If You Still Know How To Do These 4 Things From The 1980s, You Have Skills That Are Surprisingly Rare Today
Melissamn | Shutterstock The 1980s were manual. For most people, it was still a non-tech world, and they had some rare skills to deal with it. The paperwork was literal. Working with ink on paper and paper in piles of files. All that information needed systems to track it. Information was not a click away. No apps had been developed.
Information was found from using memory — human memory. Remembering through repetition and failure. Boredom or excitement depended on the seeker's passion. If you were curious enough to want the information badly enough, backtracking, rerouting, getting lost, and finding yourself where you started were all part of the fun in the annoyances of discovery.
If you still know how to do these things from the 1980s, you have skills that are surprisingly rare today:
1. Use the Dewey Decimal system
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Therapist Dr. Gloria Brame explains that the rare skill of cross-referencing was how you found what you were looking for in the '80s. As more people use the Internet for research and reading, fewer rely on the library skill of knowing how to use the Dewey Decimal System. As an avid book-borrower in my teens, I remember what a struggle it was to learn what all those numbers meant. But it was also enormous fun to go on a hunt-by-numbers to locate the exact book I wanted.
In retrospect, I learned research methods and how to follow cross-references. It helped me understand how books are organized into categories, how some crossed genres. How to track them like a detective solving a mystery that could only be solved when you finally got your hands on the book you hungered to read.
My favorite part was where it lived: the Dewey Decimal System was the secret code to a vast library that opened all the doors to knowledge. It made the library feel grander to have such an arcane yet humble organizational index. When I think back to the antiquated card catalogues, it brings back all the warm feelings, the smell of old books, and the quiet calm of being inside a library I cherished as a girl.
2. Have discretion
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Being able to remember and catalogue information indirectly implied discretion was a practical skill. Astrologer Aria Gmitter recognizes how younger generations have been raised in an age where oversharing is rewarded.
The act of self-disclosure when speaking about your inner life is encouraged on social media because people want to help others. They want others to know that they are not alone, but it's not always wise. It fools a person into thinking that their entire life has to be on the world's stage. It's like a pinprick on a hot-air balloon, slowly deflating boundaries. The line between what is personal and what is private gets blurred.
Vulnerability is powerful when it is intentional. Indiscriminate information is dangerous in the wrong hands. It's why personal information becomes weaponized. Employers reject people because of their social media posts. Private conversations in texts or emails get shared online as “part of a story,” without regard for the long-term consequences. In younger generations where everyone shares everything, discretion is rare, and it would be nice to reclaim that rare skill.
3. Memorize phone numbers
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Actively using your memory for detailed information on a daily, if not hourly, basis is another rare skill from the '80s. Memorized phone numbers were wired into the muscle memory of fingertips on a payphone. You knew multiple routes to a friend's house because you had no map available, and a curious nature, so you explored every backroad twist and turn.
The GPS was in your memory, and your phone list was a little book or bundle of paper scraps that often got misplaced, so the critical information was committed to memory through repetition. Repetition of dialing a number or following a direction. This is what gets the information into the petabyte of memory in your brain. But you didn't think of it that way in the 1980s because the computer-savvy people of the '80s were only considering kilobytes of memory.
4. Drive a manual transmission
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If you can still drive a stick shift, you have what has become a rare skill. In the '80s, manual transmissions were still preferred by many drivers who claimed it gave "more control of the vehicle," OK, whatever that meant. This reasoning didn't really matter because you needed to drive it to pick up food after ordering takeout on a landline. Domino's might have delivered, but not as far out as a lot of us lived.
If you can still drive a stick, you have a unique skill set, and you also probably know how to operate a variety of jacks and can start an old car with a butter knife. The '80s required some rare skills involving a lot of muscle action to reinforce memory exercises.
Will Curtis is YourTango's expert editor. Will has over 14 years of experience as an editor covering relationships, spirituality, and human interest topics.
