Neither sudoku nor novels : the hobby over?60s should adopt and its hidden benefits for the brain

The first time Peter walked into the community woodshop, he felt ridiculous. A retired accountant at 68, he’d always trusted numbers, not nails. The sharp scent of sawdust stung his nose, the low hum of sanders and the throaty growl of a bandsaw made him hesitate at the doorway. “You sure you’re in the right place, love?” a woman in paint-splattered overalls called out, smiling. He almost turned around. But three months later, Peter’s hands—once more familiar with keyboards and spreadsheets—were running along the smooth curve of a chair leg he’d made himself. His back ached, his fingers had tiny nicks and callouses, and he hadn’t felt so alive—or so mentally sharp—in years.

We’ve heard it everywhere: do a crossword a day, keep a sudoku app handy, read more novels. Those are the darlings of “brain health” advice for people over 60. But what if the most powerful, quietly transformative hobby for your later years is not something you do hunched over a table, but something you do with your whole body, in real space, with real materials?

Why your brain is hungry for more than puzzles

Puzzles and novels absolutely have their place—don’t toss your favourite crime series just yet. They challenge memory, vocabulary, and logical thinking. But your brain, especially as you age, is a greedy, multi-sensory organ. It doesn’t just want to think; it wants to see, touch, balance, plan, adjust, and move. It wants to solve problems in three dimensions, not just on paper or on a screen.

Imagine, for a moment, that your brain is like a town. Crossword puzzles light up a few streets in the language district. Sudoku keeps the numeracy neighbourhood buzzing. Reading a novel turns on the imagination theatre, the empathy café, maybe the memory museum. But what happens when you start working on a physical project—a wooden box, a pottery bowl, a patch of garden, a bicycle you’re restoring? Suddenly, new streets switch on. Coordination. Spatial judgment. Fine motor control. Long-term planning. Emotional regulation when something cracks, snaps, or falls apart.

This is where a different kind of hobby—the “making” hobby—comes in. If you’re over 60, there is one surprisingly potent type of pastime that quietly trains your brain in ways crosswords never can: hands-on crafts that demand both mind and body.

The secret hobby: making things with your hands

Call it woodworking, pottery, sewing, model building, metalwork, weaving, gardening with design, or furniture upcycling. The name doesn’t matter as much as the essence: you are using your hands to change raw stuff into something meaningful, step by step. It is creative labour. It’s material conversation. And for the aging brain, it’s rocket fuel.

Consider the sensory feast involved in a simple woodworking project. You begin with a rough plank. You run your fingers across its grain, noticing the knots and ridges. You smell the sap’s faint sweetness. You picture the stool or shelf or box you’d like to create. You plan measurements, calculate angles, think about stability. Then come the tools: the vibration of the sander in your palm, the sound of the plane peeling curls of wood, the focus of guiding a saw straight along a pencil line. Your brain is constantly adapting, predicting, correcting. It’s not just thinking—it’s thinking with the whole body.

Pottery tells a similar story, in clay and water instead of wood. So does quilting, with its tiny decisions about colour and shape. Even restoring a dusty, decades-old chair becomes a multi-layered puzzle: which screws to replace, which joints to reinforce, which finish to choose so that the wood glows instead of sulks.

The hidden brain workout behind every small decision

When you shift from paper-based hobbies to making things with your hands, you give your brain a job that is both demanding and deeply satisfying. It’s the difference between watching a cooking show and actually standing in your kitchen, sleeves rolled up, chopping vegetables. One is passive participation; the other is involvement.

Every time you choose between two types of screws, adjust the tension of thread on a sewing machine, or decide whether the glaze is “just right” or needs another layer, your brain is quietly doing several things:

• Calling on working memory — remembering steps, instructions, and tiny details.
• Engaging problem-solving — “If I cut here, will this still fit?”
• Practicing inhibition — resisting the urge to rush, learning to go slowly and deliberately.
• Using spatial reasoning — imagining how pieces fit together or how something will look from another angle.

