Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

Nothing intellectually, but some things are financially, spatially, and/or temporally out of reach. A long term goal of mine has been to make machines which are decently precise with wide dynamic range measurement capabilities for all of the SI base units & some commonly-used derived units. Somewhere in the 6-8 digits of dynamic range for each.

E.g. be able to measure distances over a 50cm range to a resolution of ±500nm. Easy for a coordinate measuring machine, very challenging and expensive to DIY.

Validating anything I build means finding a calibration lab willing to check it, which is also rather pricey. I don't have the space, the time, or the money to do this.

The De-googling my life project

I'd recommend Beyond Bullet Points by B. Atkinson; it's a book about PowerPoint but teaches you how to synthesize presentations, including videos and in-person presentations.

As far as career upgrades, this book was decisive for me in making the lightbulb go off so I could share my vision with others and have them see it, too.

I found that wrapping my head around B-splines helped me finally understand how to implement routines for Bézier curves.

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/B-Spline.html

Also easier for my brain to use in practice, when implemented, than Béziers, if they can work for you.

(Edit to add - great video you linked!)

"Am I a dinosaur?" and "Is anyone else struggling with this?" I think you're asking the most honest questions in our industry. Thank you for this thread.

My skill that often feels "out of reach" is building a truly great Go-to-Market machine.

I'm a product-obsessed founder. I can spend all day architecting our 'Workspace OS' or fine-tuning our AI, MAKi. But when it comes to sales funnels, marketing channels, and building a repeatable sales process, my brain just fogs over. I truly feel like I wasn't born with the "sales gene."

After 10 years, multiple pivots, and learning to survive like a cockroach, here's the only method I've found for tackling any skill that feels too big: Make it small.

1. Don't read 20 books; talk to one person. I find one person who is great at it and just ask: "What is the very first, smallest thing you would do?"

2. Don't build a complex system; do one dumb, simple action. I don't try to build the perfect marketing funnel. I write one LinkedIn post. I send one cold email. The goal isn't to succeed, it's just to start and get a single data point.

3. Don't guess what the market wants; ask one customer. I ask, "How did you really find us?" Their answer is always more valuable than a market research report.

4. Don't try to master it in a week; just survive to the next day. The goal is just to learn one thing today, so I can be slightly less clueless tomorrow.

I don't think any of us have the "right brain" for everything. But cockroaches don't have big brains either. They just keep moving, adapting, and refuse to die.

We just need to find the next small, tangible step. That's how we get unstuck.