out my phone to doomscroll or turn on the TV. We call this “relaxing.”

What was worse was aimlessly scrolling YouTube from 11 PM to roughly 2 AM. Nearly a couple of hours wasted without the slightest contribution to anything productive in nature. 

But I realized quickly that swapping a work screen for an entertainment screen wasn’t resting my brain; it was destroying my mental health. I was waking up just as exhausted as when I went to sleep. I didn’t need more content. I needed an analogue escape.

I needed Garage Time.

What is Garage Time? (And Why Executives Need It)

Garage Time doesn’t literally have to happen in a garage, and you don’t need to be rebuilding a classic car. This is not getting grease on your hands, dismantling the engine and putting it back again. While it sounds pretty cool, I am not sure a lot of us have in us what it takes to really pull this off. We would probably get hurt doing something like this. 

It is simply any dedicated, hands-on, screen-free hobby. It could be woodworking, fixing a bicycle, gardening, cooking a complex meal, or even building intricate Lego sets. In other words, things that you were interested in at some point in your life (probably your childhood or teenage years) and are getting to experience it now. 

For high-stress dads, this time must follow one strict guideline: The Anti-ROI Rule.

In the C-Suite, everything I do is measured by KPIs, profit margins, and Return on Investment. Your hobby must be the exact opposite. It must be something you do purely for the process, with zero care about optimization or monetization. It gives the executive sector of your brain permission to finally shut down.

In other words, you want to do something without thinking about what will it give you in return. In reality, the only thing it will give you in return is the ability to make your brain stop working overtime as it does every other second of the day when you are at work or helping with household chores, or most importantly, looking after your child. 

The Psychological Shift: Hands vs. Pixels

There is a profound psychological shift that happens when you put down a device and pick up a physical tool. You might not realise it, but if you stop using your hands completely for something other than typing on your laptop, you will lose the ability to do a lot of things. 

A small example- My wife recently asked me to use a screwdriver to put batteries in for the new RC toy that we got our daughter. Yes, in today’s world, due to security and safety reasons kids toys require the battery fitment area to be covered by a screw so that it makes it difficult for toddlers to open the same. 

You know what happened. For some strange almost alien-like reasons, I just couldn’t use the screwdriver to unscrew the screw. That manual action which intertwines the hands, wrists, and fingers, seemed so alien to me. 

In my line of work, the output is entirely digital. Code, campaigns, and cash flow are invisible. But when you use your hands to fix something physical, you get a localized, immediate dopamine hit that corporate work rarely provides. You can literally touch your progress.

Focusing on a tangible task acts as a moving meditation. Whether you are sanding a piece of wood or tuning a guitar string, it lowers the cortisol (stress hormones) built up from a day of putting out corporate fires.

Like I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to do anything glamorous. Or, really get your hands dirty and become Clint Eastwood. No. Not required at all. You need something simple, something that will not tax your brain overtly, something which you can do casually. 

My Garage Hobby (With a Special Section on my Wife’s Hobby)

Now that we have established why picking up something elementary is important for your mental and physical well-being, I would like to share what is it that I do in my personal life. 

When thinking about what I wanted to do, or what I liked, my options were realistically limited by the following conscious choices-

1. It should not be expensive
2. It should not be time consuming
3. It should not require a disciplined daily approach
4. It should not make me travel even a single mile anywhere
5. It should be something I could do at my own house
6. It should not be dangerous in any way

Given the list, you can understand how things like fixing a car, learning to play the guitar, climbing mountains or trekking, or cooking (pretty dangerous for someone like me) were ruled out. 

So, after a lot of thought, I narrowed down on two things- 

1. Trying to save plants by watering, changing pots, adding natural fertilizers, and making sure they are protected.
2. Building toy things- Hot Wheels Track and Ramps, Legos, Magnetic Buildings, etc. 

I wanted to categorically steer clear of saying I am into gardening, because that is not what I do to be honest. Its at a very basic level right now. 

