Obsolete Man Skills You Should Ditch

7 Obsolete 'Manly' Skills and What to Replace Them With

When you picture a manly man — a guy who every guy wants to be — you’re often picturing someone pretty rugged. Since strength and success are so intertwined with masculinity, a man’s man has to be someone who’s good at things and unlikely to fail or fall short. In other words, in the popular imagination, a man has to possess skills in order to be a real man.

Not just any skills will do, however. We know this because, frankly, some skills are openly mocked. You could be the world’s best crossword puzzle solver and be made fun of by a mediocre car mechanic for being a geek. You could be the world’s best opera singer, and get razzed by a middling boxer for your high-pitched voice. Some skills just aren’t considered very manly.

The skills men aspire to are the Man Skills, an ability to solve real-world problems, often involving physical strength or technical know-how, rather than creativity or emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, however, as the technology in our lives shifts from analog to digital and from a luxury to a necessity, a lot of the traditional Man Skills are lessening in importance.

What that means is guys still care about being good at things that have no (or little) practical usage today, while ignoring the growing importance of developing experience and comfort with new types of skill sets.

Now, if you want to stay focused on being the coolest guy ever circa the 20th century, knock yourself out! Nobody can make you respect 21st century manliness if you don’t want to. But if you’re at all interested in being ahead of the curve and exploring how to be the kind of man who’s tops in the near future rather than the distant past, then read on to discover which skills are becoming obsolete, and what you should be looking to replace them with.

1. Hunting

Hunting was a hugely important skill for much of human history, but in light of the rise of cheap and readily available factory-farmed meat, hunting’s relationship to the food we actually eat has disappeared for the overwhelming majority of the population. If you grew up in a rural area, there’s a good chance you learned to shoot game at some point, but as much as many contemporary guys fantasise about being able to kill a wild animal and eat it (Mark Zuckerberg, anyone?), particularly if you live in a big city, there’s really not much real-world benefit to that glorification.

Instead, Learn How to Cook for Yourself

Meanwhile, the average millennial man is probably more adept at ordering dinner online than actually making it, which is too bad. Cooking your own meals is a lot of fun, generally cheaper than eating out or ordering in, and typically healthier, too. It’s also something that, while it may seem impossible to a beginner, is actually not as complicated as it seems. Join a cooking class — or even watch some YouTube how-tos or try a meal kit delivery service — and you might be surprised at how handy you become in the kitchen. And yes, it will impress people.

2. Fighting

It’s a pretty common conception that at the root of every male confrontation is the possibility of physical violence. Road rage incidents, bar standoffs, most guys have found themselves in a situation that felt like a prelude to fisticuffs. And in a violent dog-eat-dog world, there’s a certain logic to that approach. But how many of those situations actually evolve into a fight? And why should any of them? Physical fighting literally doesn’t solve anything — it just leaves people angry and bruised, or worse.

Instead, Learn How to Mediate

Problem-solving with an eye to compromise and healthy conflict resolution is something that, by and large, men just aren’t taught growing up. That’s one of the reasons many of us are so quick to start swinging or shoving rather than handling things with our words. But if we start thinking that the real loss isn’t losing (or walking away from) a fight, but rather getting into one in the first place, what would we really lose?

The old-world caveman mentality of brute force’s dominance is dying out. If you’re someone who can work through a confrontation without needing to beat the other person into submission — physically, verbally or emotionally — you’ll see it pay off in your close personal relationships, too. Next time things start getting heated, try recognising that you're angry and trying to engage the other person with your words (or just walking away).

3. Repairing Your Car

In the popular imagination, the greasy car mechanic wiping his sweaty brow as he peers into your car hood is always a guy. Concordantly, the idea that a car is a guy thing and a guy should be able to fix his car as a result is something that’s pretty ingrained in our cultural beliefs. But as cars shift from analog behemoths to digital devices, some of the basic functionality in your car is now completely out of the fixing range of even the handiest of men. Not to mention that increasingly, electric cars, public transit, and cycling are becoming more attractive options for environmental reasons, and ride-sharing or car-sharing services mean the link between being in a car and being responsible for its functioning is as tenuous as it’s ever been.

