Every generation earns its quirks.
As a forty-something who straddles the dial-up years and the TikTok era, I’ve seen both sides up close—first on trading floors and later as a writer who spends way too much time people-watching at farmers’ markets.
My goal isn’t to pit groups against each other. It’s to understand why certain habits feel cozy to boomers yet scratchy to Gen Z—and what we can learn from that tension.
Ready to compare notes?
1. Phone calls and voicemails
Boomers often reach for the phone the way I reach for my running shoes: it’s muscle memory.
A live call feels respectful and real. For many in Gen Z, though, an unexpected ring lands like a fire alarm. Why talk when a concise text can do the job—and leave a searchable paper trail?
I learned this the hard way with a Gen Z colleague. I’d call, she’d let it ring out, then reply with a tidy bullet-point text. She wasn’t being rude; she was being efficient. And honestly, her written summaries beat my rambling voicemails every time.
2. Paper everything
Printed boarding passes. Paper bills. Checkbooks. Filing cabinets. Boomers trust the rustle of paper the way gardeners trust rain. It’s tangible, and it can’t “crash.”
Gen Z lives in the cloud. Scans, PDFs, digital wallets—less clutter, more portability. In my analyst days, I loved a fresh packet for a meeting. Today, I keep my records in organized folders on my laptop, and my back thanks me.
If it must be paper, I ask myself: what’s the shelf life? If it’s under 24 hours, digital wins.
A small shift that helps everyone: take a photo of any must-keep doc. The compromise isn’t either/or—it’s “both, backed up.”
3. Long, formal meetings
You know the kind: agenda read aloud, updates that should’ve been an email, everyone waiting to speak just to prove they were there.
Many boomers see meetings as the engine of alignment. Gen Z sees them as drag—especially when async tools exist.
As productivity writer Cal Newport notes, “Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.” If the outcome isn’t clear, the meeting bloats.
I started asking one pre-meeting question: what decision needs to be made? If no decision, no meeting.
Try a 15-minute cap with a crisp doc sent beforehand. Funny how brevity breeds bravery—people get to the point.
