What are other skills like this, that you have, that you expect many participants on Hacker News lack, and that have greatly expanded the possibilities available to you?
* learning to cook and prepare your own food.
* learn proper sleeping habits and make a routine that feels comfortable.
* learn to exercise - pick an activity and do it consistently with some goals in mind.
* learn to budget money and manage expenses.
* learn to groom yourself and maintain a regular cleanliness routine
* learn to entertain yourself alone - without the internet (ex. reading a book, telling a story, etc)
* learn how devices you own work and how to troubleshoot/repair them (ex. fridge, ac, oven, car)
The general theme I have is that "the things you own, end up owning you", if you are not accountable for them. Start with the things you can't get rid of like your body and then question everything else you introduce into your life to eliminate clutter.
Examples: - if you don't know how to prepare food your diet depends on what restaurants offer and you have little control over ingredients, portion size, calorie intake...
- if you pass out in front of the tv and wake up on the couch it is unlikely that you will feel motivated in the morning. Likely you will pick up McDonald's breakfast on the way to work cause you are running late.
- if you give up on exercising your body you will quickly feel powerless when you have to move something heavy.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Heinlein
Becoming a dancer opened up all sorts of doors for me. It made me comfortable in social situations from small-talk in intimate groups to public speaking in front of large ones.
I even ended up married and living in a foreign country. Currently I'm learning the language and making some progress. All of which I can trace fairly directly to learning to dance.
Caveats:
You need to like the music! So pick a form that's compatible with that (if there is one).
Don't go into this looking for a hook-up. Those people are greatly disliked by most of the people in the scene.
Obviously this is open to confident people too, but shy people will likely get more out of it because the structured nature of dance classes compensates for lack of confidence.
(Also, for all the "two left feet" people - if you can clap a rhythm to a song, you can learn to dance just fine)
- Negotiation + game theory. Learn the traditional methods, and then forget everything you know about them because the real world has changed and broken the assumptions that went into the formal theories, but you need it as a foundation.
- Basic vehicle maintenance and repair. Even if it's just buying an ODBII connector for fault reading and being able to trace fuse box connections. Also, learn to drive stick, or be dependent in an emergency on someone who does.
- Learn confidence and humility by mastering a common physical skill like an instrument, singing, or performing monologues, etc. Not stupid tricks, but something where other people are objectively way better than you are and plan to be embarrassingly bad at it for at least a decade.
While I'm in bed and before sleeping, I take two minutes to be thankful for the day. I would go from the beginning of the day and be thankful for things I have. In this world where everyone seems to be so focused on achieving new things, creating and being more productive. I believe we all should take some time to be just thankful for what we have.
Have a fridge? be thankful for that. Got you uber to go to places? be thankful. Got money to eat for the day? be thankful. Made a contribution to make life better for other people? be thankful.
Once per day for 2mins, hit the pause button, stop thinking about productivity and being a better version of yourself. Accept who you are and be thankful for it.
The other benefits of this for me personally, is that I train my brain to remember things I did during the day.
- Writing posts or making video tutorials is really great. Can be profitable, lead to professional growth, but also it's a great hobby and a fun way to create some value. Even if you don't become a successful/professional blogger/youtuber, it feels awesome to record a tutorial, see the views go up, and receive comments from people who found your video helpful. Also it develops writing/speaking skills, motivates you to learn the topic in more depth, clarifies your thoughts and understanding, gives you valuable feedback from more experienced people, grows your audience.
- Gamedev and Computer Graphics are REALLY fun to do. For people here I recommend Godot and Houdini, it's incredibly interesting, entertaining, and satisfying.
Here's a quick tutorial that I've made on procedurally generating a pretty landscape with Houdini:
So my pick is sales. When I was presenting my thesis to the assessor, he was unimpressed. It was a bachelor's thesis, technically simple, but it attacked the problem from a different angle and had better progress than some PhD students working on the same project. My supervisor congratulated me on the presentation. I told him my assessor wasn't as impressed. He replied, "Maybe you didn't sell it well enough."
Since then, I got a little obsessed in finding out how to sell things better. A lot of people get the wrong impression of sales. They think it's an overdressed guy trying to put their foot in the door and promise anything for a sale.
Sales is simple. You have something that someone wants. Something other people wish they had and probably even spent a lot of money trying to patch themselves. They would happily part with money to get someone else to handle it. The trick with sales is to simply to find those people and explain your product in such a way that they throw money at you. There's no need to be good with words or be charismatic. Just explain the product well and explain why it's worth it.
It applies to many other parts of life too - getting a job, getting a date, hiring, pitching for a startup or scholarship. The first step is understanding what you have and why it's better. The rest is just articulating that well.
Also, get some kind of physical hobby that doesn’t involve looking at a computer. It’s nice to spend some time on evenings and weekends not staring at a screen, and I find that doing things with my hands is grounding.
