I want to say first that I am not against technology. My phone has helped me out of numerous predicaments, and I wouldn’t give away the group chat with my kids.
I have begun to see what is disappearing when no one is looking. Skills that every adult had about thirty years ago are becoming less and less common, and some are already halfway gone.
I wrote all thirty-three of them down. Some of these may not be relevant in the coming world, but I think it is likely that most of them will be more relevant than ever.
Reading a Whole Book, Cover to Cover
In the past, I would spend whole afternoons engrossed in a book. These days, I find myself checking my phone at the end of every chapter, and I still read more than the majority of the people I know. At some point in time, our focus got divided into fragments.
One book asks you to hold a thread for three hundred pages. That is a muscle, and muscles you do not use waste away. I have started leaving my phone in another room when I read, and it honestly felt like it would be hard at first.
Sitting Still With Nothing at All
There was a period of time when waiting would simply consist of looking through a window. It was common for people to sit on their porches for hours with nothing but a glass of iced tea and their own thoughts. No one referred to it as “mindfulness”, it was merely another typical evening.
When silence happens for the first time, everyone starts reaching for their phones. We can’t even stand being alone with our thoughts. The irony is I’ve had some of the greatest ideas of my life in those exact moments.
Holding a Conversation Without Glancing at a Phone
One day, try to evaluate how long a phone is placed on the table when two people are having dinner. Even if the phone is face down, it is treated as a third guest. Research continues to prove that the presence of a phone even if not used first, damages the quality of the entire dialogue.
A real conversation needs eye contact and the patience to let someone finish all the way to the end. It needs the confidence that nothing on that screen matters more than the person across from you. That used to be basic manners, and now it almost reads as a grand gesture.
Remembering Things With Your Own Head
I once knew twenty phone numbers by heart, and so did everyone else. Now I would struggle to recite three, because the phone remembers everything for me. Outsourcing your memory is convenient right up until the battery dies.
Memory is not just storage, it is how we think. The facts you carry in your head are the ones your mind can actually connect. A person who remembers nothing has to look up everything, and that is a slower way to be smart.
Doing Math Without Reaching for a Calculator
Figuring a tip, splitting a bill, doubling a recipe. These used to be done in the head while the conversation kept going. Now the phone comes out for arithmetic a fourth grader once handled.
It’s not about showing off. It’s about being in touch with what numbers mean. Knowing how to estimate helps you see when totals are wrong or deals are not actually deals. That little alarm bell in your head only rings if you keep it wired.
Writing More Than a Signature by Hand
My grandmother’s handwriting was a thing of genuine beauty, and she thought nothing of it. Most of us now write a grocery list at best, and our hands cramp after a paragraph. Penmanship went from an everyday skill to a lost art in a single generation.
Writing by hand has its own benefits. It slows your thoughts down to the speed of the pen, and people remember what they write far better than what they type. A handwritten page of notes sticks with me in a way a typed file never has.
Finding Your Way by Landmarks and Memory
Some adults now can’t even navigate their town without a computerized voice directing them. I’m sometimes guilty of this too. We used to be able to create a mental map of the area using things like gas stations, church steeples and that barn on the corner.
A sense of direction tells us where something is located. With GPS, we lose this important skill. An easy fix is to turn the voice off on the GPS when driving on familiar roads. You will regain the skill quicker than you expect.
Waiting in Line Without Entertainment
Waiting in line used to be a little break during the day. You would look around, think about dinner, maybe chat with the person in front of you. Now, it feels like a crisis when you don’t have your phone to distract you during a 90 second wait.
Waiting isn’t exciting, but almost everything worthwhile requires it. Whether it’s a marriage, a garden, a career, or even bread dough, they all ask for your patience. If we can’t tolerate unengaged waiting while in a line at the store, longer stretches of time by a significant degree will only cause more damage.
Making Small Talk With a Stranger
The chat at the bus stop, the word with the cashier, the comment about the weather to whoever was nearby. Small talk was the glue of ordinary life, and it is drying up. Everyone in every line now stands in their own private bubble.
The weather chats weren’t really about the weather. These were practice being not awkward with people, and sometimes they turned into friends, work, or spouses. Each one of my parent’s good stories started with chatting with someone.
Asking a Person Instead of a Search Bar
Now that I am older, I understand that questions can open doors. I remember asking seemingly everyone I could about the answer to my question. I remember asking the old man at the hardware store, the librarian, and even the neighbor who fixed his own car. Asking questions drew me into conversation with others, and over time I became known.
Although the search bar may respond quicker, you get a generic answer. The hardware store guy would ask what you were actually trying to accomplish and would save you forty bucks. An answer from a human is accompanied by experience and judgment, and that is the real value.
Deciding Without Reading a Hundred Reviews
I recently watched myself spend forty minutes reading reviews for a twelve dollar spatula. My mom would have picked one up, glanced at it, and bought it. Somewhere along the line, we traded judgment for research.
