I don’t mean simply tying your shoes or working a button. I mean complex.
I can type better if I don’t look. My typing teacher in high school said we’d be better off if we never looked, and she was right.
I play guitar and can do most chords without looking. One thing that was interesting about learning guitar is how much I looked at first. My guitar teacher said it was ok to look because eventually I’d be able to play w/o looking, and I can.
I’m learning piano, and I usually don’t look as I learn a song, but once I get the song memorized, I start looking.
A weird thing I can do is change the band on my clock radio back and forth between AM and FM, as well as hit the preset buttons to change stations. I can do that in the dark while reaching up behind me.
I have some fidget rings I’m constantly playing with. I can do tricks with them while not looking.
There are lots of every day tasks I do with my hands that obviously don’t require looking, but there aren’t that many complex tasks with fine motor skills where I don’t look.
I can tie a bowline around my chest, with my eyes closed, underwater. A deckhand on a research cruise convinced me that it could save my life someday. I suppose it could, but every scenario I’ve imagined it coming in handy seems awfully Indiana Jones-like.
I can do knitting without looking. It’s super-easy if I’m just doing a knit stitch, or just doing a purl stitch, but for patterns where I have to start counting stitches, looking is much better for the accuracy of the piece.
Type, play various musical instruments & hand-roll cigs. Not at the same time, though. I can chop veggies very finely too but I prefer to look lest I should lose the rest of my non-looking abilities.
I type faster, and more accurately, when I don’t look at the keyboard. Same with a guitar. I don’t use a pick and, usually, don’t strum; I pluck or finger-pick, and can hit my fret locations much more quickly and accurately if I don’t look at my hand. In fact, the surest way for me to screw up is to look at my finger placement as I’m playing.
Rolling 35 mm film into a wire cage prior to developing it. I could do that either in a darkroom or in a changing bag (a black zippered bag with elastic sleeves). Looking at it defeats the purpose.
Minor White would save himself time by winding two rolls of film into the same wire cage. He would turn one of them over so their emulsion sides faced apart. I have done this but it is quite a struggle. It doesn’t save ME any time.
