In the old days pre glass clockwork on the -200 I had my hands full (and my brain) but nowadays glass and automation have sadly declined skills considerably.
So your hands on flying skills were top notch but your capacity to think about much else was compromised then?
I would argue that automation and modern flight deck aids mean that one has to make the effort to manually fly at appropriate times to maintain manual skills.
In the case of Air France 447 I still am absolutely staggered that a trained and experienced pilot could maintain full aft stick and think that it was an appropriate way to fly the aircraft!
I have never flown a sidestick and have nothing against them in principle but, as was proven in the AF case, it means that pilot monitoring has absolutely no idea what pilot flying might be doing. And what competent pilot would expect his/her colleague to be holding full aft stick?