The Enduring Joy of Making Things

The joy of creating beautiful or useful things is multiplied when we make things for others

Hands-on physical activities can reduce negative thinking and lift depression.absolutimages/Shutterstock

Making things by hand can boost your mood and benefit others. The act of producing useful or beautiful things—especially by hand, and especially for others—provides a sense of accomplishment and purpose.

Once a project is complete, the satisfaction of seeing what you’ve made in your home, on a plate, or in the hands of a loved one outlasts more fleeting pleasures.

While many of us feel this instinctively upon completing a project or product—such as a blanket, a meal, or a painting—neuroscience and social science research back up the idea that using our hands to produce things is good for our bodies and brains.

Your Own Two Hands 

Making is “the act of taking a material and physically changing its state and/or shape to create something new that has a specific use or purpose,” according to James Otter, a designer of wooden surfboards and the founder of Otter Surfboards in the UK.

In his book “Do/Make: The Power of Your Own Two Hands,” Otter writes, “You already have the tools you need to start making. They’re right in front of you. Your hands.”

He breaks down the making process into three steps: preparation, process, and power. The first involves deciding on what to make and how to go about it, and the second two involve perfecting the procedure and developing confidence in your ability.

“Through the act of making, we reawaken our hands and minds to reconnect with the beauty of the natural work around us,” he writes.

Making things “allows us to slow down,” helps us to increase our confidence, and leads us to a “deeper sense of purpose.”

Health Benefits

Research has found that this sense of connection and purpose can have physical benefits. According to the UK group Knit for Peace, a study on knitting found a significant relationship between knitting frequently and feeling “calm and happy.” Among the 3,545 knitters in the study, those who knitted more frequently also reported higher cognitive functioning. The researchers asserted that as a skilled and creative occupation, knitting has “therapeutic potential.”

Knit for Peace also reports that knitting confers health benefits such as lower blood pressure, reduced depression and anxiety, and distraction from chronic pain. Additionally, it reduces loneliness and isolation while increasing a sense of usefulness and inclusion in society.

Kelly Lambert, Ph.D., has seen the healing effects of hands-on work in her profession and in her own life.

Lambert is a professor of behavioral neuroscience and a co-coordinator of the neuroscience program at the University of Richmond in Virginia. In her book “Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist’s Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power,” she writes that hands-on physical activities affect the circuit in the brain that is responsible for the negative thinking and emotional emptiness that accompany depression.

Through her research, Lambert identified a critical link between symptoms of depression and the areas of the brain involved in motivation, pleasure, movement, and thought.

Lambert herself found that working with her hands—in the simple act of cleaning her house—helped to lift the depression she experienced after the death of her mother. She developed the “effort-driven rewards theory” as an action-oriented approach to treating depression. Accomplishment through hard work, she found, sent the message to her brain that “[her] efforts could again lead to desirable consequences.”

A Tangible Legacy

Knit for Peace started as an income generation project for Hutu and Tutsi widows, victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and civil war. These women knitted school sweaters for orphans, and the UK’s Charities Advisory Trust paid them by raising the funds through featuring the project in the Trust’s Good Gifts Catalogue.

“Knitting for charity makes people feel more useful and worthwhile,” reports Knit for Peace. As a product-oriented hobby with a tangible, visible, and useful result, it “creates satisfaction at completing a task and reinforces a sense of capability.”

Hobbies other than knitting that also produce long-lasting treasures—woodwork, painting, and other arts and crafts, for example—also leave a tangible family legacy, so that older people may find them especially valuable.

A study published in the “International Journal of Aging and Human Development” showed that “long-term participation in creative activities has benefits for middle-aged and older people that may improve their adaptation to later life.”

The study looked at 546 adults aged 40 to 88 who participated in creative hobbies. They were surveyed using a tool called the “Creative Benefits Scale,” a measure of the different kinds of psychological, emotional, and social gains that people believe they experience from participating in creative activities on a long-term basis.

The study sorted the benefits of creative participation into four major themes: identity (a sense of meaning derived from one’s creative hobby); spirituality (connecting to the universe through the practice of one’s hobby); calming (a de-stressing effect from one’s work); and recognition (the sense that other people recognize and admire one’s creative products and the skill involved in creating them).

The researchers found that creative activities—in particular those that involved generativity (an altruistic concern for others, especially those younger than oneself)—played a part in life satisfaction.

“Creativity may help explain the link between generativity and life satisfaction,” they wrote.

They also noted that “participation in creative activities can help people bounce back from late life losses, and provide new sources of identity.” The researchers propose the teaching and maintaining of creative skills as one way to alleviate depression and anxiety in middle-aged and older adults.

Drs. Carrie and Alton Barron say in their book “The Creativity Cure” that everyone is capable of creativity and happiness. They recommend “taking happiness into your own two hands” by working to find your creative outlet, whatever form it may take.

Discovering what you enjoy doing with your hands may take some time, but it'll be time well spent. Try cooking a simple meal, planting a garden, or making a toy from a kit if you’re not sure where your hands-on talents may lie.

“Creative expression through the proper form,” write the Barrons, “the form that’s organic for you will make you feel well and sometimes even ecstatic.”

Create with your hands to benefit yourself and others, while leaving a legacy for those you love.