Don't double down out of pride or get flustered when you are wrong if you know you are wrong. To boot, nothing will make people remember you were wrong more than you making a fuss about whatever you are wrong about.
Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
121–130 of 277 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#122Cooking 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.
Relatedly: meal planning. Turning raw ingredients into food is only the last step. Just as important is figuring out what meals to prepare, what ingredients you’ll need, how to efficiently use those ingredients, how to take advantage of leftovers, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#123Learning about nutrition and fitness, even if you don't do either rigorously.
Patience and also how to firmly and kindly say, "no."
Art is a pretty nice hobby that works your ability to observe and visualize. Sort of like meditation when you're in the "flow" of it.
Playing an instrument is similar. Having a hobby that is active, not passive, and relaxes you is great.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#1241. How to spend less than you earn. Lots of people desire “financial freedom”, meaning they can spend what they want when they want it. Solving this via revenue leads to the hedonic treadmill, and you’ll never out earn your growing wants. Instead solve this by controlling your wants, and you’ve achieved financial freedom immediately.
2. How to take risks. Finding the balance between recklessness and absolute risk avoidance is about managing downside, so you get a chance at the upside with acceptable consequences if things go wrong. Get this right, and the world is your oyster, even if this is your only skill in life. Get this wrong, and it will swamp every over accomplishment, skill, and strength you may have.
3. Know what you want, and why you want it. The worst thing in life is time wasted winning at unfulfilling endeavors. The “winning” sucks you I’m and keeps your trapped in a local maxima, where all roads look like moving backward. (Usually, this means understanding and controlling your need for status vs your other needs—-and that requires a lot of introspection.)
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#125How to generate meaning in one's life. This normally comes from taking on responsibility. Then, one continually increases the amount of responsibility one takes on.
One thing most human beings can do as a shortcut to this: have a child.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#126Cooking 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…
I am envious of your food budget. A mere pound of chicken breast at my local grocery store costs ~$10/lb, though they range from about ~$5-10lb. However, at the cheaper end, the meat is a demonstrably lower quality, with odd texture issues due to chickens growing so fast (the condition is called 'woody chicken'). Your budget would get me 15 lbs of protein. That's just not enough food for 2 people (my household size). I spend about $400/month grocery shopping (like you, nearly all meals eaten at home).
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#127Granted, from SciFi, but I have found this to be fairly inspirational: > A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficie…
Change a diaper? Done!
Plan an invasion? No.
Butcher a hog? No way, I like pigs.
Conn a ship? Would like to try. Is learning to fly helicopters an acceptable substitute? (By far the most difficult thing I've ever done - building a pipe organ was kid's play in comparison.)
Design a building? How about a tree house?
Write a sonnet? No.
Balance accounts? Terrible - ask my bank manager.
Build a wall? No.
Set a bone? No.
Comfort the dying? No.
Take/Give orders? Yes.
Cooperate? With whom/what?
Act alone? Yep.
Solve equations? Never could do that.
Analyse a new problem? Constantly.
Pitch manure? Yes, I really have done this. Not recommended.
Program a computer? My job.
Cook a tasty meal? My chicken curry is world famous!
Fight efficiently? Not sure what that means.
Die gallantly? Not yet.
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#128Everybody ought to learn whatever they need to learn given their individual circumstance. Therefore, probably the best skill is learning to discern what to learn (critical thinking, perhaps), followed closely by learning how to learn (largely a self awareness thing).
Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?
#129Cooking (proper food not junk), growing your own food, personal finances, how to manage emotions, carpentry, welding, how to enjoy time by your own, languages (the more the better), how to do basic fixing of appliances (see RepairCaffe), learn the joy of not to stop learning, sleeping habits, health habits, be conscious what you want at work to be happy (depressed Manager or happy technician)... To be continued... ni…
> growing your own food
Some people like doing this one and really get into it, but for the most part, no one grows food with enough macronutriets to sustain themselves. Potatoes are the main exception.