The ability to be true to yourself in social interactions! youtube.com/c/socialanimal
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Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
81–90 of 876 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#82Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.
From this list, the thing I struggle most with is conversations with strangers. Any suggestions on how to improve that?
"Hi , my name is .. . What you've been up today?"
- Start conversion with something you notice about the other person, the event, the surroundings ("the color of your watch matches with your sweater - stylish!", "is this stuff boring or is it just me?", "you know why they put that thing over there?")
- Topics: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams
- Repeat the last few words of the other person and look asking. The person will continue the subject s/he's talking about
- Connect and imagine the other guy. "I am a writer" - "A writer! I always wanted to be one but always stop after one page of writing. I imagine you must be very disciplined"
- Avoid RAPE (Religion, Abortion, Politics, Economics)
- You can always say nothing and just stay there. Often the other person picks up the conversation once you're past a few minutes.
- Try looking people into the eye while walking around, and force yourself to not look away. This is a nice training for looking strangers in to the eye in a cold approach. Once you got that, talking to strangers becomes much less intimidating.
- Eventually people will ask you what you do for work / or what you did today. Have something ready that sounds interesting.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#83Some 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.
huge plus one to this one.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#84Some 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…
Actually getting a proper handle on my finances has been the single thing I did last year which has contributed most to my general mental wellbeing. Historically I've been terrible at it, I'm paid incredibly well compared to most of the population, but because I wasn't consciously budgeting I'd end up running down to the last few pounds in my bank account every month.
Putting an effort into setting actual budgets at the start of the month means I'm shifted from impulse buying silly things on the basis that I have the money at the moment to holding off on those and saving some money. (And admittedly still making silly impulse purchases, but with solid data that I can afford to do so and still have enough money left over for food).
I can highly recommend the ridiculously named You Need A Budget (https://www.youneedabudget.com/) if you're not sure what you're doing, since they have a ton of content around how to go about budgeting. Even if you don't buy the software, give their educational material a read.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#85Here is my personal list as an embedded developer: Embedded Linux: seems to be a growing field in embedded engineering as single board Linux computers are getting smaller and cheeper Amazon IoT core: there are a lot of capabilities to understand! Luckily Amazon does seem to have some training available. Advanced C debugging and building: with embedded c it is pretty easy to let the IDE hold your hand when building an…
I'm fascinated with how many embedded linux emails I've received lately. Definitely seems like the field is growing like mad.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#86When I read the latest "who is hiring" post I was overwhelmed by the amount of Python listed; I've always used PERL but I seem to be the only one at the office left who can.
So you're becoming a niche developer. Congrats, now is time to shine and rack in the big dough. While everybody flocks to Python, go search jobs for Perl and ask for big buck. I bet there are plenty of legacy projects for Perl.
There are at least 3 somewhat big companies that have huge Perl codebases and a lot of Perl developers (>2k each) - Booking.com, Ebay, PayPal.
Source: worked in one of the companies above myself till this year.
I am pretty sure Perl developers cannot ask for big bucks just yet, perhaps in 10 years?
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#87Machine learning. I used to think it wasn't worth learning but I was recently convinced otherwise. ML is one of the few skills that can enable an individual to make a 10x change to a business.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#88Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.
Honesty is not a skill, lying successfully is. Neither is kindness. (And forced kindness can be patronizing.)
> Honesty is not a skill, lying successfully is.
I can see why you would think this. Lying successfully ultimately takes more work than being honest. Being honest is like swinging a golf club or tennis racket correctly. It feels awkward and unnatural at first, but eventually gets easier. Honesty definitely is a skill, though.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#89Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.
From this list, the thing I struggle most with is conversations with strangers. Any suggestions on how to improve that?
Don't be afraid of looking like an idiot
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#90not sure about others but I am looking forward to invest time and energy in video editing
Thought about doing the same. What's your plan to learn it?