Nine old-school habits people in their 60s and 70s keep — and why they make them happier

On a soft, washed-out Sunday afternoon, I watched my neighbor, Mr. Harris, in his tiny front yard, gently pressing marigold seeds into the soil with the careful attention of someone tucking in a child. He hummed something—maybe an old Sinatra tune—and paused now and then to straighten his back, look up at the sky, and simply…breathe. No earbuds. No smartwatch. No notifications. Just a man, a patch of earth, and the slow satisfaction of doing one small thing well.

Later, he waved me over and handed me a paper envelope with a handful of seeds. “You plant these,” he said, “and remember, not everything has to be fast to be good.”

I smiled, but the line didn’t really land until much later. Because in a world where many of us are sprinting—through work, through news feeds, through endless to-do lists—there’s a quiet group of people in their 60s and 70s who are doing something radical: they’re not in a hurry. They’re holding on to old-school habits that look almost quaint from the outside—and yet, if you look closer, you can see something else there too.

Contentment. Ease. A kind of happiness that doesn’t need to be posted to prove it exists.

Spend time with enough people in their later decades, and you begin to see patterns: simple rituals they repeat without fanfare, choices that seem small but shape the entire texture of their days. These aren’t productivity hacks or self-optimization strategies. They’re quieter than that. And maybe that’s what makes them powerful.

1. Slow Mornings and Real Breakfasts

If you wake up in a house where someone in their seventies rules the kitchen, chances are you won’t find them chugging coffee in the car or skipping breakfast altogether. You’ll smell toast. Or frying eggs. Or oatmeal simmering with cinnamon. There might be the soft murmur of a radio station, a newspaper folded just so, a cup of tea warmed between both hands.

Many older adults treat mornings as something to be entered, not conquered. They will sit down to eat, even if it’s just half a banana and a piece of toast. They don’t scroll while they chew. They look out windows, check the weather, talk to whoever’s at the table—or simply enjoy the quiet.

This old-school breakfast ritual does something modern life often forgets to do: it signals to the body and mind that the day is beginning, and that you are allowed to arrive in it slowly. Physiologically, it helps steady blood sugar. Mentally, it carves out a pocket of predictability in a world that may no longer feel entirely in their control.

Ask them why, and you’ll often hear something like, “I like to take my time in the morning.” Underneath that is a deeper truth: they’ve learned that how you start your day is often how you move through it. Slower mornings create kinder afternoons.

Old-School Habit	What It Looks Like	Why It Feels Good
Slow breakfast	Sitting down, simple meal, no rush	Creates calm, steady energy for the day
Handwritten notes	Cards, letters, small messages on paper	Deepens connection and gratitude
Face-to-face chats	Porch talks, coffee visits, phone calls	Reduces loneliness, builds belonging
Simple walks	No tracking apps, just moving and looking	Supports health and mental clarity
Daily chores	Laundry, dishes, tidying by hand	Gives purpose and a sense of usefulness

2. Walking Without “Working Out”

The Art of the Aimless Stroll

Walk with someone in their sixties who grew up before fitness trackers, and you’ll notice a different pace of attention. They see things. A robin yanking up a worm from the soil. A neighbor’s new paint color. A crack in the sidewalk that wasn’t there last fall. They notice the world the way you notice a face you love—carefully, gently, in detail.

For them, walking was never primarily about burning calories or closing rings. It was how you got to school, to the store, to a friend’s house. It was how you cooled off after an argument or “got some air” when the walls felt too close. That habit has stayed, even if the destinations have changed.

Today, their walks often have loose purposes: mail a letter, pick up a few groceries, circle the block and see who’s out. The distance doesn’t have to impress anyone. The pace doesn’t have to be shared. That freedom—to simply go out and move because it feels good—is a quiet sort of joy.

Researchers have long connected regular walking with better heart health, improved mood, sharper thinking. But many older people don’t quote studies. They’ll say, “If I stop moving, I’ll rust.” So they keep walking. Around parks, malls, tree-lined streets, or even just down the hallway and back. Each step an affirmation: I am still here. I can still go somewhere under my own power.

