What Are People Still Doing in 2026 That Makes No Sense?

Why outdated practices survive when someone still benefits from keeping them.

In 2026, hospitals still exchange medical records by fax. Businesses still mail paper checks. Employees spend hours in meetings that accomplish little. Job applicants upload résumés only to reenter the same information manually. Consumers continue paying for subscriptions they no longer use.

These practices seem irrational, yet each survives because it still makes sense to someone.

Three forces explain their persistence: coordination problems, misaligned incentives, and human inertia. Organizations struggle to replace systems that other organizations depend on. People preserve routines that benefit them even when those routines waste everyone else's time. And familiar arrangements continue because changing them requires effort.

The result is a world where technological progress moves much faster than the institutions and behaviors surrounding it.

Why are hospitals still using fax machines?

Modern hospitals operate sophisticated imaging equipment, electronic health records, and increasingly capable AI systems. They also continue exchanging patient information through methods developed decades ago.

According to federal health IT data, four in ten hospitals surveyed in 2025 often sent summary-of-care records to outside organizations by mail or fax. Another 34% reported doing so sometimes. The survey covered 2,351 responding hospitals.

This was happening alongside substantial technological progress. Hospitals increasingly exchange records through electronic health information networks, including systems designed to connect different software providers.

The obstacle is coordination.

Healthcare organizations use different software, operate under strict privacy requirements, and depend on established networks of physicians, specialists, insurers, and other providers.

Replacing one hospital's fax-based process accomplishes little if the receiving organization still depends on it.

Each participant has a reason to maintain compatibility with the others. Together, those reasonable decisions preserve an outdated method of exchanging information.

Why are businesses still writing paper checks?

The United States has electronic bank transfers, instant-payment networks, and automated accounting systems. Yet paper checks remain embedded in commercial operations.

A September 2026 research briefing from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland reported that 87% of businesses surveyed by the Association for Financial Professionals used checks for at least some business-to-business payments in 2025.

Checks accounted for 13% of business-to-business payment transactions in 2024, down from 32% in 2015. Both figures come from the Cleveland Fed's analysis of payment data.

That distinction matters. Businesses are using checks less frequently, but most haven't abandoned them.

Checks require processing, depositing, and reconciliation. Electronic payment systems eliminate much of that manual work.

Why maintain the older process?

Because suppliers accept checks, existing accounting systems accommodate them, and employees understand the procedures. Switching to electronic payments requires coordinating bank details, payment information, internal controls, and reconciliation processes.

For an individual company, the transition creates immediate work while the benefits arrive later.

Multiply that calculation across thousands of businesses, and an inefficient system survives even as better technology becomes widely available.

Why do we keep having meetings about work instead of doing it?

Meetings serve important purposes. People need to debate, negotiate, coordinate, and make decisions together.

But many workplace meetings exist primarily to communicate information that could be shared without gathering everyone in the same room.

Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index found that its most heavily interrupted employees experienced a meeting, email, or chat notification approximately every two minutes during core work hours.

Consider a hypothetical weekly status meeting involving eight people. Each spends one hour attending and fifteen minutes preparing.

That's ten hours of labor for a single meeting.

Across fifty working weeks, the meeting consumes 500 hours. At an illustrative fully loaded labor cost of $75 per hour, the annual expense reaches $37,500.

If the meeting primarily communicates status updates, a shared written report would accomplish the same purpose with less collective effort.

Why doesn't the meeting disappear?

Because the organizer gains immediate access to eight people's attention while the organization absorbs the combined cost. Attendance is visible. The opportunity cost of interrupted work is harder to measure.

The problem isn't meetings. It's treating attendance as evidence of collaboration.

Why do job applicants still enter information they've already provided?

An applicant uploads a résumé containing employment history, education, skills, and contact information.

The application then asks the applicant to type those details into separate fields.

In a 2026 survey conducted for employment website Monster, 58% of respondents identified reentering information already listed on their résumés as a major frustration. Another 61% reported encountering résumé upload errors or technical problems.

The repetition often originates in applicant tracking systems that require standardized information for searching, screening, and comparing candidates. Résumés contain different formats, and software doesn't always extract their contents accurately.

Structured fields solve a problem for the employer by placing information into consistent categories. But the employer has limited incentive to eliminate duplication when applicants continue completing the process.

The time cost adds up.

A candidate submitting twenty applications and spending an additional ten minutes repeating information on each one loses more than three hours to duplication.

The employer gains cleaner data. The applicant performs the work required to produce it.

Modern parsing technology, reusable applicant profiles, and targeted verification offer ways to eliminate this repetition. The bigger challenge is persuading employers to invest in reducing work performed by someone else.

Why are we still paying for things we don't use?

Subscription services have transformed how people purchase entertainment, software, memberships, and everyday conveniences.

They have also transformed how people stop purchasing.

A traditional purchase requires an active decision to spend money. An automatically renewing subscription requires an active decision to stop.

A 2026 survey commissioned by financial services company Self Financial found that 59.9% of its 1,272 U.S. respondents had at least one paid subscription going unused. The survey estimated an average of $26.79 in unused monthly subscription spending per respondent.

That's more than $320 annually if the same spending continues for twelve months.

The survey also found that 70% of participants had forgotten to cancel a free trial and subsequently been charged for a subscription.

Occasional-use subscriptions still provide value when customers deliberately maintain access. The problem arises when payments continue without a conscious decision that the service remains worthwhile.

The arrangement favors the service provider. Revenue continues without another purchasing decision, while the customer must periodically reconsider the expense.

This is human inertia converted into a business model.

Why does inefficiency survive progress?

These examples reveal three reasons outdated practices persist. Think of how many more examples exist.

Fax machines and paper checks survive because replacing them requires coordination among multiple organizations. Unnecessary meetings and repetitive applications persist because the people who benefit from the processes don't bear their full costs. Unused subscriptions continue because maintaining an existing arrangement requires less effort than changing it.

Over time, these forces reinforce themselves.

An inefficient process becomes familiar. Familiarity produces fewer complaints. Fewer complaints reduce pressure for change. Eventually, the original reason for the process is forgotten, but the process itself remains.

Technology advances while the behavior surrounding it stays the same.

Before attempting to improve an outdated system, organizations should identify who performs the work, who receives the benefit, and who has the authority to change it. Otherwise, they risk spending money automating inefficiencies that should have disappeared.

When a practice survives despite better alternatives, the question worth asking is:

Who benefits from keeping it?

🧬 QuestionStrings to Practice

The Incentive Test: Use these questions to examine an outdated process or routine.

What are we still doing that seems unnecessarily complicated? → Why was this process originally created? → What prevents us from replacing it? → Who bears the cost of maintaining it? → Who benefits from keeping it unchanged?

Explore more questions worth asking at QuestionClass.

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