I want to learn how to chillax (chill and relax) no matter what (I have hyper-anxiety.)
Rest all (programming in C and Go, Japanese language, master System Design, get ripped and few more) is secondary.
Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
281–290 of 433 posts
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#282- MANDATORY: Re-learn focus. I will not self-diagnose but I exhibit ADHD symptoms and I started actively fighting them back (they mostly come from the phone). I am not going to just deny myself access to apps on schedule -- my brain never clicked schedule, not even once in my life -- but through a persistent and sustainable self-change from deep within. It's slow but it's beginning to work. - MANDATORY: Get more inti…
I hope you find that your first and last goals "re-learn focus" and "prioritize body" feed into each other nicely. I worked a lot at my ability to focus on tasks (not just work, but in general) this year, and starting an exercise routine really helped me out a lot. Strength work is a time for me to not be on the phone or computer. Having that time to be in my own head and just think about stuff I find helps sharpen m…
Oh yes, they are very closely linked!
To be even more precise, regaining focus unlocks many other skills, prioritizing the physical health included. I am still working my way towards that.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#283- MANDATORY: Re-learn focus. I will not self-diagnose but I exhibit ADHD symptoms and I started actively fighting them back (they mostly come from the phone). I am not going to just deny myself access to apps on schedule -- my brain never clicked schedule, not even once in my life -- but through a persistent and sustainable self-change from deep within. It's slow but it's beginning to work. - MANDATORY: Get more inti…
I do a lot of local dev using docker. I've taken to adding an image just for agents and using that to make modifications. Agents can install or run anything they need without touching my actual machine. I can also limit what they can read and write.
Yes, that would be the ideal setup indeed, agreed.
But ruined health made me laser-focus on my wife and my work and I ignored many other things. Much to my shame, I don't even have a home media center and I have all the skills to make it happen and have it be much better than f.ex. Netflix or Disney+ UI.
It's all about carefully picking my battles, at least in this stage of life. Lack of focus and trying to be everywhere led to me making dozens, if not hundreds, of easily avoidable mistakes. I am hellbent on never allowing that again.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#284I'd like to improve my parenting skills, as well as improving the ability to maximize my (few) free time to dedicate to my hobbies
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am honestly curious about your point on productivity boost. Are you saying that you can write tests at the same speed as AI can? Or is it the point that tests written by AI is of much lower quality that is not worth using them? I am at the role of solo-preneur now and I see a lot of benefit from AI. But then I read posts like yours that experienced devs don't see much value in AI and I start to doubt the things I d…
Try giving this prompt to your favorite LLM: "Write unit tests with full line and branch coverage for this function: def add_two_numbers(x, y): return x + y + 1 " Sometimes the LLM will point out that this function does not, in fact, return the sum of x and y. But more often, it will happily write "assert add_two_numbers(1, 1) == 3", without comment. The big problem is that LLMs will assume that the code they are wri…
Tip: teach it how to write tests properly. I’ll share what has worked pretty well for me.
Run Cursor in “agent” mode, or create a Codex or Claude Code “unit test” skill. I recommend claude code.
Explain to the LLM that after it creates or modifies a test, it must run the test to confirm it passes. If it fails, it’s not allowed to edit the source code, instead it must determine if there is a bug in the test or the source code. If the test is buggy it should try again, if there is a bug in the source code it should pause, propose a fix, and consult with you on next steps.
The key insight here is you need to tell it that it’s not supposed to randomly edit the source code to make the test pass. I also recommend reviewing the unit tests at a high level, to make sure it didn’t hallucinate.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#286- MANDATORY: Re-learn focus. I will not self-diagnose but I exhibit ADHD symptoms and I started actively fighting them back (they mostly come from the phone). I am not going to just deny myself access to apps on schedule -- my brain never clicked schedule, not even once in my life -- but through a persistent and sustainable self-change from deep within. It's slow but it's beginning to work. - MANDATORY: Get more inti…
I feel like I could’ve written exactly this myself. The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement. What’s your plan? How is it working?
I would not even know how to call my so-called "technique" if somebody else did not do it for me: awareness.
What I do I would today call "reconciliation" or "making peace". Let me explain.
On the one hand, I start recognizing in a colder, more methodical and mathematical manner, what things I did screw up in my life and why. I drill down and understand what emotions, unmet needs and un-addressed trauma led to these faulty decisions. Then I say: I understand why I did it but this only worked against me, it's time to change it and put myself on a better path. And by "better path for me" I don't mean only financial and career success; I mean those _and_ being happier and calmer.
On the other hand, I allow my more beastly / primitive / emotional / immature side to show up. I don't shun it, I try to sympathize with it and somewhat validate it. That's basically treating a part of yourself like an angry and lost kid: you do feel for them but want them to stop doing damage. But you also want to not force anything on them; you want them to understand and internalize they are only hurting themselves and others (in this case: other parts of you) with zero benefit for anyone involved.