3. Phone Calls, Porch Visits, and the Lost Art of Showing Up

Conversation That Doesn’t Multitask

For a lot of people in their seventies, friendship is not a like on a post; it’s a knock on the door. It’s calling to say, “I was thinking about you,” not “Do you have a minute?” It’s showing up with soup when someone’s sick, not just dropping a “Get well soon!” in a group chat.

These are the people who still keep address books with smudged ink and dog-eared edges. They remember birthdays without being reminded by an app. They will sit at a kitchen table, refilling the same mug of tea three times, while stories scatter like crumbs across the tablecloth.

This kind of connection—unhurried, focused, in-person when possible—does something that digital communication rarely manages: it makes us feel undeniably real to one another. To share the same air, to see someone’s shoulders rise and fall as they laugh, to hear the pauses and the sighs—that’s intimacy.

Many older adults also learned, in harder decades, that you don’t wait for life to be easy to reach out. You call after a loss. You visit after a surgery. You ask, point-blank, “How are you really doing?” That directness can feel bracing, but also deeply comforting. It cuts through the performance.

And on the other side of those porch visits and phone calls? A measurable lift in mood, a drop in loneliness, a sense that the world is less harsh than the headlines say. Happiness, in this sense, isn’t a spike of pleasure—it’s the slow, steady warmth of knowing you are woven into a web of people.

4. Paper, Pens, and the Beauty of Tangible Things

Lists, Letters, and Little Anchors

In a drawer in my aunt’s house is a stack of spiral notebooks, each one filled with sloping, uneven handwriting. Inside are grocery lists, notes from doctor’s appointments, recipes, prayers, phone numbers, book titles, and the occasional frustrated scribble—“Where did I put my glasses?”

She laughs about her “old-fashioned” paper habits, but she keeps them. So do many of her friends. The paper calendar hanging in the kitchen. The checkbook register. The birthday cards saved in shoeboxes. The list taped to the fridge with a magnet that says, “Don’t forget.”

In a hyper-digital era, these objects are more than nostalgia. They’re anchors. Writing something by hand slows the brain down just enough for meaning to sink in. You don’t absentmindedly tap out an apology letter in ink. You don’t impulsively send a handwritten note you’ll regret later.

People in their 60s and 70s often grew up when stationery was an art and receiving a letter was an event. Many still send cards for anniversaries, condolences, holidays “that nobody celebrates anymore.” It’s not about formality. It’s about the quiet statement: I took time for you.

There’s also the tactile comfort of it all: the scratch of pen on paper, the way a page bends between your fingers, the sight of your own handwriting changing over the years. It’s as if your life leaves a trail you can actually touch.

And it turns out that aging brains often appreciate these slower, physical tools. Writing things down can bolster memory. Organizing thoughts on paper can calm anxiety. Holding a real book instead of a screen can bring the nervous system down a notch. Happiness, in this case, shows up as less scatteredness, more groundedness.

5. Chores, Home Cooking, and the Quiet Pride of Taking Care

Doing Things the Long Way, On Purpose

Watch an older person fold a towel, and you might see a small ceremony in motion. Corners matched. Edges smoothed. Stacked just so. There’s no rush, no sense that this is “wasted time” because it’s not income-generating or “content.” It’s just part of caring for the space they live in—and, by extension, for themselves.

Many people in their 60s and 70s came of age when a lot of domestic tasks were still done by hand. You cooked instead of ordering in. You mended a shirt before buying a new one. You swept instead of pressing a button and watching a robot do it. Time-consuming, yes. But also strangely satisfying.

That satisfaction hasn’t disappeared. In fact, it has deepened with age. When mobility, careers, or social roles shift, chores can become less of a burden and more of a backbone. There is comfort in tasks with clear beginnings and endings: the sink starts full of dishes and ends empty. The basket of laundry goes from a crumpled heap to a neat pile.

Cooking, especially, carries emotional weight. A pot of soup on the stove can mean: I still know how to feed myself. I still have taste, preference, skill. Sharing that soup means: I still have something to give.

