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Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#451

Post by chishaku »

the_gastropod wrote: post #386
astura wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. I have friends who do too but it's not because they don't know how to cook, it's because they don't like to and don't wanna bother and can afford the luxury of having someone else to do it for them.

I have a suspicion this kind of living, in part, explains why so many people are miserable. I feel like removing every inconvenient thing from your life, and "having someone else do it for you" must make your ability to handle discomfort atrophy to the point where the tiniest unpleasantness feels like a catastrophe. Like muscles, your brain, your immune system, etc., we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a w…

> we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a while to grow.

One could argue that struggle is the prerequisite to growth.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#452

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

kerkeslager wrote: post #298
dsego wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never recommend deadlifts. Those are really dangerous and easy to do wrong. My friend shattered his spine doing deadlifts and needed surgery and months of recovery and he still can't bend down or sit in certain positions.

Being weak and overweight is way more dangerous than deadlifts. Muscle mass helps build and maintain bone mass (depending on your age) which avoids broken bones, and osteoporosis later in life. Strong people get injured less and recover faster from injuries. Yes, there are some ways deadlifts can go horribly wrong, but these are pretty avoidable.

That’s a false dichotomy.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#453

Post by astockwell »

localhost wrote: post #291

I would say focus on building a solid, functional body vs. say focusing on goals like "how much can I lift?" or "how much do I weigh?" or "how fast can I go?". Those goals, while laudable, can also cause you to break down your body in your quest to achieve them. An example from literally yesterday. Over the past few months, I struggled with medial knee pain that was limiting my ability to walk up stairs and do other…

Love Jeff’s stuff, there’s a reason he has such a following. His deep dives into pelvic tilts and shoulder issues have been a huge help to me also.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#454

Post by deadbunny »

mamcx wrote: post #150
vasco wrote: post #59

Some less usual things people do that I think are very high value but boring (hence why they're not usually done): - Understanding taxes, the importance of savings and baseline personal finance literacy. - Reading the political programs of a few parties running for elections in you country - Reading a few yearly report / financial statements for a public company, an NGO/non-profit/state agency/local government and tr…

> Understanding taxes, the importance of savings and baseline personal finance literacy. Ok, what could be a good resource for this? The problem with finances is alike eating: You get so much talk from shaddy "experts" that is hard to see where the good info is.

I know enough about taxes to hire an accountant.

The Reddit r/personalfinance sub is a well moderated place (no shady experts shilling nonsense). Take a look at their wiki[1] for a good jumping off point.

There are also country specific pf reddits listed in their wiki if you're not in the US.

The basic jist of things is:

1. Create a budget, go through the last few months of bank statements and categorise your spending

2. Pay down your debt (starting with the highest rate first)

3. Save 3-6 months expenses (which you know from your budget) as an emergency fund. (This does not need to all be accessable immediately just available, say 80% in a savings account with 30 days notice)

4. 2 & 3 should be done at the same time, it might not be mathematically the best but paying all your debt off and then being fired/made redundant without a cushion is not good.

Then once you've got a handle on the pf stuff, think about r/financialindependence or r/fire

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#455

Post by colecut »

ryanmercer wrote: post #283
inform880 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cooking thing really hits home. I work in a high stress, banking environment at a fortune 500 company, and I eat out most days. I know theoretically how to cook, but between the time it takes to shop, cook, and clean, AND I'm doing well financially it's so hard to convince myself to cook. Living alone doesn't help either.

Instant pot (best kitchen purchase I've ever made) and meal prep. There's entire subreddits dedicated to meal prep with a lot of good ideas.

Sorry you're being downvoted. I guess the instant pot isn't hacker trendy enough

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#457

Post by anarchodev »

neuroticfish wrote: post #294
tnel77 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”

I've been trying to learn to cook off and on for years now and I get so discouraged all the time because I'm still either overcooking or undercooking something, still not getting the flavors right, not using the right amount of oil despite the recipe's prescription. I can't be alone in feeling that way.

I know you're getting a ton of responses, but if you do see this, look up Food Wishes on youtube. Would not be an exaggeration to say it has changed my life. 5-10m videos focused on one dish, usually including quite a bit of context and instruction aimed at beginners.

Cook with stuff you like! That way even if you screw it up you're left with stuff you mostly don't mind. Can't count the number of times I've screwed up meat sauce, and ended up eating a pound of meaty-tomato slop that tasted just fine albeit wasn't recognizable as any type of dish.

Also go easy on yourself. Recognize that this is a whole skill set that people spend their whole lives cultivating (just like software). You'll start to develop an intuition.

Make sure you have the right equipment you need too. I probably spent two years thinking I couldn't make eggs, turns out my pan was warped.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#458

Post by snarf21 »

blueside wrote: post #365
snarf21 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to believe that introspection is the one true real superpower. Here is an exercise for the reader. Every year on your birthday, write down what you "know" to be true about life, work, love, politics, money, meaning, happiness, environment, etc. and then seal it. Now read what you wrote last year and see how dumb you used to be.

I don't think it's good to regard it as "how dumb you were". I used to do something similar to this but this screwed me up a bit mentally, leading to a big lack of confidence. How can I be confident or feel good about my decision if I am currently "dumb"? You're not dumb if you make the best choices you can with the information you have at the time.

Sorry, I mean "dumb" in jest. The point is that introspection allows you to see what you knew based on what was available and what was short sighted and biased. I think that taking the time to consider decisions or positions at all is a huge step forward.

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#459

Post by BlueTemplar »

isaachier wrote: post #207
BlueTemplar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the most superficial level: It's easier to talk about snow or numbers in languages that have more words for these concepts than in languages that have less.

Having recently listened to John McWhorter's lectures on the history of human language, I was surprised to find out that there is no reliable evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language affects thought). The Wikipedia article on linguistic relativism states: > The strongest form of the theory is linguistic determinism, which holds that language entirely determines the range of cognitive processes. The hypo…

Surely the reality is somewhere between "not at all" and "entirely" ?

Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?

#460

Post by dsfyu404ed »

take_a_breath wrote: post #420
the_gastropod wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion this kind of living, in part, explains why so many people are miserable. I feel like removing every inconvenient thing from your life, and "having someone else do it for you" must make your ability to handle discomfort atrophy to the point where the tiniest unpleasantness feels like a catastrophe. Like muscles, your brain, your immune system, etc., we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a w…

I am also skeptical of "optimizing" every part of our lives. Cell phones allow us to do so many things more efficiently than in the past. But what are people actually doing with that freed up time?

>But what are people actually doing with that freed up time?

Vomiting their ideology upon strangers on the internet and watching youtube (or some other video platform).

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