I can understand the need for reviews when making a big purchase, but I believe drowning yourself in reviews makes you second guess your instincts. Some of the best things in my house have been purchases made in thirty seconds. Those purchases were made by someone that knew what good design was.
Disagreeing With Someone Face to Face
People type messages to strangers online that they would never say in person face to face. Because of the screen, the other person’s face is removed, along with all decency. While at the same time, face to face disagreement seems to be intolerable to most people.
There are rules when it comes to arguing and disagreement, like lowering your voice, not interrupting, and attacking the idea, not the person. If done well, two people can have a heated disagreement, and shake hands afterwards. In fact, entire friendships used to be built on that.
Apologizing in Person, Out Loud
An apology via text is better than no apology at all, but not by much. A real apology involves a person, their voice, and the awkwardness of standing there as you deliver the apology. The awkwardness is not a problem, it is the evidence that you are sincere.
I had my kids apologize face to face their whole childhood, and they hated it. Now they are grown adults who can do the most difficult social thing there is. Seeing someone accept your apology teaches you something no emoji could ever do.
Keeping Plans Without a Thread of Confirmations
Remember when you said Tuesday at noon, and then you simply showed up on Tuesday at noon? There was no confirming the night before and no checking in an hour out. Your word was the entire system, and the system worked.
The need for constant re-confirmation makes it seem like there is an option to plan something and canceling is easier and more common than ever. It used to be that flakiness would cost you a reputation. I still act as if a stated plan is a promise and people notice it like an old-world courtesy.
Being Unreachable Without Feeling Panic
For most of human history, leaving the house meant being unreachable, and nobody thought twice about it. Messages simply waited. The world got along fine until you returned.
Now an unanswered text for two hours reads as a crisis. We carry a leash in our pocket and call it connection. The most rested I have felt in years was three days at a cabin with no signal, and it took a full day for the twitch to stop.
Reading a Room Without a Word Spoken
Most of what people are trying to communicate in a conversation doesn’t always get said verbally. It can come through body language like crossed arms, looking towards the door, or silences that seem to last just a bit too long. Those that grew up in a culture of face to face interactions, learn how to interpret this nonverbal communication without any conscious effort.
Because this generation socializes through screens rather than in person, they miss out on critical social experiences. An emoji is just a label, but a video feed of someone smiling is a whole lot more. The ability to “read a room” cannot be learned through an app, it has to be learned from experience in an actual room.
Watching a Movie Without a Second Screen
Half the country now watches television with a phone six inches from their face. The show plays while the thumb scrolls, and neither gets truly watched. We call it relaxing, but it is really just split attention wearing pajamas.
The mental discipline required to focus on a single story for two hours is a form of discipline that will pay dividends. You’ll remember the film better, and the experience will give your brain a much-needed break from multitasking. I started putting my phone across the room when I watched movies, which was like getting a new pair of glasses.
Spelling Without Autocorrect Catching You
Autocorrect has taken over the job of knowing how words are spelled. Turn it off for a day and watch what happens, I dare you. Perfectly educated adults now hesitate over words they wrote with confidence at twelve years old.
Spelling seems trivial until you have to write on paper. A card, a form, a note taped to a door, and suddenly there is no red squiggle to save you. The mistake stands there in ink, and small competence gone missing always shows up at the worst moment.
Remembering a Birthday Without a Reminder
For most of my life, I knew all the family birthdays, and my mother did too. Now, though, we no longer need to remember. An app does that for us. The birthday wishes are sent on time and don’t cost anything.
It’s clear that you can feel the difference when someone remembers your special day with no reminder. It shows that you exist in their mind, and not just some mental database. I keep several birthdays in my mind as a personal act of respect.
Living a Moment Without Recording It
Stand at any concert or graduation and look at the crowd. A thousand people, and half of them are watching the moment through a little screen held over their heads. The recording gets watched maybe once, and the moment itself was never fully attended.
Some of my best memories are not documented with photographs and yet, I can still picture them perfectly. Whenever you are present in the moment, that is when memory works best. The next big moment you are at, try to put away your phone and just stand there. The difference is amazing.
Fixing a Thing Before Replacing It
A chair that wobbles, a cord that is fraying, a jacket that is missing a button. My old instinct is to fix it and my new one is to reorder the item since the replacement arrives tomorrow. Repair is becoming a thing only specialists do.
Knowledge is gained through fixing things, and that knowledge builds upon itself. For example, someone who fixes a lamp will not be scared to tackle a leaky faucet and undertake the repair himself. Each repair is an act of support for the value of ability over the ease of just calling someone to do it.
Finding a Fact Without a Search Bar
In the past, research meant getting a library card, writing up an index, and spending an afternoon at the library. It was a slow process and that was the point. The journey to finding an answer was a lesson as you always learned six other things you weren’t looking for.
The search engine hands you an answer with no journey attached, and the answer alone is thin. It happily does the digging, the comparing, and the judging for you, its way. But the digging is where the understanding comes from, and handing it off means giving that up.