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It's not easy. I had a very rocky start in life. Sure I did not sleep under bridges but growing up in a shitty Eastern European town with a gay brother and you yourself being the nerd who effortlessly gets all A grades and is also good at karate, physically attractive and liked by girls sadly had a ton of downsides that many people are blind of. Almost everyone hates you for being different and they feel threatened by you while all you want is to fit in and be a part of a friendly group. It was and still is a big tragedy, one I don't claim I have managed to come to terms with even as of today.
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But what I do lately is talk to my more primal side: "Look, I really understand how much you hate doing X and Y. I hate them too! But what else would you do? We did it your way for so long, you had an almost complete full reign and look what happened -- now we all suffer from severely diminished physical and mental health, we hate our life and often our work, we know that we wasted our best years on pointlessly rebelling against things we could never change. Where did all that bring us? Please, work with me. I understand that you never feel heard because we never achieved the life you wanted. But I can't see any shortcuts. Do you? If not, then let us please take the long but much safer road to our goals. That way we'll still get there one day. If we are not making progress then we'll talk again and readjust strategy and maybe do things more your way. But in the meantime, can we do things my way for a while? Please?"
Or something very similar.
But all that is 99% specific to me. You really have to find your own way to your deeper and more primal / emotional side. It exists and very often sabotages you because you never give it the wheel. Being civilized does this to us and no, I am not saying you should go outside and beat someone to death with a ratchet wrench of course. I mean that you should find a way to do the things you truly want, regardless of the cost.
I am NOT doing this well at the moment. For example I am too chicken to give up programming. But as mentioned above, I am trying to reconcile a few factors the best way I can for the moment. Maybe if that unlocks more energy and more motivation then the time would be ripe for more drastic measures.
One step at a time.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I could’ve written exactly this myself. The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement. What’s your plan? How is it working?
For me personally, it's certainly been an iterative process. I like to think of focus as any other habit that I want to form, so from that: - Schedule time for it - Understand that I will have slip ups and that's okay - Make it hard to do the bad things (in this case, I have domain blockers to stop me redditing, I move my phone to another room etc.) - Make it enjoyable. For me it's finding a particular energetic DJ s…
Iterative process is exactly how I would describe it. Formulate, try, readjust, ad infinitum / until you find a good-enough state.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I could’ve written exactly this myself. The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement. What’s your plan? How is it working?
Seconded. I am also curious to what your ADHD plan is.
Check my reply to your sibling. No good formula. I am just starting (was somewhere at the beginning of 2025). In general: try to reconcile the parts of you that don't feel listened to, with your everyday self.
And be a touch assertive when you need to. I found I can't just put down the phone so I changed what I do on my phone (books instead of doom-scrolling). So far it works okay-ish. I am fine with a gradual progress.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#289I want to learn driving. I live in a city with well-connected public transport (Singapore) so I don't feel the need to learn. However, this year I travelled to some rural areas in Japan and started to feel the pain of relying solely on public transport which is either extremely sparse, or sometimes non-existent which limits the places I want to visit. That's why I felt like if I obtain this skill, I can explore more…
I learned this year at 45 - before that I only had a moped license and used a moped. I am not a "car person" and did not expect I'd like driving. I turned out wrong! I enjoy it and especially enjoy the benefits and freedom a car gives you. You'll most likely not regret it too.
Re: Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
No courses on the 3D printing side really — I think I did go through one of the Prusa ones after getting enough free "meters" on Printables but I don't remember it telling me much I hadn't already learned. There is a blog post that has been posted here before that really covers almost everything important about design for 3D printing: https://blog.rahix.de/design-for-3d-printing/ I really just ADHD'd the hell out of…
Thanks so much. Going through some of these motions... installed OpenSCAD, made something basic which was easy. But I found out that making something more complex forces you to invent your own layout system. Last month I looked on Udemy and did part of Mango Jelly's course. It's a good one, I actually found out later that he has a bunch of stuff on YouTube. I'm still reading the rest of this and your other comment, t…
> But I found out that making something more complex forces you to invent your own layout system.
The problem is exactly that, yes. If you want a simple shape and maybe to stick a thread on it (one of the first things I printed) then OpenSCAD has the basics and there are really interesting libraries.
But if you get into something complex, you end up building your own scheme and then constantly gardening it. The complexity never gets truly abstracted away because you can never truly work in a higher order way.
FreeCAD is a long way from perfect, but what it is, that you need, is a space where you can reason about geometry in a way that lets you learn. And if you want code-CAD, you can do it with python macros, or limited bits of OpenSCAD in that workbench, or you can use CadQuery/Build123D and generate STEP files for some of it, and then build on those.
I would still say I don't know CAD anywhere near as well as I'd like to. But I know where to start, I've learned the terminology, and I am able to think in CAD in a way I never expected to.