Wealth often grows not from explosive wins, but from quiet, unsexy practices repeated over years, like a sourdough starter that ignores your inbox.
It's Tuesday. I push my toddler's stroller down the street after breakfast while we walk my husband to work.
São Paulo is already buzzing, and I’m mentally sorting my to-dos between nap windows and conference calls.
What always surprises me is how many of the people I meet, including founders, heirs, and quietly successful folks in our circle, keep returning to the simplest, least flashy pastimes.
Not the yacht-party kind of hobbies (though a few do sail), but habits you and I can practice today without a private club membership.
This post is a peek behind the curtain and a reminder that wealth often grows from consistent, unsexy practices that stretch your thinking, your attention, and your patience.
Here are eight hobbies I keep seeing among people who’ve built and sustained real wealth, along with how to try them in a grounded, non-gimmicky way.
1. Reading widely
The wealthy people I respect read across lanes: biographies, industry papers, novels, anthropology, and even poetry.
They read to connect dots, not just to collect quotes. They want to see how ideas rhyme across fields, because innovation usually happens at the intersections.
When I was nursing my then-newborn at 2 a.m., fiction kept me sane and sharp. It also softened my thinking for the next day’s strategy call.
Reading needs to remain a steady thread through your week.
Try this tiny stack to build range: one book for skill (something you can apply), one for worldview (history, science, culture), and one for pleasure (fiction counts). Keep them in different rooms so you read by context, not willpower.
Give each book a job. If it has none, let it go.
2. Long, aimless walks
If I could bottle one habit I see among the truly wealthy, it’s walking.
They take calls on foot.
They solve problems on foot.
They reset on foot.
There’s something about steady movement without distraction that loosens knotted thinking.
I notice it on our morning route in Itaim: fifteen minutes in, my brain finally steps out of the meeting room and into the world.
Practical way to start: pair a daily walk with an existing cue such as after lunch, after school drop-off, or when your calendar switches contexts.
Leave your phone in your pocket for the first ten minutes. Let your mind arrive.
3. Endurance sports (done humbly)
It’s not only about marathons but also about training for something that asks more of you each week.
Running, cycling, and swimming build emotional range.
You learn to sit with discomfort, negotiate with your inner critic, and still show up.
Wealthy friends who race don’t chase medals as much as they chase better decision-making under stress.
A tempo run is rehearsal for high-stakes choices: you find the edge, back off, then find it again.
If you’re postpartum or in a heavy season, aim for streaks, not peaks.
Ten minutes of movement daily beats a heroic Saturday that wrecks you.
Consistency is the flex.
4. Meditation and stillness practices
The most resource-rich people I know guard a daily moment where no one can reach them.
Sometimes that’s meditation.
Sometimes it’s breathwork, or simply closing a door and staring out the window for five minutes.
Stillness sharpens your yes and your no.
I’m not a monastery person; I’m a mother who cooks dinner at 7 p.m. while answering Slack, and even two minutes between tasks changes the texture of my evening.
I breathe slow, feel my feet, and watch my nervous system downshift.
A line I underlined in Rudá Iandê’s new book Laughing in the Face of Chaos keeps echoing for me: “When we let go of the need to be perfect, we free ourselves to live fully—embracing the mess, complexity, and richness of a life that's delightfully real.”
Perfectionism is the enemy of practice.
If meditation feels awkward, good.
Lean in for sixty seconds and call that a win.
5. Journaling and note-taking systems
Wealthy people tend to capture their thinking.
They capture not just tasks but also judgments, hunches, and tiny lessons from messy days.
They build a personal knowledge base they can consult later.
I keep a single running note on my phone with three headers: Decisions, Questions, and Patterns.
Every evening I add one line to each.
It’s minimal and honest, and it’s often where my best ideas for work and family rhythms appear.
Journaling functions less like therapy on paper and more like a mirror that refuses to flatter you.
If writing longhand feels heavy, voice-note yourself during a walk and transcribe later.
The point is to externalize thinking so you can edit it.
6. Collecting and curating (thoughtfully)
Art, watches, and rare books are common interests; yes, some wealthy folks collect.