And then there’s the delightfully humble gift that making hobbies often give: mistakes. The table leg that’s a centimetre too short. The quilt square sewn inside out. The mug that comes out of the kiln with an accidental wobble. Unlike word puzzles, which usually have one perfect answer, hands-on projects teach your brain to live in the land of “good enough”, “fixable”, and “let’s try again”. This flexible, experimental mindset is itself a protective layer for the aging brain.

The unexpected emotional magic of “I made this”

There’s another layer to this, one that’s harder to measure but easy to feel. When people over 60 pick up a making hobby, they often report something beyond mental sharpness: a return of quiet pride. Not the loud, showy kind. The kind that lives in your chest when you look at a wobbly stool or lopsided bowl and think, “That came out of me.”

After retirement, many people find their identity quietly shrinking. The job title falls away. The daily structure dissolves. You’re no longer “the nurse”, “the manager”, “the teacher”. Days blur. People suggest “keeping busy” with puzzles and TV dramas, but busy is not the same as fulfilled. Making things reintroduces a feeling that is both old and entirely new: craftsmanship. Agency. Being useful to yourself and others.

Emotional benefits ripple outward from each small project:

• A sense of progress – You can literally see how far you’ve come from uncut fabric or raw wood.
• Embodied calm – Repetitive motions, like sanding, knitting, or planing, can settle the nervous system.
• Tangible legacy – A blanket for a grandchild, a shelf that outlives you, a handmade bowl used in family dinners.

Neuroscientists often speak of “reward pathways” in the brain. That tiny spark of satisfaction when you finish something and see it, hold it, use it? That is your brain’s reward system lighting up like a small, welcome bonfire. Over time, those fires can brighten even grey, low-energy days.

More than solitary: how making reconnects you with others

Then there’s the social side. Sudokus are usually solitary; novels can be shared in book clubs, but they still come mostly alive in your own head. Making hobbies, in contrast, naturally spill out into community—whether you plan it or not.

You start asking neighbours for offcuts of wood. You trade patterns, swap seeds, or exchange tips about the stubborn sewing machine that keeps skipping stitches. A casual chat at a community class turns into coffee, then into friendship. Your half-finished projects become stories: “This is the one I started the week my grandson was born,” or “I made this stool with Janet from the Thursday group.”

And social interaction is one of the quiet guardians of brain health. Conversations, even about sandpaper or glaze colours, nudge your language centres, your empathy, your sense of belonging. Loneliness shrinks the world; making hobbies, strangely and beautifully, can expand it again.

Trying it for yourself: how to begin, gently

If this all sounds appealing but intimidating, that’s good. A little nervousness means you’re stepping into unfamiliar territory, and that’s exactly the kind of stretch your brain thrives on. You don’t need to become a master craftsperson. You don’t need perfect eyesight, strong wrists, or a garage full of power tools. You simply need a beginner’s project and a little curiosity.

Start with something manageable, something that fits the space and tools you have. Here’s a simple comparison to help you picture what might suit you:

Hobby	Good For	Brain Benefits
Simple Woodworking (e.g. small shelf, bird box)	People who like tools, measuring, and practical projects	Spatial skills, planning, motor coordination, problem-solving
Pottery or Clay Modeling	Those who enjoy tactile, messy, sensory experiences	Fine motor control, creativity, sensory integration, patience
Sewing or Quilting	Detail-oriented people who like patterns and colours	Attention to detail, sequencing, visual design, persistence
Model Building (trains, planes, ships)	Those who enjoy precision work and patience	Concentration, planning, hand–eye coordination
Creative Gardening (designing beds, structures, containers)	People who love being outdoors and watching things grow	Long-term planning, pattern recognition, sensory engagement

You might borrow tools or join a class so you don’t accumulate expensive gear. Many community centres, retirement villages, and local clubs offer introductory workshops—often led by someone like you, who once stood in the doorway feeling unsure and ended up finding a new part of themselves.

