A third of adults can't boil an egg — this is not an accident
Modern society profits from your helplessness. Self-reliance is the way out.
When the world plunged into lockdown in March 2020 and the national pastime became social media doom scrolling, there was one tweet I spotted that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
It wasn’t lamenting the loss of our liberty, channelling our collective fear for humanity or ruminating over an existential crisis.
It was a woman freaking out about not being able to visit her local salon to get her eyebrows done.
Fair enough, I thought. A global pandemic is no reason to let things slide. The subject in itself wasn’t the problem for me.
It was the immediate conclusion she had drawn that jarred — that the only way for her to keep her eyebrows in check was for her to get to the salon.
It took everything in my power to stop myself replying with: can you not just pick up a pair of tweezers and do it yourself?
That tweet has stayed with me because it’s not really about eyebrows. It’s about something much bigger.
It’s about the quiet, creeping belief — one that most of us have absorbed without realising — that left to our own devices, we are largely incapable of looking after ourselves.
Modern society leads us to believe that without machines or the services of others, we would spend the rest of our days wandering around in a dazed and bushy-eyebrowed stupor, unable to even feed ourselves.
And so we outsource. We get something or someone else to: clean our house, make our daily bread, dispose of our waste, mind our children, walk the dog, make our clothes, put up shelves, grow our food, fix the car, iron five shirts for £20.
We are taught to believe that spending our money on services will make our lives easier. That we will be freer.
And yet as a society, we are more unavailable and unfulfilled than ever before.
Here’s the question no one’s asking: what is it that’s so important that we prioritise before doing things for ourselves?
Generally, work.
We spend our supposedly ‘liberated’ time working longer hours to further feed the capitalist machine, so we can continue to buy more bogus dreams and deepen the chasm of emptiness and longing.
This is not convenience. This is dependency.
And I think it’s time we talked about the difference — and what happens when you start doing things for yourself again.
The system needs you to feel helpless
A 2016 survey found that a third of British 25-34 year olds couldn’t boil an egg.
I’ll just let that hang for a moment.
I can’t imagine this was the case fifty years prior. Something has gone seriously wrong somewhere down the line.
I don’t blame us as individuals for lacking many of the basic life skills needed to look after ourselves. Why should we bother learning them when we live in an age where our every whim can be fulfilled with almost immediate effect?
Hungry? Order a Deliveroo. Can’t sleep? Download an app to read you a story. Something’s broken? Buy another one from Amazon with next-day delivery.
But here’s the cost no one mentions.
Western society is in a co-dependent relationship with globalised systems. Empty supermarket shelves during the pandemic proved that if you throw a crisis into the works, the global systems we depend on for food, fuel and a lot more are in fact very fragile.
This means our comfortable day-to-day existence is inextricably linked with forces outside of our control.
I don’t know about you, but I find that quite disconcerting.
As Tom Hodgkinson puts it in How to Be Free:
‘The long-promised technological utopia in which robots do all the work while we give ourselves up to reading philosophy, drinking fine wines and having sex has never materialised.’
Instead we got Deliveroo, doom scrolling and a generation without boiled eggs.
The more we rely on external markers of gratification, the more they make us feel inadequate, powerless and with little agency over our own lives.
And that’s not a bug in the system. It’s the feature. A person who believes they can’t do anything for themselves is a person who keeps buying.
Outsourcing your life isn’t freedom. It’s a slow erosion of your agency dressed up as convenience.
I freaking made these
When we moved into our house twelve years ago, the two windows in the bedroom needed curtains. We went to a department store and gave the measurements.
I questioned if they had misheard ‘curtains’ for ‘kidney’ — I could not believe the price they were quoting.
My immediate thought was, with absolutely no sewing experience whatsoever: I’m pretty sure I could just do this myself.
And so I did. I found a YouTube video, bought metres of material, borrowed my Mum’s sewing machine and cleared a couple of weekends.
Many (many) hours later, not only had I acquired a new life skill but I had made two fully lined, floor-length curtains that looked great and still hang on those curtain rails to this day.
Sure, I could have spent hundreds of pounds for someone else to make them. And it would have been much quicker. But I wouldn’t feel the huge sense of pride and satisfaction every time I walk past them, still quietly exclaiming to myself over a decade later: I freaking made these.
It’s hard to put a price on that feeling. And it compounds.
Because every time you do something for yourself — make sourdough, put up a shed, upcycle a coffee table with power tools, make country wine — you are banking evidence that you are capable.
And that evidence changes how you see everything else.
Whenever I’ve shared something I’ve learnt on social media, I often receive the same comment: ‘Wow, is there anything you can’t do?’
My honest response is: probably not a lot. And I’m repeatedly surprised to learn others don’t think the same way about themselves.
It’s not because I’m special or particularly gifted. I just believe in myself and my capabilities. I know that with a bit of guidance, a willingness to learn, to get things wrong and try again, I am probably capable of most things.
So is everyone else. That’s the point.
Self-reliance is not isolation
I want to be clear about something. Doing more for yourself does not mean doing everything alone.
One of the most important things I’ve learnt — particularly since moving to Portugal — is that self-reliance and community are not opposites. They’re partners.
The goal isn’t to need nobody, we’re not robots. The goal is to stop depending on impersonal systems that do not give a toss about you and start building real relationships of mutual support with people who do.
My neighbour Rui helps me navigate Portuguese bureaucracy. I help promote his vineyard to the world. A friend lends me her tree pruners. I teach her to ferment a carrot. This is reciprocity — the oldest human technology there is.
The problem was never asking for help. The problem is outsourcing your entire existence to corporations and calling it a life.
As Hodgkinson says:
“Let us each become jacks of all trades. Every man, woman and child should be able to cook, clean and change a plug. We are in danger of becoming a radically useless world of computer-game players. Freedom lies in self-sufficiency.”
Freedom lies in self-sufficiency. Not in paying someone else to live your life for you.
Where to start this week
You don’t need to go into full homesteader mode (unless you want to? join me!). You just need to start closing the gap between what you think you can’t do and what you actually can.
Do one thing you normally pay someone else to do
Fix the leaky tap. Hem the trousers. Bake a loaf of bread. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is the moment afterwards — the moment you look at the thing and think, I did that.
That feeling is the antidote to every message the system has fed you about your own incapability.
YouTube before you outsource
Next time something breaks or needs doing and your first instinct is to call someone or buy a replacement, search for a tutorial first.
Give yourself thirty minutes to learn. You will be amazed how often the answer is simpler than you assumed.
Ask what you’re really buying
When you outsource a task, you’re not just buying convenience. You’re buying the belief that your time is better spent elsewhere. Sometimes that’s true. But often, the ‘elsewhere’ is just scrolling, or working to earn the money to pay for the outsourcing. Catch the loop.
Teach someone what you already know
The fastest way to value your own skills is to watch someone else benefit from them. Cook a meal with a friend. Show a neighbour how to fix something. The reciprocity is the point.
You are not as incapable as you’ve been led to believe.
Not even close.
Every skill you reclaim is a small act of defiance against a system that profits from your helplessness. Every time you pick up the tools instead of the phone, you are telling the machine: I don’t need you for this.
Start small. Start with the tweezers.
What’s one thing you currently outsource that you’d secretly love to learn how to do yourself? Tell me in the comments.
I’m Leyla. I write about reclaiming the skills, the time and the agency that modern life quietly stole from you. Amongst other things. I send this once a week to 8000+ readers — join them if you’d like it in your inbox.
If this one landed, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And hit the ❤️ so Substack shows it to more people.