On a Wednesday afternoon within the suburbs of Thane, 23-year-old enterprise graduate Rajalakshmi Indulkar (she accomplished her diploma from a preferred MBA institute in Mumbai) is hunched over a picket embroidery hoop. She is rigorously threading a sample into linen material.
Her pals from the identical faculty are busy with company deadlines, PowerPoint decks and Slack notifications. Rajalakshmi, nevertheless, selected one thing else. “I tried an actual job for three months,” she says. “But it felt like I was staring at a screen all day with nothing tangible to show for it. With embroidery or pottery, I can see what I’ve made.”
She just isn’t alone.
Across cities and campuses, a stunning pattern is rising amongst youthful adults: as an alternative of chasing company careers with conventional zeal, many Gen Zers are investing their time and power in offline hobbies, together with knitting, pottery, gardening, candle-making and even blacksmithing.
Online, the web has given these actions a nickname: “grandma hobbies.”
The phrase began as a joke on social media. But behind the humour lies a deeper shift in how this technology thinks about work, ambition and energy.
THE PARADOX OF GEN Z (WANING) MOTIVATION
To many millennial managers, Gen Z seems oddly disengaged from work. Several office surveys recommend youthful workers are much less linked to their jobs than earlier generations. A Gallup office evaluation discovered that 54% of Gen Z employees are not engaged at work, barely larger than different generations.
Meanwhile, a office notion survey discovered that only 9% of workers believe Gen Z has the strongest work ethic, far behind older generations.
But right here is the paradox: the identical technology typically spends hours studying hobbies that haven’t any monetary reward.
In pottery studios, crochet golf equipment and concrete gardening communities throughout India, younger adults who say they’re exhausted by company routines seem keen to patiently grasp time-consuming crafts.
“No, it’s not that they lack discipline,” says Mumbai-based profession counsellor Dr Ritu Sharma, who works with younger jobseekers. “What I see is a shift in motivation. Many Gen Z clients struggle with the structure of corporate work but are incredibly dedicated to activities that give them a sense of control and creativity.”
A GENERATION NOT INTERESTED IN CLIMBING THE LADDER
This shift can also be seen in world office surveys. Take the Deloitte 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, as an example, which discovered that only 6% of Gen Z respondents said reaching a leadership position was their main career goal, with many prioritising work-life stability as an alternative.
Research on office attitudes additionally exhibits Gen Z typically values flexibility, goal and psychological well-being greater than traditional career advancement.
In different phrases, ambition has not disappeared, it has merely moved elsewhere. “Older generations equated success with promotions and salaries, but Gen Z often seeks fulfilment outside their jobs. That’s why hobbies become very important to them,” says Delhi-based profession advisor Ankit Kapoor, who works with early-career professionals.
For a long time, profession recommendation revolved round hustle tradition, which meant working more durable, working longer, and monetising each ability. But tutorial analysis suggests Gen Z could also be actively rejecting that mindset.
Studies describing the “anti-hustle ethos” amongst youthful employees spotlight developments equivalent to “quiet quitting” and prioritising private well-being over relentless profession pursuit.
In sensible phrases, that always means doing the minimal required at work whereas reserving power for private pursuits. Career counsellor Neha Gupta, who runs a youth mentoring programme in Delhi, sees this shift ceaselessly. “Many Gen Z graduates tell me they are not willing to sacrifice their mental health for corporate careers. They would rather earn modestly and spend their time doing things they enjoy.”
THEY FIND JOY IN TANGIBLE WORK
Another purpose for the pastime increase could lie within the nature of contemporary jobs themselves. Much of at the moment’s work, together with emails, spreadsheets, displays, is intangible. Progress can really feel summary in such circumstances. By distinction, crafts provide instant outcomes. A knitted scarf, a hand-crafted ceramic bowl or perhaps a flourishing balcony backyard gives one thing company duties hardly ever do, which is a visual, bodily end result.
For this technology and for a lot of child boomers, that distinction is what issues. “Modern digital jobs often feel disconnected from real-world impact,” provides Gupta. It is right here that hobbies restore a way of expertise that many younger professionals really feel is lacking in information work.
For 24-year-old Delhi resident Arjun Verma, the choice to prioritise hobbies got here after a yr within the consulting business. “I realised my entire day was meetings and Excel sheets,” he says, including that it felt like he was working however not creating something.
Verma finally left his job and now spends a lot of his time studying woodworking in a membership in Kailash Colony. “I’m not saying corporate jobs are bad, but making something with your hands is incredibly satisfying.”
Similarly, Hyderabad-based graduate Mehak Singh spends her evenings in pottery lessons as an alternative of networking occasions. “Pottery slows me down,” she says.
To critics, these developments reinforce stereotypes that Gen Z lacks work self-discipline. Young employees have typically been labelled “lazy” or “entitled” by older colleagues, a criticism that consultants say tends to repeat with each new technology getting into the workforce. But the deeper story might not be laziness, it could merely be a altering definition of “success”.
Gen Z grew up throughout financial uncertainty, local weather anxiousness and the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, conventional profession guarantees now not really feel safe. As a end result, private fulfilment is commonly prioritised over company loyalty.
For Gen Z, the way forward for work could not lie in climbing the company ladder, it could lie in placing down the laptop computer and selecting up a pair of knitting needles.
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