Resisting Relentless Messages of Productivity
A Feature Review of
In Defense of Dabbling: The Brilliance of Being a Total Amateur
Karen Walrond
Hardcover: Broadleaf Books, 2025
Buy Now: [ BookShop ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ] [ Audible ]
Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler
It is nigh inevitable. Most people who practice a hobby can probably recall statements like “Oooh, you could sell that!” or questions like “Have you ever thought of opening a business or an Etsy shop?” In a culture that worships productivity and efficiency, every activity must justify itself in profit. The only things worth doing are marketable, salable, lucrative.
Enter In Defense of Dabbling by Karen Walrond, a book whose subtitle promises The Brilliance of Being a Total Amateur. Walrond begins the book with the realization “I am not an expert at anything.” Despite living a good life, she writes, “very little of my good life has anything to do with expertise or mastery. The joy I’ve had in almost everything I’ve ever done—from my professional life to parenting—has arisen mostly in the attempt.”
This thought leads Walrond on a quest to discover the brilliance involved in being a total amateur. First, she rehabilitates the word amateur. While for many “amateur is often used as a stand-in for ‘incompetent,’ or ‘unskillful,’ or even ‘shoddy,’” the word comes from Latin and means “lover.” An amateur is someone who does something voluntarily, for the love of it, rather than from mercenary motives. Second, she pushes back on “hustle culture,” “the societal expectation to be productive at all costs.” The background noise of hustle culture is “the acquisition of money, power, and mastery is the only way to live a successful life.”
In her research, Walrond discovers that “being an amateur might just be good for our brains.” Citing a 2023 study where “researchers found that people who pursued hobbies reported better health, more happiness, fewer symptoms of depression, and higher life satisfaction than those who didn’t,” she concludes that maybe “intentional amateurism…could just be the secret sauce to a merry soul.”
Walrond puts this thesis to the test in the body of the book. She asks, “What if I dabbled in a few new activities (or returned to a few old ones) as a way of dipping my toes in the water, a first step to resisting the relentless messages of productivity?” But she lays a few ground rules first, “guidelines for making the practice sustainable.” Because even dabbling can become another opportunity to chase productivity, Walrond develops the “Seven Attributes of Intentional Amateurism”—curiosity, mindfulness, self-compassion, play, stretch zone, connection, and awe—to keep her experiment in check. She writes, “Intentional amateurism should never feel like a chore; it should feel like self-care.” Practicing intentional amateurism “opens us to the limitless possibilities of rest and leisure being spiritual practices, ones that can be woven into the fabric of our lives.”
And once she lays these ground rules and shares some perceptive questions for readers to ask about what activities might serve as their own places to practice amateurism, Walrond walks through each of the seven attributes a chapter at a time. Chapters open with an anecdote that displays the attribute and move into expert testimony of the attribute’s value. Walrond interviews someone she sees as exhibiting that attribute and concludes by detailing her own dabbling while trying to practice it. The activities she tries are a blend of creative (pottery, piano, video editing, and photography) and active (swimming, surfing, and sailing) pursuits. Walrond’s admissions that being a dabbler is hard (as when she writes, “The decision made and advice received, I promptly did the next obvious thing: I began putting [it] off”) help to disarm the reader. It’s hard not to cheer her on, or to think dabbling in avocations might be possible and desirable outside the confines of the book.
For my part, I already dabble. Outside a narrow range of skills for which I am paid, I intentionally cultivate activities that enrich life without following a straight path to a pile of cash. What struck my attention about this book is the defense of dabbling—the idea that amateurs (who practice hobbies for simple love of them rather than using them as means to a mercenary end) might be on to something. And there is some of that in the book, especially in the first two and final chapters. I admit I was already primed to nod along to those bits, and the bulk of my underlining appears there. Yes! I thought. I am more than what I produce! There are benefits to intentionally doing things purely for love of them! As a believer in the imago Dei and in a God who blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy, I can fully affirm practices that push back against philosophies that treat human beings as “cogs in a capitalistic machine,” against hustle culture, and against the pride, greed, and covetousness that so often accompany them.
I was less enthusiastic about the body chapters of the book, which felt less like a defense of dabbling and more like a demonstration. To be sure, I think the “Seven Attributes of Intentional Amateurism” that form the basis of these chapters are, if not a defense, at least good gestures for would-be dabblers toward self-care. But they seem incidental to the defense rather than integral to it. I would have appreciated more attention spent on the “why” of practicing intentional amateurism than the “how.”
Walrond is a capable writer, so readers will not be bored by her descriptions of the activities in which she dabbled. Those who need permission to embark on their own dabbling adventures will find an amiable companion here, and Walrond’s argument that doing things for the love of them is a form of self-care will strike a chord with kindred spirits. But those who are interested in a robust apologetic for being “total amateurs” might be better served elsewhere.
Jonathan Schindler
Jonathan Schindler is a nonfiction book editor who lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and three children. He is a total amateur at board games, book clubs, coffee roasting, and writing his Substack,Multibasking.
 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
Understanding Christian Nationalism [A Reading Guide] |
 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall for Christian Readers!
|
 Hilarious One-Star Customer Reviews of Bibles |
