Do you remember the times when doing something felt like a workout? Everything in life used to take a little more effort. For example, you’d have to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil or wait for a TV to warm up before you could watch your favorite show. Today, you only need to click, tap or swipe to complete tasks. Technology has made so many tasks quicker & easier that most of us don’t realize how much effort used to go into simple things.
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Doing Laundry
Doing laundry needed a lot of physical work. You’d either had to carry baskets of laundry to the laundromat or wash clothes by hand. Then you had to hang everything outside to dry and wait for hours. With modern washing machines and dryers, you can toss clothes inside and press a button for quick results. Some machines even have special settings for different fabrics & stain removal.
Making Coffee
Making coffee used to be a full-on ritual. You’d boil the water, measure out the coffee grounds, wait as the coffee maker slowly dripped the brew and crossed your fingers for the perfect taste. But with coffee machines, you just put in a pod, press a button, and you get a cup of good coffee in under a minute.
Heating Food
The traditional way to heat food involved either preheating your oven or heating leftovers in containers that ended up too hot on the outside and too cold at the center. With a microwave, you place your meal inside and press the button to get hot food in seconds. Many microwaves have preset buttons for various foods, which makes cooking pretty foolproof.
Cleaning Floors
Sweeping and mopping used to take up a big chunk of your day, especially if you had to drag out the mop, bucket and all that water. Robot vacuums like Roomba move around independently to clean floors without any human help. A simple button press lets the vacuum clean your floors while you focus on other tasks.
Getting Directions
We used to need a large road atlas or try to recall directions given by someone who may or may not know the area well when they wanted to find directions. Now, you only have to open Google Maps or Apple Maps on your device, enter your destination into the search field and start your journey. The app shows real-time updates about traffic conditions, detours & turn-by-turn directions.
Washing Dishes
Washing dishes required a lot of time and effort, especially if you lived with a large family or hosted parties. You had to clean all dishes by hand, rinse them and then dry them off. Now you simply load your dishes into the dishwasher and press a button. And the best thing – the dishwasher can operate overnight so you won’t hear the noise during the day.
Making a Phone Call
Before smartphones, making a phone call meant picking up a landline, dialing a number manually (or memorizing it if it was someone close), and hoping you didn’t accidentally hang up. Making long-distance calls used to need phone cards or paying high fees. Smartphones allow us to connect instantly by either tapping on someone’s contact or speaking a voice command.
Sending Letters
To send a letter back in the day, you needed effort & planning – hand-writing the letter, making sure the address was correct, finding a stamp and walking to the mailbox. You would need to wait several days before receiving a response! We now send emails and texts or DMs within seconds. It’s instant communication.
Checking the Weather
In the past, people had to listen to the radio or watch the nightly news to learn about the weather – only a few were lucky enough to check a weather app on basic flip phones (which weren’t really accurate). Today, your smartphone allows you to view live weather updates, hourly predictions and alerts about incoming storms.
Paying Bills
Paying bills used to mean writing checks, buying stamps, and then crossing your fingers that they’d arrive on time. Late payments could result in accumulating late fees and possibly lead to service termination. Now, we can pay bills automatically through apps or websites with just a few taps. You can even set up recurring payments for everything from utilities to subscriptions and keep track of all your finances in one place.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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