(Slight aside: I started with Lindy Hop, which is typically danced to Jazz music. It has its roots in a variety of Black dances and grew out of the Savoy ballroom in Harlem starting in the late 20s. It's certainly not the only dance that teaches these skills, but I think it's a good choice.)
At the core, it's about communication and collaboration; communication and collaboration with the person you're dancing with is the essence of a partner dance. You want to make space in the dance for a balance your ideas and your partner's, and so whether you're leading (initiating movement) or following (responding), you want to share your ideas and listen to your partner's. Non-verbally. In real time. Over a lossy communication channel.
Beyond that, you're communicating and collaborating with other dancers sharing the floor. Unlike some dances, there's no macro-level choreography that keeps dancers from running into each other. You need to pay attention to your surroundings, understand how your movements are going to affect others, and adjust as the situation changes.
During classes or practice sessions, communication and collaboration with peers and instructors is also important. It's silly, but dance classes were the first time I ever really learned how to listen to and give constructive feedback in a kind and effective way.
All of that said: it's a bit like math. You'll start by counting (literally, perhaps), not with an understanding algebra or combinatorics. It won't feel revolutionary at first. You may not have any epiphanies until your instructors take of the "kid gloves" and at least reveal that "improper" fractions are just fractions and that it's a-okay to subtract a larger number from a smaller number. (And just like math, you can go as deep down any rabbit hole as you'd like. One day, after a few years of dancing and hundreds of hours of classes, I spent a full hour-long lesson exploring the complex topic of: walking forwards and backwards.)
It's hard to say whether this skill will afford me new opportunities in the future, but it's immensely satisfying and I think it's useful because it has changed the way I think about language in general. It's hard to explain, but when I only knew English, words were the concepts that they symbolized. Of course I knew intellectually that "dog" is just a symbol for the animal, but I couldn't separate them subconsciously, if that makes sense. Now that "perro" is also a symbol for the animal, and it's ingrained in my mind enough that I don't have to translate it to English, it's as if words and things have been "decoupled". Unfortunately I'm finding it hard to articulate why that revelation matters. Basically, learning another language expands your mind in a unique way. It's just something you have to experience.
With my hands and wrists (from being at a keyboard for years), I find knitting to be more comfortable. Also, if you do it correctly, the motion is different from typing and therefore actually helps with repetitive strain in the wrists.
It's not going to give you a "great expansion of possibilities", more like an "occasional ability to charm your way into an improved situation". Bang for the buck, though, I tellya.
Getting tapped out or beaten up over and over develops a kind of calmness and humility that transfers well to other situations in life. After you've fought someone on stage in front of friends and family, it's difficult to find other experiences particularly scary.
It lets you tap into a number of deep and ancient aspects of being human, in a safe and productive way (assuming you are able to find a good, disciplined school, and not one run by people with egos).
But the main point is, I could happily subscribe to a Sunday every 6 months, for car maintenance, or for woodcraft fire lighting, or for knots and Maker and ... and ...
I guess this post is the right question, but the next question is where do I learn these things - and a one stop shop would be ideal.
Go camping, hiking, trekking, canoeing etc. It keeps you in shape, and is great to decompress and enjoy yourself.
-> Linux terminal, amazing how much more fun using a computer is with just the terminal (also a browser to Google the commands)
-> Wood working, it's fun to cut timber and build things, especially if you have an office job like myself.
Learn how to write a 650 word summary, pitch, or blog post. Really learn it and focus on concise and engaging writing. My ability to write well at that length has helped me so many times in my life with blog posts, cover letters, documentation entries, marketing, raising money, and web content.
A surprising resource for this was a book called Manly Art: They Can Run-But They Can't Hide by George Kimball. It's a collection of boxing writing. Stories about boxing matches are usually quite short, about 650 words. Conveying the stakes and action of a boxing match in short form is hard to do well. This book demonstrates the balance between brevity and color.
Understand the physics of moving through the water. Learn to lean on your chest to achieve proper balance in the water. Grasp how to "catch" the water with a high elbow position. Breath properly on both sides. Etc.
It's fun to swim well and it will help you live a healthier life.
Many people have no idea what economists actually work on. Economics is not only Macroeconomics. It is a consistent theory of human behaviour. It tries to understand social behaviour and human interactions using a very small number of hypothesis.
It genuinely gives a new light on how you understand social phenomena.
The mildly irritating thing about this skill is that once you learn it you can keep your friends and family up and running but, likely, no one will be able to do the same for you.
I have now internalized things like all of nothing thinking, mental filters, personalization, etc that whenever my mind tries to pull a fast one on me I'm able to quickly rationalize the negative thought by seeing the cognitive distortions in it.
But like everything this requires a lot of practice to do mentally (I nearly did it for 1 year with pen and paper first - actually I made a web app for myself to do it but you have to write it down in the beginning)
Communicating effectively with others will open up more opportunities than any other skill. It’s also a great way to learn more about others and yourself.