Instead, Learn How to Code

The 20th century mythos of the car as a vehicle that gave you freedom — to cross great distances, to discover new things, to leave your past behind — is perhaps now more accurately applied to the internet. There’s a pretty good chance you spend more time online these days than driving (ideally not at the same time, though), but the average person probably has little idea how any of the internet actually functions, let alone how to build a website or make an app.

Considering the way the economy is increasingly shifting toward the digital, having at least a solid grounding in what makes the internet tick is a good idea generally. There are a lot of free or cheap how-to courses designed to help you learn how to code these days. Give one a try and see if it doesn’t come more in handy than learning to replace the alternator.

4. Fixing Things at Home

Power tools are such a de facto man thing that you’d be hard-pressed to find examples of women using them in most movies or TV shows. Men just are the mechanics of the world, right? As with car maintenance, however, the idea that a man owns his house and should therefore know how to take care of it is increasingly an outdated concept. With most millennials having no real shot at home-ownership, there’s a good chance your landlord will be the one in charge of fixing anything that goes wrong in your place — or, more likely, paying someone else to.

Instead, Learn How to Decorate

It’s a sort of running gag in contemporary culture that women put a lot of effort into decorating their homes and filling them with the basic household necessities while men, well, sleep on a mattress lying on the floor. While it’s not as cut-and-dried as that, the average guy probably has some catching up to do with regards to interior design. It’s not something that women are innately better at, after all; it’s something that you can make serious strides in by committing yourself to. If you have the time and/or the money, investing in how your space looks, feels, and functions can really change how you feel about the space (and how any potential dates you bring home feel about it).

5. Being a Leader

For much of human history, patriarchal societies meant women were expected to stay home and raise children, and men were expected to run everything else. Meaning, while there’s a good chance your mom wasn’t a CEO, your grandmother almost certainly wasn’t.

But in today’s world, the notion that a man will or must be a leader is increasingly vanishing. What that means is that guys who were brought up expecting to be in control are now having to accept that — gasp! — their boss is a woman. What to do?!

Instead, Learn How to Collaborate

Workplaces of the future are likely to be less reliant on men’s top-down leadership and more dependent on open communication between coworkers of all genders and utilises a lot of different peoples’ skill sets. Rather than a bunch of guys all competing to nail down a corner office, a healthy workplace is one where ego takes a backseat to communal success.

Unrestrained ambition and a need to be in control all the time will hurt your chances at a promotion, not help them. So instead, try to focus on building soft skills such as supporting co-workers, building links between different divisions, and knowing how and when to compromise.

6. Being a Disciplinarian

For a long time, the most important aspect of being a father was simply providing for your family, and second, perhaps, was molding your sons into men. That meant being stern with them — even harsh. That meant toughening them up by teaching them how to shoot, how to fight, how to push through their pain, how to overcome their fears. All the old Man Skills, basically.

The archetypal disciplinary father really wasn’t setting his sons up to have emotionally healthy lives, though, meaning possible repressed trauma, difficulty communicating about feelings, and a dire need to see a therapist are far more common than you’d hope for adult men.

Instead, Learn How to Communicate With Your Children

If you really want to have a positive impact on their lives, it’s vital that you prioritise being there for them and encouraging them to be open with you about what they think and how they feel, rather than pushing them to fit into a narrow model of how to be. Don’t be the father who punishes his son for exploring more feminine things — he’ll resent you. Instead, be the father who encourages his kids to pursue their own interests and to become their own people, and who’s there to listen when something’s gone wrong.

RELATED: How to Be a Better Father, Explained

7. Holding Your Emotions In

For a long time, the model man was stoic: the strong, silent type who never cried and wouldn’t admit when something made him sad or afraid. Let’s leave that whole concept in the past where it belongs.

Aside from just valuing communication, kindness, and empathy, this is a life-and-death issue. Men’s inability to open up can cause them to struggle with forming friendships and meaningful bonds with other people, which scientists have linked to early male mortality rates. That’s right: Being emotionally walled up is literally killing men.

Instead, Learn How to Talk About Your Feelings

As a man, there might not be any single more important skill you can pursue than emotional maturity. Understanding what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it, and how to handle that feeling is something that few men are taught growing up, and it’s hard to overstate the negative impacts the absence of that skill can pose. If you have the means to, consider going into therapy. Even if you don’t feel that you’re struggling and haven’t been diagnosed with any mental health issues, therapy is a proven effective way to work through problems that have been plaguing you and become a happier, healthier version of yourself.

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