There’s a saying that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a certain field. Which equates to playing a lot of notes on an instrument, hitting a lot of balls on a tennis court, or many hours immersing yourself in a second language. And you have to be dedicated. There’s no point slacking off when the going gets tough around the 3,000 hour mark.
But given the hours you’ve invested in mastering these new abilities, wouldn’t you hate it if they then became redundant. With newer technologies the main protagonist. So today, I’d like to pay tribute to the skills no longer needed to pay the bills. While they may not have required years of commitment to master, we should pause and reflect on the fallen.
Here are some of my favourite superseded skills:
- Winding the cassette tape back into shape with a biro.
- For that matter, even making a mix tape. With bonus points awarded for correctly pre-emptively hitting the record button to avoid chopping the start of the song. And bonus-bonus points for timing your mix to fit exactly on a single side.
- Sending a fax. Actually, who am I kidding – I never mastered that. Do I need to dial zero first? Do I need to put in the area code? Bah… too hard.
- Blowing the top of the Nintendo game cartridge to make it load properly. This skill was a mandatory in the lounge room for many years.
- Locking the front passenger car door by pushing the button down AND pushing it shut while holding the handle up. Kids these days don’t even know…
- Art Directors – how are your Letraset skills these days?
- And finally, signatures. I’ve almost forgotten what mine looks like. A skill that is literally, no longer required to pay the bills.
What about you? Any redundant skills you’d like to pay tribute to? Feel free to add yours in the comments.
Scott Esdaile is an Interactive Specialist at BCM
Remembering all my mates home phone numbers before everyone had a mobile!!
Nice flash-backs Scott. My skill that’s no longer needed (thank god!) is neatly wrapping up the cord to the TV remote each night so no one tripped on it.
How about a preemptive one – keyboards and keypads. Expecting touch interfaces to take over in the not-too-distant future.
I taught myself touch typing but don’t expect I’ll ever be able to touch type a touchscreen keyboard.
Oh the type writer required many, many skills….
1. Trying to get the paper perfectly straight as you fed it through
2. Typing with the same weight behind each letter to maintian perfect ink flow
3. Precision whiteout’ing closely followed by trying to re-type exactly over the whiteout
Judging by a number of my school projects, i did not entirely master these skills!
Great post Scott.
There was always skill involved in the timing of delivering your Kodak Instamatic film to the chemist. Get it to them before their daily delivery to the developing lab and you might even have the prints back same-day! Nothing beat the anticipation of flicking through that envelope of prints. Until…doh! the film wasn’t wound on properly, doh! there was a thumb over the lens, doh! over-exposed, doh! badly framed, doh! looking into the sun, doh! they moved as the shot was taken. Getting more than 1 good shot out of a roll of 24 on a crummy ‘point and shoot’ camera, now there’s a forgotten skill.
Possessing keen navigation skills required for using the humble UBD is no biggy with the introduction of in-vehicle GPS – thank god!
Loved this post………what about opening a milk bottle by pushing the foil seal down with your thumb.
Writing cheques.