Here are a few old fashioned skills you still need to know even though it is the 21st century. These will add to your enjoyment of life, help you build a community of people you know and can trust, and help you be healthier, happier, and more successful.
1. Conversation. Yes, I know everyone and their BFF uses smartphones for communication these days and conversation consists of sending one another links and adding "WTF" or "LOL" to it, but we still need face-to-face conversational skills. Skills that exceed, "do this" or "move" or angry glares. Small talk is a dying art. Cocktail conversations are getting rare. Cocktail hour is disappearing, as is the dinner party. Now people gather in restaurants and sit cocooned in their techosphere - even to the point of texting one another while sitting at the same table. The deaf who text one another also make eye contact and hold a conversation that encompasses the texting, but the hearing? They rely only on the texting - no body language clues, no eye contact. It isolates people. Conversation, held face-to-face, even on trivialities, builds connections between people.
Conversational skills help you learn to read the body language of others, and in tense situations or even in survival situations, increases everyone's survival chances.
Outside of survival situations, conversational skills improve the lives of the people using them - they are more confident, happier, and often more comfortable. A society of conversationalists is more creative, more vibrant, and more successful.
2. How to find your way - especially in new neighborhoods or when going somewhere new. And not just with MapQuest or a GPA. You won't always have access to the internet or the satellite triangulation to tell you where to go. Pay attention to landmarks, learn how to tell the compass directions, learn to read a paper map. Learn how to give verbal directions - and take them.
3. Learn how to procure food with what resources you have. What's the best food to get at a convenience store? Can you set a trap, hunt, fish, wildcraft? You don't have to be an expert at it (trust me - hunger will improve your skills as long as you have the basic knowledge). I know a lot of survivalists emphasize hunting and fishing skills. A few even acknowledge wildcrafting skills. But few address how to shop effectively and efficiently. I think we need the full spectrum of food procurement skills, whether in the wild or the aisles.
4. How to cook from scratch. Not everything, just a few special dishes. Perhaps your favorite comfort foods. You don't have to become a full-blown chef to be able to feed yourself. You certainly don't have to be a gourmet cook. Plain and simple fare is sufficient. Pick a few dishes to learn to do using different methods of cooking - stovetop, on a grill, on an open fire, in a fireplace, with a microwave, using an electric or woodfired oven and/or Dutch oven. May I recommend soup, cooking rice and/or beans, and perhaps a casserole for your repertoire? Knowing how to procure your own food and to make a few dishes increases your confidence, and gives you something you can contribute in a disaster situation.
4. How to entertain yourself and others sans anything electronic. I've met people who wouldn't know how to do anything fun if their smartphone died, or their TV, or electronic games. Learn to play cards, board games, charades and other parlor games, knit, sew, paint, play a musical instrument (not on a computer...), make musical instruments (from fruits and vegetables - it's fun!), dicing games, and word games. There's a lot of entertainment out here you miss out on if all you do push buttons to add cabbages to your electronic farm. And when you play these games with other people, you get to practice and hone your conversational skills. And you could maybe shop for and make food to snack on while playing - and hey! You've just used all the skills listed so far and had fun doing them.
5. Make a shelter. When I was a kid, we'd run out to the woods and build "forts" and tree houses and "caves" (we didn't have real caves, so we had to make them) to live in for the weekend or any time we escaped from our chores. It was good practice for disasters, and there are so many disasters that could leave you temporarily homeless - wildfires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, just to name a few. What will you do if you become suddenly unhomed and need a temporary shelter for a night, a couple of days, until you can get to better shelter like a hotel or a friend's house? A few branches and a pile of leaves can make a decent, if cramped, place to sleep that's warm and dry. I've taught all my Camp Fire and Boy Scout kids how to do this.
6. Gardening is a hobby today, but for more and more people, it's becoming a necessity. Our country has a long history of being self-sufficient through gardening - the home vegetable patch, the Victory Garden, the commons gardening. Some of this is coming back through both the environmental movements and necessity - GMO foods are wreaking havoc on the digestion of many people, causing food allergies in people who never were before, and prices are going up, and sometimes, the stores are just out. Gardening is both a hobby and a need now - and not only can you stock your larder from your yard, you get valuable exercise, too, reducing the need for a costly gym membership.
7. People skills are important (and often sadly lacking in this day and age). Since most people do a majority of their communicating via electronic methods these days, a lot of old fashioned skills have fallen by the wayside. Learning how to barter, how to persuade someone to your point of view, how to be personable, how to mind your manners, how to take a leadership role, how to follow, et al. are often unknown, overlooked, or just plain foreign concepts to people today. Some students still join Debate Class or clubs, but those numbers are declining. Can you put on an impromptu skit? Can you recite poetry or quote favorite authors or statesmen (I'm not talking politicians)? How are your manners? Like the communication skills, these are just as important for building a community.
8. Good old fashioned muscle power. Nearly everything can be done with electricity or gasoline, so we need to use muscles less and less. This doesn't mean we need to use them less, not if we expect to stay healthy. That's why some people buy gym memberships - to fake the use of their muscles they once got through chopping wood, plowing land, digging soil, sweeping the house, beating rugs, doing laundry, caring for flocks of chickens and the family goats, pigs, horses, cows..., harvesting, threshing grains, kneading dough, etc. Build time into your week so you can do some of your chores manually, without power assistance. Use those manual chores in place of going to the gym, and you'll find you're getting a better workout that pays you instead of you paying them.