Picked up on woodworking when I was 40, built a ton of little furniture and things for the house. Last year finished my most ambitious project and built a home office shed that I’ve been using since. I’m 43 now and spent a couple hours browsing Pinterest this morning getting some inspiration on what to build next. Life long learning!
Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
101–110 of 164 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#102I am almost 40. Recently learned wave boarding, a new language (indian) and a few cooking things during pandemic. Just when pandemic started I realized I am happiest when I am learning something. There is something to look forward to every day. Most of my new skills come because of my son. We do it together. He is faster at learning physical stuff, i am good at finding small improvements It's been fun
> a new language (indian)
can you please expand on it? India has many languages. Was your language choice random or for a reason?
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#103I started taking weight training seriously about a year ago, Then came the virus and the lock-downs. Gyms closed for weeks where I live. At the moment they are still closed again. I didn't want to build a home gym with heavy weights, especially because hopefully gyms will open again some day. I also didn't want to lose the muscle I built which made me segue into body weight training and calisthenics. Previously I had…
> I didn't want to build a home gym with heavy weights
if you want to be a minimalist then a pair of dumbbells or kettlebells would be enough. You don't need much
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are very interesting! How did you decide what you wanted to do at each juncture?
When I finished undergrad I started teaching middle school, and after two years of teaching I finally had a summer off with zero obligations. I had read A Walk Across America , about a guy who walked across the US. It sounded fascinating but it took him several years. So I settled on biking, because you can get all the way across the US on a bike in a summer. I did that a couple times, and then spent a year living on…
Serious question: do you think there are only 100 things that would be interesting to learn?
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#105Not sure it qualifies as a "new skill," but I've been living and working in Thailand for the last almost two years, when everything previously was in the U.S.
And as a product manager I'm always learning new things.
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#106I'm only 35 but I've continued to pick up skills throughout my life and I've only increased it as I got older: - Started learning masonry and general handyman work in 2018 (33 years old) - Started learning Spanish in 2019 (34 years old) - Started learning piano in 2020 (35 years old) My goal for 2021 is to learn a lot about electricity, batteries, etc. and would like to build a little off-grid backup
How are you finding your progress on Spanish and piano? How are you learning it — private one on on instruction or self study?
Spanish is going quite well in year two. Year one was basically worthless. I didn’t really know how to learn the language and made a ton of mistakes.
First, I spent the first few months studying grammar rules and learning words but didn’t do much speaking because I felt I didn’t have a good “baseline”
Second, once I realized speaking was important, I went all in... did 1 hour a day voice calls for 2 months. This ended up being worthless because I didn’t really recall mistakes I made.
So what I realized that the best approach was hybrid... I should be doing some academic studying AND some speaking. But the biggest change I made was actually writing down the mistakes I made during my video calls with the native speaker and studying those mistakes in my flashcards.
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I finished undergrad I started teaching middle school, and after two years of teaching I finally had a summer off with zero obligations. I had read A Walk Across America , about a guy who walked across the US. It sounded fascinating but it took him several years. So I settled on biking, because you can get all the way across the US on a bike in a summer. I did that a couple times, and then spent a year living on…
Serious question: do you think there are only 100 things that would be interesting to learn?
No. It's a simple way of saying I'd love to live longer than a human lifetime, but would never want to be immortal.
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#108I learned how to solder, program Arduino, print on a 3D printer and use fusion 360... really why so many people feel like 40 is old?
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#109Machining. It started with YouTube. I picked up a lot of concepts and that set my brain to recognize these tools. Then I randomly bought a milling supply company basically for almost nothing while shopping for interesting deals. Well, now I have multiple tons of milling tooling and so obviously I need a 3-ton milling machine. Looking at an older CNC mill. So that’s one skill. Another is automotive repair. My skill le…
Hold on. I kept re-reading that thinking they must mean they bought a milling machine, but no you bought a milling supply company. Come on, you can't gloss over that. I need to know the story behind that because it sounds fascinating.
Re: Ask HN: Have you picked up any new skill from scratch in your 40s or later?
#110In the 10 yrs since turning 40 I’ve picked up audio engineering and full DAW programming and tooling for music. Been writing and mixing a lot. Have had a few tracks released on some label compilations, am working on a solo EP, and have a full-length album I’ve written part of and mixed all of with my band coming out in Feb. feels really,
Really good.