Old Skool

Recently, I have felt a strong pull to step away from technology and take a more analogue approach to life. So I decided to do a little experiment and try doing things in a more old skool way for a while.

This blog is about how it's going.

It started with ditching my Garmin watch as my everyday timepiece and wearing my old Seiko Divers watch. I love the Garmin, but the fact it sends me notifications was starting to get on my tits, so it had to go. It is now only worn when I am doing physical activities, and for that, it's brilliant. Something about having a proper watch that had hands and ticks just felt good.

Doing this allowed me to be more focused and less distracted.

After the watch came the iPad. I still use it often, but I am back to an A5 paper notebook with a pen for daily note-taking and brainstorming.

I found that doing this helped me to develop better ideas and improved my problem-solving skills.

I have even put the Kindle away in favour of paper books.

I found I understood the books content a lot better.

Even my music taste has gone back a couple or three decades. I still listen to that on my iPhone, but I feel a turntable and vinyl are not too far in the future.

I found this helped me appreciate how good music from a bit back was. Fleetwood Mac's Rhumors is just so good.

I have also taken an old skool approach to my diet and training and cut out all processed food, which has significantly affected my fitness and health (in a good way) in a very short time.

This resulted in a 6-inch loss from around my tummy; I stopped snoring and lost over a stone.

These are just five of the benefits I have seen; there are many more.

If I had to sum up what this old skool approach has given me in one word, it would be "peace."

I did a podcast about the whole old skool experiment this week, and following that, messages came in from people who have listened to it saying how much they are fed up with all the distractions from technology and they, too, want to go back to simpler ways of doing stuff.

So what has all this got to do with you?

Well, if you feel life is getting a bit too fast, chaotic, and stressful, maybe the answer does not lie in another device, app, or new-fangled way of doing things; perhaps it is time to ditch some of that and go back to the old skool way of doing things.

But don't take my word for it; give it a go.

And you should give it a go, at least for a little while. You might just find, like me, that a more peaceful life is to be found in a more old skool, analogue approach to life.

What started off as a bit of a laugh and an experiment is fast becoming a way of life that gives me much more than I expected. I am going to stick with it for a bit longer.

Who knows, in a couple of months, I could be sporting a mullet and a moustache. Maybe not. Some old skool stuff should be left in the past.

Take Care

GB