I’m not about to go out and buy an old fashioned alarm clock, but at least with a deck of cards, I can get a little bit of that tactile, physical experience back, one that keeps me from constantly checking my phone. Alarm clocks don’t need to be smashed back into snooze – if you even have an alarm clock that’s not part of your smartphone. No need to put a key into a lock: an access card unlocks the door a key fob starts your car. These activities also give us something physical back when touch screens have taken so much away. “Any of the activities we’ve been talking about give us a feeling of control and mastery, which is critical to reducing stress.” “Most people struggle with stress because they feel like something is out of their control,” he said. Ingersoll also points to the popularity of franchises like Pinot’s Palette, where people paint and drink wine or the resurgence of knitting or the fact that, in the depth of my stress, I also bought a new cross-stitch kit, as being part of the same phenomenon: doing something physical to help put our minds at ease, or at least focused on an activity we steer. Penguin told the New York Times that illustrator Johanna Basford’s coloring book Lost Ocean has sold more than 16m copies in 40 countries, and now has more than 1.3m copies in print in the US (and of course more adult coloring books have sprung up in its wake. While playing solitaire hasn’t become a hot new trend, adult coloring books have. I’m not alone in trying to find a tactile way to ease stress. “It’s quiet, it’s focused, it’s movement, it’s using our eyes and concentrating our hands, so we’re really doing the opposite of what stress does to us, which is overstimulating and overwhelming.” This and other hands-on activities “distract us from stress and focus us on a task” he said. Playing the game with real cards rather than on a screen adds to the stress-quelling quality of the game. They force you to have some.īut my affinity goes beyond that, says Dr Joel Ingersoll, a clinical psychologist and certified master coach. One-player card games are called patience games. I can control some things but not all, and finding out the result takes time. It’s reminded me that the ultimate outcome – of anything – depends a bit on skill (whether I take the red four to put on the black five from my deck or the table) and chance (the shuffle). Slapping cards on to my dining room table has become a way to disconnect and tune out. Solitaire was sometimes the only quiet, sibling-uninvolved activity available on days that it rained. I haven’t done this since I was a teenager, when I spent my summers at the Jersey shore.

Over and over again, I dealt out those piles from one to seven, then tried to get them to stack up on top of aces in the proper order and suit. Not on my computer or my phone, but with playing cards. I closed my laptop, closed my office door, fired up Netflix, and played solitaire. So what did I do, after pounding my head against the deadlines while glancing at the smartphone on my desk for updates from the hospital?

Old world solitaire