The second hobby is something I have always enjoyed ever since I was a kid. Making models was fun, engaging, and pretty satisfying. With my wife getting these engagement things for my toddler daughter, I really picked up an interest. 

This also allows me some quality bonding time that I can have with her. She really loves acting like a giant dragon and destroys all the Lego buildings, bridges, and roadways I create using the hot wheels ramps and track sets. 

Now coming to what my wife has picked up. We got a ton of drawing and scribbling books for our daughter. One of those drawing books had something called ‘Mandala Art’ Guys if you don’t know what Mandala drawings and paintings are, just Google it. She finds it pretty soothing and comforting to literally use the crayons and keep filling in the hundreds of intricate sections. 

How My Hobby Anchored Our Digital Detox Tips for Families

You cannot tell your family to limit their screen time if you are constantly staring at yours.

My Garage Time forced me to leave my phone, which completely changed the evening dynamic of our house. It turns out, mom and dad’s hobbies are one of the most effective digital detox tips for families because it sets an analogue baseline for the whole house.

Here is how we built a family-wide detox around my offline hobby:

1. The Parallel Play Hour

While I am in the garden or on the play mat, my wife will often do her Mandala art, and my toddler will play with either me or her wooden blocks on the floor nearby. We are all engaged in our own analogue activities simultaneously. It replaces the default habit of turning on the TV just for background noise.

2. The Show and Tell Rule

Toddlers love physical objects. Letting my daughter (and my overly curious Labrador) help or watch me work with my hands is incredibly grounding. My dog loves to watch me care after the plants. He is pretty fascinated by what goes on. My daughter on the other hand, loves her Lego skyscrapers. Handing her a safe, physical object to inspect replaces the need to hand her a tablet or a tv remote to keep her occupied. She learns that the real world is infinitely more interesting than a screen.

3. The Tech-Free Zone Declaration

My home has a strict new rule which I have enforced. Unless there is a Grade 3 escalation at work (client leaving, payment stuck, stinker emails, etc.) I am not going to open my laptop. If I am in there, I am unreachable by Slack or email. Making just one designated area in your house completely screen-free  and tech free is the easiest, lowest-friction way to start a family-wide digital detox.

Beating the Dad Guilt of Taking Time for Yourself

Let’s address the elephant in the room: It feels incredibly selfish to close the door and do a hobby for an hour when your wife is exhausted, the baby is fussy, and the dog needs walking.

I really feel that the guys that can do this and take out this ‘me time’ for themselves are selfish as hell. I would never be able to do something like this ever. I just don’t have it in me to have fun, relax, or calm down, when everyone else at home is tired, exhausted, and stressed. 

I struggled heavily with this Dad Guilt. But I had to reframe it using the airplane oxygen mask rule. If I don’t take 45 minutes to decompress my brain with a physical task, I will bring my corporate anxiety back into the living room. I become short-tempered and reactive.

The key is communication. My wife and I created a Partner Agreement. I get 45 minutes of uninterrupted Hobby Time on Saturday and Sundays. In exchange, she gets 45 minutes of completely uninterrupted, out-of-the-house Mom Time on Saturdays and Sundays. It is a strategic trade of resources that keeps us both sane.

The Bottom Line: Be More Than Just Your Job Title

You are a COO. You are a Dad. You are a Husband. But if you strip all those titles away, you still need to be you. You need to unwind and decompress, because you need to keep going at full steam the next day, week, month, quarter, and year. If you don’t invest in some time where your brain is chilled, you will not be able to utilise it when you really need it.

Reclaiming an analogue hobby isn’t a luxury; it is preventive mental health maintenance. It breaks the screen addiction, lowers your baseline stress, and ultimately makes you a more patient, present father when you walk back through that door.

Find your garage. Put down the phone. Build something.

Guys, tell me in the comments section about some activities, which you engage with as part of your Garage Time!