Guessing Well: Sizes, Distances, and Amounts
My dad used to look at walls and estimate (to within a foot) how much wood would be needed. He isn’t alone in this. I’ve seen people measure with their hands, I’ve seen farmers who can assess an entire field by eye, and estimating is just part of an everyday skill that’s built from close observation.
Currently, people won’t measure anything without an application, and they won’t trust estimates, even their own. However, estimation is an understanding and familiarity with the physical world. Someone who can estimate a half cup or a quarter mile has spent years observing their environment.
Listening to an Album, Start to Finish
An album used to be an evening. You put the record on, read the liner notes, and let the artist walk you through the whole arc in order. Skipping a track took real effort, so you learned to love the slow songs.
Today, we have access to a bottomless shuffle of music, and the ability to skip songs is free. As a result, we listen to more songs, but actually hear less music. Occasionally, I will listen to a full album to completion, and it’s similar to having a home-cooked meal after years of eating convenient food.
Keeping a Paper Journal Nobody Will Read
Diaries used to be as common as toothbrushes. People would write a few lines at night, poorly and truthfully to an audience of no one. That page was where a person engaged their own consciousness.
Writing with no audience is a different act than posting, because there is no performance in it. The page does not like or share, it just holds what you actually think. A shelf of old journals is a better record of a life than ten thousand photos.
Telling a Story Out Loud, Well
Every family always had a storyteller. Some person who could keep a whole table engrossed with a tale of a flat tire. The timing, the suspense, the classic pause before the good part. That kind of skill comes from listening to others do it.
Storytelling is how families pass themselves down. Whether it’s the night the basement flooded or how your grandparents met, all of it survives as told stories or not at all. A link and a forwarded video are not stories and will not make anyone at the table cry laughing.
Knowing the People on Your Own Street
My parents could tell you the name, job, and pie preference of every household on their street. Neighbors would borrow tools, babysit each other’s kids, and if they saw your newspaper pile up they’d notice. That network was security that no one paid for.
Only three of my neighbors know my name. That’s considered being “friendly” with my neighbors. We have swapped the people over the fences for people in our social media feeds. But the neighbor is one who will actually be there in five minutes when something goes wrong.
Doing One Thing at a Time
Observe an older tradesman working and you will notice each task completed in its entirety. They will calmly take out a tool, complete a task, and calmly put that tool away. Then they will move to the next task. There is an unusual calmness about this.
Juggling gets treated as a talent, but the research is blunt, switching between tasks costs you speed, accuracy, and calm. Single-tasking is the real superpower dressed in work clothes. Try doing one thing completely and notice how strange, and then how good, it feels.
Losing Yourself in a Hobby for a Whole Afternoon
Model trains, quilting, engines, gardens. It seems that people would immerse themselves in a single hobby for the entire Saturday and re-emerge happier. That kind of deep, hours-long absorption is what the psychologists call flow, and it is becoming rare.
An easily accessible phone is a huge distraction, especially as the afternoon drags on. Each notification takes time away, and the short time span does not help anyone. A pastime that consumes an entire day and rewards you with an improved week is certainly worth defending.
Falling Asleep Without a Glowing Screen
People would read a couple pages, switch off their lamp, and jump into bed. The final light of their day was a light bulb, not a social media feed. People didn’t lay awake in the dark at 12am watching random people fight.
When I use a screen just before sleep, I get stolen from twice. The blue light keeps my body awake, and the agitating notifications take my focus. Since buying a paper book, and an old fashioned alarm clock, my sleep improved more than any advice from a doctor ever managed. My phone now charges in the kitchen, and it can cry all it wants.
Cooking Without Watching Somebody Do It First
Some chefs possess the unique ability to open the fridge, scan the ingredients, and prepare a meal using only the items available. They don’t require a recipe, cooking video, or instructions. Rather, they rely on their own instinctual judgement cultivated over many years of experience in the kitchen. That kind of improvisation is a rare form of cooking talent, and unfortunately, it is starting to disappear.
While videos may be great teachers, they can also be somewhat of a crutch and may never be taken off. At some point, you have to cook without the videos, and yes, you may ruin a few dinners. Think of the ruined dinners as tuition for a lesson in cooking, and they’re much cheaper than they feel.
Keeping Something to Yourself
The details of every meal, opinion, and family issue did not need to be shared with everyone. It was a virtue of the adult world to keep some things private and certain details simply were no one else’s concern. A person who was able to retain certain information was considered trustworthy and that meant something.
The pressure to share every experience creates pressure to perform and document everything. Everyone deserves private moments in their lives. I value the fact that there are still moments in my life that have never been seen or captured by the internet.
Letting a Question Stay Unanswered
At the table, someone asks, “what ever happened to that actor?” Before they even finish the sentence, four phones are out. The little mystery is solved in nine seconds. We have lost the ability to sit comfortably with not knowing.
Wondering is not a problem that needs solving, it is where curiosity lives. An unanswered question keeps working on you all evening, and sometimes the guessing is the whole fun. Let one go unanswered next time and watch the conversation get better instead.