I expect many participants here to be strong in the logical aspects of rhetoric and would suggest focusing on social interaction, understanding the audience, playing with different presentational styles, receiving and giving feedback, and the part I find most difficult, figuring out and acknowledging what you want to achieve in a given interaction.
Sometimes you can sound like an asshole when a friend asks you something very specific and you answer: "why don't you Google it?", but IMHO you're doing him a favor.
Most of the time you will be paired up to form a group of four, so you will probably experience the feeling of being out of place and uncertain of how to act (rules, etiquette). This will help with practicing dealing with uncomfortable situations if you are more introverted. The reason why golf is addicting for many of us is that once you get ok at the game, you start to enjoy the improvement or just the addiction of hitting a great shot where you had planned to hit it. The outdoor aspect is also a big bonus, especially if you start walking 18 holes.
Combination of: 1) Really thinking about what i value in life (and its monetary cost) 2) Index funds and living cost efficiently (Learning the type of risk here is important - i.e. volatility risk)
This is nothing new to many, but to me it was a revelation. When you start plugging numbers into a calculator as opportunity costs of current purchasing decisions the numbers are incredible. Ben felix - youtube (9/10) Mr money mustache - blog (7/10) - imperfect but useful for putting things in context
The rates are debatable but often 7% yearly is quoted. Example, instead of buying a 40,000 car, put it in stock market for 30 years and get just 6% return you've got 229,000. Thats a large percentage of retirement for simply deciding not to buy a new car
To me this seems like a cheat code for turning the difficulty down on life. We've got enough things to worry about other than personal finance.
I personally feel strongly about this, some might disagree: News. Have a look here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/529060/uk-newspaper-mark...
Makes it clear why so much of the most read and quotes articles are of such bad quality. (There are still many good news outlets!, just large swathes of the largest ones are terrible) Something like 70% of the uk new market is owned by 3 papers or something like that.
I'm sure you can quibble with some of the things ive written here but i feel the general direction holds.
The skill of recognizing the need for difficult conversations, then having them. A 20 second awkward, difficult conversation saves 20 days or 20 months of unfortunate use of my time. There is a general form of this, that if it’s easy to arrive at the answer, but hard to act, that’s probably the right direction. Or, the obstacle is the way.
The skill of recognizing that everything makes sense when I know the full story. Especially in relation to other people. When someone else doesn’t make sense to me, it’s almost always a problem with me, not having the full story. I have not encountered an exception to this yet. This injects empathy and objectivity at a broad level into one’s life.
The skill of habits and routines executed on priorities. This is the difference between being busy doing stuff all day and never accomplishing anything, to making consistent progress toward what’s important.
Then as second step, you can evaluate the data yourself, or even question it. See where you can find the source, or see other data. This step is more checking if the statistical evaluations are correct, or if there is p-hacking or any other problem. It must also follow basic common science. And if not, this should be explained.
What I usually find (>90% of the articles that I find interesting) is that the reports are conflicting and even the data is conflicting. The evidence/science is often incomplete and filled in with unfounded theories. And knowing this, it reduces the amount of information that is important in the articles.
So technically logical thinking is a way to compress all the data, without loss of information.
Become a volunteer as a first-aid responder. You will learn and practice how to react in a lot of unusual situations (kids choking, burns, wounds, people fainting...), learn more about healthcare-related subjects, and live incredibly unusual experiences. It's a highly rewarding skillset.
* walking the file system recursively as a data structure
* regular expressions
* so much of any projects documentation can be automated
* once you fully appreciate an understanding of data structures algorithms write themselves
* Work on your own car; learn basics: changing oil, light bulbs, air filters, adding wiper fluid. Learn more advanced: brake pad and rotor changes, fluid flushes, keep building this skill and you'll have fun getting dirty and saving money
* Learn how to get your partner or preferred partner gender to cum; this could be fun and exciting for both of you
* Learn how you like to cum
* Learn about money, stocks, 401ks and budgeting basics
“In robust training for this life, which is itself a continual fight with some form of adversary or other, the aim should be to form that solid and adamantine fiber which will endure long and serious attacks upon it, and come out unharmed from them, rather than the ability to perform sudden and brilliant feats, which often exhaust the powers in show, without doing any substantial good.”
-- Walt Whitman
Maybe we could come up with some that would enhance ones time spent with a partner/spouse?
- understand and manage the complexity
- finding a way to keep moving forward
- keeping things in balance
- knowing when to stop arguing
- accepting better solutions
- when stand corrected, have the courage to say "you are right, i was mistaken"
For example learn to service your car, repair your home, etc.
Your things may last longer, you can save a bunch of money, your better half will be impressed, you learn how basic stuff in the real world works and you’ll get some time off the screen.
* Weightlifting
* Cardiovascular exercise
* Sewing