Enough carpentry and building skills to be able to build decks, porches, sheds, renovate rooms in your house, etc. If you're a homeowner and can improve your home with little help from contractors, you will be able to affordably increase the value of your house immensely, as well as the quality of your home life and that of your family. The return on investment can be crazy -- imagine being able to take a couple weeks off work for a project and increasing the value of your house by ~10% during that time.
Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
101–110 of 277 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#102Understanding yourself in different dimensions would be at the top of my list. It takes a lifetime to do it well though.
Learn to cook and prepare food, especially your favorite foods. Then you can make better decisions when buying packaged food, when eating out and also not be dependent on someone or some establishment for something as basic as food (of course, you can take this further and get into gardening and such, but just start with cooking from ingredients you can buy).
Listen to people without interrupting and trying to solve their problems. Listening is a gift to others and to yourself.
Learn to write better, since we (the readers and writers here) depend on written communication a lot more than people from the last century and before.
Learn to manage expenses, followed by learning to manage investments (start by understanding the power of compounding).
IMO, playing an instrument and learning a sport are hobbies, not necessarily life skills.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#103Probably the most important skill people are skipping is etiquette. Which I think says a lot about HN. Communication (texting, listening, etc), maintaining and creating relationships, avoiding injury, relaxation, exercise, cooking, healthy eating, self defense, first aid, swimming, types of reading (fun, searching, learning), searching, separating truth from fiction, knowing when to seek help, a hobby, cleaning, main…
Social etiquette drives me up the wall sometimes. I get it, it's necessary, and I do follow it, but there are some that just make zero sense. In fact, most of them make no sense. It's just social constructs made by people, and some go to war over it. Ridiculous. I don't want to shake hands, I don't want to smile, I don't want to sit down if you do. It's like, why does it matter to you? I literally couldn't give half…
Social etiquette is about respect and care for others as well as yourself, lack of etiquette in my mind is a display of lack of self awareness at best, and self centered/narcissism at worst.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#104Cooking cooking cooking. You’ll eat probably until the day you die. Might as well figure out how to feed yourself in a way that sustains you and brings some joy to you and possibly to others.
This is by far the most important thing I can think of, followed shortly by being able to maintain a regular, high-quality exercise regimen.
Meal prep is the key to keeping the discipline in terms of cooking cheap, high-quality meals for yourself. If you understand some fundamentals about how to store food and scaling recipes up, you can leverage your time very well. In a given week, I spend ~2 hours in the kitchen total. Of this, about 1 hour is spent per week doing meal prep. The other hour is time spent re-heating or preparing the final meal for consumption across each day.
The most powerful way to engage this is using simple, predicable, efficient tools & processes. I use very few tools in my kitchen. Iron skillet, 2.5qt iron pot for frying, and an instant pot for pressure cooking. That's about it. I prepare stuff in ~1 week batches, usually on weekends.
I spend ~$150/m on groceries, and maybe $100/year on food that I don't make for myself. Every meal I eat is arguably of very high quality compared to available alternative vendors. Watching others order door dash every single day as their sole source of sustenance has me somewhat disappointed in society. The amount of money most people spend on food is incredible to me, especially considering the quality in most cases.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#105Diagramming. I'm serious. The more I (as a developer trying to master design) delve into the product design space. The more I see that there is no more fundamental skill in design than that of constructing 'information architectures'. Essentially, mapping (or diagramming) the most important pieces of a design that you are making. It is literally the key to creating a great design. I wrote more about this in a guest p…
Do you have any other recommendations for this? I checked out the link you shared, but was greeted by a screen-filling popup to sign up for something. I navigated back.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually sort of agree with that. It doesn't have to be stuff you need to do but you do need to pick and choose. For example, while I'm not ignorant of how a car works, I did make at least an implicit decision a very long time ago that working on cars wasn't going to be one of the ways I spent my time. And while I do certain things around the house, I get someone in for major jobs and for electricity/plumbing gener…
Completely agree that having a fundamental understanding of most things is good, but that it’s more important to know what you don’t know than to really and truly know something. Changing a tire? Yes, you should know that (or, honestly, be able to intuit it, it’s not exactly complex). Being able to change the oil, a fan belt, or coolant? Yeah, I know I could if I had to, but with the hazardous waste and all it’s far…
Of course, "run-flat" tires are increasingly common these days and the crap jacks that are almost always the from-the-factory standard can make it near impossible to change a tire in non-ideal situations.
And you should also know how to jump-start a vehicle which is almost certainly something you'll need to do sooner or later. Also add washer fluid.
But yeah, the engine compartment isn't some mysterious magical box to me but the vast majority of things I get done for me.
(My parents also never did any car work and I didn't own a car until I had a professional job.)
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#107Cooking cooking cooking. You’ll eat probably until the day you die. Might as well figure out how to feed yourself in a way that sustains you and brings some joy to you and possibly to others.
This is by far the most important thing I can think of, followed shortly by being able to maintain a regular, high-quality exercise regimen. Meal prep is the key to keeping the discipline in terms of cooking cheap, high-quality meals for yourself. If you understand some fundamentals about how to store food and scaling recipes up, you can leverage your time very well. In a given week, I spend ~2 hours in the kitchen t…
Do you have this process documented anywhere ?
Would like to learn it.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#108Probably the most important skill people are skipping is etiquette. Which I think says a lot about HN. Communication (texting, listening, etc), maintaining and creating relationships, avoiding injury, relaxation, exercise, cooking, healthy eating, self defense, first aid, swimming, types of reading (fun, searching, learning), searching, separating truth from fiction, knowing when to seek help, a hobby, cleaning, main…
Keep in mind that etiquette is highly subjective and culture-specific. As English speakers a lot of ours is derived from traditional British customs, even if you’re not a native of a former colony. For instance, saying “excuse me” before you barge in front of someone to get something off the shelf at a shop. I’m American, so that is obvious. I live in Estonia, and here you either 1) stand awkwardly and wait for them…
True - but I’d also say that part of good etiquette is to make an effort to learn the basics of the culture in which you’re participating. If I’m traveling to China for business it’s incumbent upon me to learn the order in which people should be introduced, how to exchange business cards etc.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#109Diagramming. I'm serious. The more I (as a developer trying to master design) delve into the product design space. The more I see that there is no more fundamental skill in design than that of constructing 'information architectures'. Essentially, mapping (or diagramming) the most important pieces of a design that you are making. It is literally the key to creating a great design. I wrote more about this in a guest p…
Do you have any other recommendations for this? I checked out the link you shared, but was greeted by a screen-filling popup to sign up for something. I navigated back.
I would highly recommend reading the article for a fuller picture behind this idea.
But if you want a shorter primer, you can check out this one that gives a short summary of this concept: https://planflow.dev/blog/ux-planning-starts-with-informatio....
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#110Have a viable exit plan from working life. You don't always get to choose when you can no longer work.
This is where it's good to have a life partner. My mother didn't when she died, but was lucky enough to have her siblings and son nearby. She did leave this world completely broke, as dementia care is extremely expensive in the US.
Without family or wealth, once one cannot work here in the US, I think most people go where it's cheapest and eventually become homeless, then die.