When you bear in mind that most kids wouldn’t know what to do with a CD if it was placed in their hands, it may come as something of a surprise to discover that vinyl records are making a significant comeback.
Analogue devices may feel like remnants of a bygone era, but they clearly still have a place in people’s hearts. And this extends beyond physical objects, too.
Take bullet journaling, for instance, which is steadily becoming a popular way for people to take notes, organise their lives and ensure they reach the bottom of their to-do list each day.
Analogue life has some surprising benefits, and in this blog post, we’re going to look at four of the most compelling.
- Fewer distractions
Ding!
How many times does your smartphone make that noise each day? And, every time it does, you get distracted; you’re taken away from whatever it is you’re doing and led into a digital world that will make you less productive.
Analogue devices, generally, don’t have notification systems built into them. A pen won’t ask you to recharge it when it runs low on battery; a notepad will never crash or inform you that you have three new emails waiting.
We live in a very noisy digital world, but by turning in part to an analogue life, we can drown out the sounds of those notifications.
- More creative freedom
When you work within a digital realm, you’re always constrained in some way.
Despite how clever and flexible modern software is, it still relies on computer code, and that will always set limits and imposed restrictions.
Again, using pen and paper as an example, there’s literally no limit to what you can do with it. Beyond having the freedom to write and draw in any way you see fit, you can screw paper up, fold it, combine it with other things, and do so much more – you can’t do that with a tablet!
- More focus
With distractions kept at bay, analogue life enables us to become more focused.
Whatever it is we’re doing – be it writing a blockbuster novel, planning the to-do list for tomorrow, listening to our favourite album or flicking through the pages of a real book – we can do so wholeheartedly.
This means those tasks and hobbies will become even more special and worthwhile.
- A tactile experience
You can’t pick up and hold a song you’ve downloaded from iTunes in the same way you can a vinyl record. And that’s such a shame, because there’s nothing quite like the tactile feedback from tangible, analogue objects and devices.
Holding a pen and feeling it glide across paper is an experience that we’re a long way from seeing replicated fully on smartphones or tablets. By comparison, the latter continues to feel somehow disconnected and cold.
Tangible, tactile experiences help us become more creative, satisfied and deliver far more pleasure than the digital alternative.
Wrapping up
Bookshops are reopening and people are even starting to buy analogue cameras. And who would have thought we’d reach this stage, where time appears to be reversing and allowing us to enjoy traditional ways of working and forms of entertainment?
If you haven’t investigated the benefits of analogue life, now might be the perfect time to do so.