Since I have been working from my home office for over five years now, I’m not a regular commuter, and therefore, not a regular subway train passenger. I’d (almost) like to be, I find the subway to be a great place to read and listen to my precious podcasts.

And to get a feel what “they” think. And judging by the trip I made today, people don’t read newspapers as much as they did five years ago. Which is naturally no surprise, we knew that. But now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

On my way back, at around Hornstull, a young woman sat down opposite me, took a sip of her raspberry water, and pulled up a book. I was trying to act cool and just continue to stare ahead and listen to my podcast, but of course I was curious to see what she was reading. It looked like a design book of some sort.

Before I get to the point, a story of my best line ever. Of course, these words were never uttered out loud so whether they were better than my blurting out “you and I make a great team” to Jessica on the first morning of a company team building conference back in 1999 is questionable.

In 1998 – note the timeline here – I was on my way to work when a young lady again sat down on the seat opposite of me. She was reading a very thick book, and reading intensely. At around Zinkensdamm, I saw the name of the book, and by the time the red line had taken me to Gamla Stan, I was biting my lip, trying to summon the courage to blurt out my Great Line to her. But turned out that I didn’t have enough, so I just ran out of the train, down the stairs, to Coffee Cup to get my morning latte, and sent a text message to a friend of mine in Finland: “I should’ve said ‘I feel a great chemistry between us’.” Yes, the book was a chemistry book and I still think it would have been a funny thing to say.

Well, today, the person in front of me was reading something about design, and she, too, got to work. She pulled out a pencil, cracked the book open and started to read. And then she underlined the entire first paragraph of the first page she read.

And watching her do that made me realize that I haven’t been underlining anything for a while. It’s been at least ten years since I read a book like that, with a pen, and underlined important passages.

I was always a bad underliner, either overdoing it, or not doing it enough. A good example of that is my copy of Philip Kotler’s marketing bible “Marketing Management” where I’ve pretty much underlined every word in the summaries, but nothing elsewhere.

Last year, on a train in Helsinki, I saw a young girl go through a pile of school papers, working at least seven different colors when underlining parts of them. It’s nice to see that the old technique is still in use, and that it seems to work.

I pulled out my Moleskine and my pen, and scribbled down a note of her underlining. I think it says, “underlne, womon in trvin paregrf” but I’m not sure because my handwriting is what it is. It was “personal” to begin with – a word my third grade teacher used in a meeting with my parents – and I’m afraid it’s just got even more so over the years.

Writing longhand is another underrated skill of the past, I’m afraid, as today’s kids are taught to type at school. I know that aside from my little notes, signing bills at restaurants is about the only thing I write in cursive.

That’s a shame. I can’t underline enough the importance of good handwriting.