But the common thread isn’t luxury. It’s curation.
They develop taste on purpose.
They study provenance and craft.
They choose a few things to go deep on, and they build relationships around those interests.
You can collect within your means.
A friend curates vintage cookbooks and hosts a quarterly dinner where everyone brings a recipe from the stack.
I keep a small shelf of Central Asian textiles in our apartment; it keeps my roots alive in a city that moves fast.
Start small, pick a theme, and learn the story behind each piece.
Curation trains the same muscles you need for good investments: patience, research, and the ability to walk away.
7. Strategy games (chess, bridge, Go)
The wealthy people I know love games where luck is short-term noise and strategy is the long-term signal.
Chess opens pattern recognition.
Bridge builds partnership and memory.
Go teaches you to think in territory, not just tactics.
What I love about these games is how they reward humility.
You will blunder.
You will overextend.
You learn to recover without drama.
If you’re new, set a weekly game night at home.
When Emilia sleeps, Matias and I sometimes play a quick chess blitz on the balcony with tea.
It’s competitive and goofy and keeps our brains sparring in a playful way.
8. Hands-on crafts and gardening
This one surprised me.
A lot of very wealthy people I meet do something tactile.
They knit.
They throw clay.
They tend balcony herbs or bonsai.
They make bread with patience I don’t naturally have.
Why? Because working with your hands recalibrates your nervous system and your timeline.
A sourdough starter ignores your inbox. Basil does not care about your KPI.
On Sundays, I prep a simple dough while Emilia stacks cups on the kitchen floor.
The house smells like home by late afternoon, and that alone feels like wealth.
You don’t need a yard. Start with three pots: basil, mint, and parsley.
Fail, learn, and start again next season.
Before we finish, there’s one more thing I need to address…
None of these hobbies require a trust fund.
But they do require a commitment to your own interior life, which is rarer than money.
Why these hobbies keep showing up
Wealth responds to leverage in attention, energy, and time.
These hobbies build exactly that.
- Reading expands your context.
- Walking and endurance sports improve stress-testing.
- Meditation gives you a clearer signal.
- Journaling distills your thinking.
- Collecting refines judgment.
- Strategy games sharpen foresight.
- Crafts and gardening anchor you in a body and a season.
When you stack them, you become the kind of person who notices sooner, decides cleaner, and acts longer.
That’s compounding.
Common roadblocks (and how to move through them)
“I don’t have time.”
I understand.
In our house, two full-time jobs plus a toddler means everything runs on routine.
We wake at 7, eat together, walk Matias to work, then I work while our nanny is with the baby.
Evenings are family, then dishes, then us.
The way through is to integrate, not bolt on.
Read during commutes.
Walk during calls.
Journal in three lines before bed.
“I’m not good at it.”
You don’t have to be.
Hobbies serve your life, not your image.
As noted by many performance coaches, identity grows from repeated evidence.
Let competence emerge from consistency.
“I’ll start when things calm down.”
They won’t.
Choose one micro-practice this week and protect it like a meeting with someone you respect.
A gentle nudge if you need one
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll repeat it because it helped me when I was caught in perfection or burnout.
Rudá Iandê’s Laughing in the Face of Chaos gave me language for staying human while life is crowded.
His insights pushed me to question the invisible rules I was following and to listen more closely to my body’s signals before I sprint into another project.
One line sits on a sticky note near my desk: “Their happiness is their responsibility, not yours.”
It frees me to invest in hobbies that nourish me, rather than managing everyone’s mood.
If you’re craving a reset in how you relate to pressure and productivity, the book inspired me to simplify my practices and be kinder to my limits.
Next steps
Pick one hobby from this list and give it a job for the next 14 days.
Name where it fits in your routine.
Define what “done” looks like (ten pages, ten minutes, one line, one pot watered).
Tell someone you trust, or teach your kid to hold you accountable with a sticker chart.
Then let the practice work on you.
You won’t become a different person in two weeks.
But you will start living like the kind of person who invests, compounds, and quietly builds wealth in ways that don’t scream, but last.
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