Keep your first goal tiny and tangible: a single wooden box, a basic tote bag, one ceramic mug, a small raised garden bed. The task is not to produce a masterpiece, but to give your brain the pleasure of wrestling with material reality and slowly winning.

Safety, adaptation, and listening to your body

Of course, aging bodies come with their own set of rules and limits. Arthritic fingers, stiff hips, temperamental backs—none of these are disqualifications. They simply shape how you work.

You can choose lighter materials, use adaptive tools, sit on a tall stool instead of standing, or swap heavy sawing for gentler sanding and assembly. If woodworking feels too demanding, try carving soft soapstone or whittling small objects in softer woods. If kneading clay is hard on your hands, try hand-building smaller pieces or using air-dry clay at the kitchen table instead of a full wheel.

Your brain doesn’t need you to push to exhaustion; it just needs you engaged and interested. Ten focused minutes of careful stitching, shaping, or sanding beats an hour done in pain or frustration.

The quiet revolution of making in later life

When we talk about brain health after 60, the conversation often becomes narrow: prevent decline, ward off disease, keep what you have. But there is a quieter, more hopeful story available—the idea that your later years can still be a time of learning, skill-building, and creative growth.

Imagine a decade of your life where you collect not just appointments and medications, but also small victories in the shape of everyday objects: a row of birdhouses along the fence, each more confident than the last. A patchwork quilt stitched slowly over winter evenings. A mug whose lip fits your mouth in the most satisfying way because, without knowing it, your hands taught themselves what comfort feels like in porcelain.

Neither sudoku nor novels can give you the feeling of running your hand over something you finished, something that exists in the world because you persisted. They’re good companions for quiet afternoons, but they live mainly inside your head. Making things with your hands moves the action outward—to the nerves in your fingertips, the balance in your stance, the decisions you make in the face of tiny obstacles. It’s brain training disguised as craft. Therapy disguised as “just a hobby.”

So if you find yourself staring at yet another crossword, pencil hovering; if you’ve finished a novel and can’t quite remember the protagonist’s name; if your days feel strangely flat—consider standing in that metaphorical doorway, like Peter did. Let the scent of sawdust, or clay, or fresh soil drift toward you. Let your curiosity tug once, gently, at your sleeve.

Your brain, it turns out, might be less interested in another puzzle on paper and more interested in what waits at the workbench, on the potter’s wheel, beside the sewing machine, or out in the raised beds. Pick something up. Feel its weight. Begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it too late to start a hands-on hobby if I’m over 70?

No. The brain remains capable of forming new connections throughout life. Starting at 70 or beyond may mean going slower, choosing lighter materials, and taking more breaks, but the benefits—to coordination, confidence, and mood—are still very real.

What if I’m “not creative” or bad with my hands?

Most people who say this have simply never had patient instruction or enough practice. Making hobbies are skills, not innate talents. Your first attempts will likely be clumsy. That’s not a sign of failure; it’s the exact process your brain needs in order to learn.

Can I still do puzzles and reading if I take up a making hobby?

Absolutely. Think of puzzles, reading, and hands-on making as a balanced diet for your brain. Reading and sudoku train certain mental muscles; crafts and building projects train others. Together, they offer broader stimulation than any one activity alone.

What if I have limited space at home?

You don’t need a full workshop. Many hobbies can be done at a small table and packed into a box when you’re finished for the day—hand sewing, small-scale model building, whittling, or air-dry clay work, for example. Community centres and shared studios can also give you access to space and tools without crowding your home.

How often should I do my hobby to help my brain?

Consistency matters more than long sessions. Even 20–30 minutes, three or four times a week, can be beneficial if you are mentally engaged and slightly challenged. Aim to keep learning new techniques or slightly more complex projects over time, so your brain doesn’t slip into autopilot.