Pay attention to what makes you look up and realize three hours vanished. That’s a signpost, not a distraction.

Absorption is information. Losing track of time is your attention reporting, without consulting your opinion of yourself, what it wants to be doing. That does not mean the activity has to become your work, but something inside it is worth understanding.

Next time three hours disappear, write down what it was specifically: not the hobby, the part of the hobby. Fixing things, arranging things, working out how something functions. That detail travels much further than the activity does, and it tends to reappear in whatever you end up taking seriously.