These everyday efforts are also a quiet rebellion against a culture that says your worth is in your achievements. Many older adults know better. Your worth can also be in how gently you rinse the coffee cups, how faithfully you water the plants, how consistently you show up for a body and home that need tending.

6. Staying Loyal to Places and People

The Happiness of Not Constantly Upgrading

Ask someone in their seventies where they get their hair cut, and they might tell you a story. “Oh, I’ve gone to the same barber for thirty years.” The same diner. The same dentist. The same brand of coffee, the same holiday dessert, the same little walk around the neighborhood at dusk.

In a culture that worships novelty, this can look like stubbornness. Why not try the new trendy café? Why not move somewhere more “exciting”? Why keep the same old car or the same furniture when there are endless options?

But what looks like resistance to change is, often, a deep appreciation for continuity. Familiar places hold memories in their walls. The corner booth at the restaurant is where birthdays were sung. The park bench is where the grandkids learned to tie their shoes. The living room chair is where thousands of pages were turned.

This kind of loyalty reduces a lot of decision fatigue. There is a quiet relief in not having to research every possible option, in not evaluating your life every five minutes for “optimization.” Instead of chasing the next thing, older adults often double down on what already works.

And in those repeated visits—to the same market, the same post office, the same pharmacy—relationships grow roots. People learn your name, your quirks, your routines. You become more than a customer; you become part of a living, local story. And belonging, more than variety, is what tends to feed long-term happiness.

7. Saying “No” (and Meaning It), While Saying “Yes” to Small Joys

The Wisdom of Choosing Not to Hurry

One of the most underrated old-school habits you’ll see in many people over 60 is the ability to say no—calmly, firmly, without apology. “No, I can’t make it.” “No, that’s too late for me.” “No, I don’t feel up to that.” Not because they don’t care, but because they finally understand that energy is finite and peace is precious.

This doesn’t always come naturally; many of them spent decades overcommitting. But age has a way of clarifying priorities. Suddenly, guarding an early bedtime or a slow afternoon at home isn’t indulgent—it’s survival. So they decline more often. And in the space created by those no’s, they say emphatic yeses to the things that truly light them up.

Yes to a mid-morning coffee with a friend. Yes to watching birds gather at the feeder. Yes to another chapter of a good book. Yes to sitting on a bench and watching the world go by without needing to turn it into a task.

These small joys are not treated as guilty pleasures. They are seen as the point. Many older adults no longer believe life is only valuable when it’s impressive. They’ve seen enough to know that the quiet, ordinary moments are the ones you miss most when they’re gone.

And so their days often have a gentle rhythm: effort and rest, effort and rest. Chores in the morning, reading in the afternoon. Errands one day, staying home the next. This self-regulated pace is one reason so many of them, despite aches and losses and worries, describe themselves as “pretty content, all things considered.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do these old-school habits seem to make older adults happier?

Most of these habits slow life down and make it more tangible: real conversations, handwritten notes, shared meals, simple walks. They reduce stress, strengthen relationships, and create daily routines that feel steady instead of chaotic. Happiness grows more easily in that kind of stable, connected environment.

Can younger people benefit from adopting these habits?

Yes. You don’t have to be in your 60s or 70s to enjoy slower mornings, walks without headphones, or meaningful face-to-face time. Many younger people who try these habits report feeling calmer, more grounded, and less lonely.

Do all people in their 60s and 70s live this way?

No. Older adults are as varied as any other age group. Not everyone enjoys cooking, writing letters, or staying in one place. But these habits do show up often enough across cultures and communities that they’re worth paying attention to.

How can someone start if modern life feels too fast for this?

Begin with one or two small changes. Maybe sit down for breakfast three times a week instead of eating on the run. Call one friend instead of texting. Take a short daily walk without counting steps. The point isn’t perfection; it’s creating small pockets of slowness.

Is this about rejecting technology completely?

Not at all. Many people in their 60s and 70s use smartphones, video calls, and social media. The difference is that they often blend tech with older habits that keep life grounded: paper notes, in-person visits, real-time routines. The balance—not the rejection—is what tends to support their happiness.