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Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#171

Post by Silhouette »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #122
kpmcc wrote: post #94

Cooking 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.

And then the next extension of cooking and meal planning is knowing about good nutrition. An hour or two learning about things like protein, carbohydrates, fats, fibre, salt, vitamins and minerals, and calories can make a huge difference to how nutritious and well-balanced your meals are forever.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#172

Post by mandeepj »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #122
kpmcc wrote: post #94

Cooking 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.

You can always switch ingredients. It helps if you are out-of-stock for one then you are able to switch for another

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#173

Post by adverbly »

kharak wrote: post #158
biren34 wrote: post #124

1. 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 avo…

1, I see clearly as skill. 2, risk management skills can be learned. Risk taking though, I've always regarded as a question of temperament. I'm personally close to zero risk affinity and don't feel an emotion (yes not reason) to take any financial risk, at all (other risk, too, really). To the contrary, mind and body squirm at the thought. 3, this seems unnecessarily tied to "winning". What if I really don't care abo…

3 - I'd agree that it is not really a skill so much as an effect with many possible actionable causes, some of which can be trained. I think you and OP are actually coming at this from a similar angle if you indeed don't really care about winning. OP's point is that many people get sucked into doing things for reasons other than their impact on their long term happiness. Competitiveness, addiction, lack of experimentation can all lead to inefficient return on effort. There are likely many skills that can improve on these, but introspection towards your feelings/emotions to understand how your emotions respond to externalities is probably a cornerstone of many of them.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#174

Post by adverbly »

Retric wrote: post #30

Probably 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…

As someone who finds many "social etiquette" practices painful, cringe-worthy, and the cause of many communication breakdowns, I would actually like to learn more about the benefits of social etiquette, and how I can improve on it.

Does anyone have any good resources to point me to?

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#175

Post by biren34 »

adverbly wrote: post #173
kharak wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1, I see clearly as skill. 2, risk management skills can be learned. Risk taking though, I've always regarded as a question of temperament. I'm personally close to zero risk affinity and don't feel an emotion (yes not reason) to take any financial risk, at all (other risk, too, really). To the contrary, mind and body squirm at the thought. 3, this seems unnecessarily tied to "winning". What if I really don't care abo…

3 - I'd agree that it is not really a skill so much as an effect with many possible actionable causes, some of which can be trained. I think you and OP are actually coming at this from a similar angle if you indeed don't really care about winning. OP's point is that many people get sucked into doing things for reasons other than their impact on their long term happiness. Competitiveness, addiction, lack of experiment…

That’s a fair response.

The reason I’d call this a skill is because you could screw it up on purpose—-it’s not random.

To achieve this outcome you need to know of your values, be aware of your current emotional state (and the outside factors influencing it), and have the techniques to exert more control over your internal state than the outside factors are seeking to exert.

To me, it’s like driving a van in very windy conditions. The skill is to not get blown off the road.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#176

Post by dmerrick »

I always think of this poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    To laugh often and much; 
    to win the respect of the intelligent people 
    and the affection of children; 
    to earn the appreciation of honest critics 
    and endure the betrayal of false friends; 
    to appreciate beauty; 
    to find the best in others;  
    to leave the world a bit better 
    whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
    or a redeemed social condition; 
    to know that one life has breathed easier  
    because you lived here. 
    This is to have succeeded.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#177

Post by biren34 »

kharak wrote: post #158
biren34 wrote: post #124

1. 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 avo…

1, I see clearly as skill. 2, risk management skills can be learned. Risk taking though, I've always regarded as a question of temperament. I'm personally close to zero risk affinity and don't feel an emotion (yes not reason) to take any financial risk, at all (other risk, too, really). To the contrary, mind and body squirm at the thought. 3, this seems unnecessarily tied to "winning". What if I really don't care abo…

For #2, I can’t speak to your values. It seems unlikely you’ve never taken any risk in your life. Of course, not knowing you, I can’t say for sure, but I’d bet you only choose to pursue “sure things”.

I’ll save you the philosophy about missed gains, but instead ask—what if your “sure things” were only 99% probable? They’d be at least somewhat risky, no?

Would you still do them? And, for the things you have done, how can you be certain of the outcome, any outcome, beyond that level of confidence?

Maybe for someone as risk averse as you, #2 is beyond the point of diminishing returns. But for anyone who doesn’t fit that bill, I’d say #2 is critical.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#178

Post by adverbly »

RobertKerans wrote: post #161
tarboreus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Etiquette sends a strong signal that you're socially reliable. Working in groups is difficult and you can't just brute force it by waving your hands and saying you only care about the work or about being nice or whatever. Disagreements happen constantly and you can't just fight or disband the group every time you don't reach consensus, or you can but your group will be quickly outcompeted by a more functional group.…

It's quite sad that you've needed to put that much thought into an explanation.

It actually does take that much thought though! Social dynamics are extremely complex to model, and they are way more important than we think. There is a lot of complex game theory and metagaming going on. Most of it goes over my head, but people's "gut feeling" about others takes a lot of things into account(what they know that I know, etc...). Communicating while maintaining good gut feelings is not easy! We basically need to hack our own minds to get things right.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#179

Post by adverbly »

Aeronwen wrote: post #74
x87678r wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it telegraphs if you care about us or not. If you dont care about what I think, what will happen if down the road things get rocky? You probably wont care about me then either and will bail or be unreliable.

It shouldn't, because the best people at playing the etiquette game are the ones you shouldn't trust. Which is why it's an important skill to learn. Because you too can exploit it for personal gain.

> The best people at playing the etiquette game are the ones you shouldn't trust.

I can totally see that this is true in some circles(e.g. sales people). But in other circles (e.g. education/some types of customer service), etiquette can be a good indicator of how willing someone is to assist. Like many things in this space, this varies so much depending on someone's situation(e.g. line of work, culture, industry, circle of friends, etc...)

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