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Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#31

Post by micdr0p »

Shared404 wrote: post #13
motohagiography wrote: post #8

- Learn to edit well, it's how to write well. Nothing opens doors like clear writing. For sources of quality edited writing, read The Economist, Quanta, and the first novels by authors who wrote 20th century literary fiction. Their later ones had less editing. - Negotiation + game theory. Learn the traditional methods, and then forget everything you know about them because the real world has changed and broken the as…

> - Learn confidence and humility by mastering a common physical skill like an instrument, singing, or performing monologues, etc. Not stupid tricks, but something where other people are objectively way better than you are and plan to be embarrassingly bad at it for at least a decade. I would personally recommend martial arts for this. You get a useful skill (eventually), there is no skill ceiling, and there are alwa…

Very supportive of this in general. We are all human and (presumably) enjoy mastering physical challenges!

But for me the physical challenge of playing the piano scratches a totally different itch than the physical challenge of rock climbing.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#33

Post by stormdennis »

dcminter wrote: post #2

If you're a shy person who would like to do better in social situations - learn to dance. Becoming a dancer opened up all sorts of doors for me. It made me comfortable in social situations from small-talk in intimate groups to public speaking in front of large ones. I even ended up married and living in a foreign country. Currently I'm learning the language and making some progress. All of which I can trace fairly di…

I'd an Aunt who recommended amateur dramatics for the same reason. I didn't follow her advice, unfortunately.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#35

Post by MarxOk »

sethammons wrote: post #4

I'm reminded of: “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, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~…

All useful except butchering a hog - a human being does not need to eat hogs to survive and thrive.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#36

Post by jlg23 »

Non-determinism. Hackers are so used to finding a logical, elegant solution that we sometimes forget that social behaviour is not deterministic and that, when judging others, we do neither have perfect knowledge nor we are entitled to fully know and understand the motivations of others.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#37

Post by gitgud »

-> Logical fallacies, being able to name the reasons why an argument has problems is a great skill to have and it's kind of interesting.

-> Linux terminal, amazing how much more fun using a computer is with just the terminal (also a browser to Google the commands)

-> Wood working, it's fun to cut timber and build things, especially if you have an office job like myself.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#38

Post by rypskar »

dcminter wrote: post #2

If you're a shy person who would like to do better in social situations - learn to dance. Becoming a dancer opened up all sorts of doors for me. It made me comfortable in social situations from small-talk in intimate groups to public speaking in front of large ones. I even ended up married and living in a foreign country. Currently I'm learning the language and making some progress. All of which I can trace fairly di…

What maybe surprised me most about learning to dance is how much you learn about signaling and how important signaling is to get two individuals work as one. Giving and reading signals was never my strong side, but it have improved a lot after learning to use signals in dance. The way I hold my hand or some light pressure on the back tells the one I'm dancing with what I plan for us to do and it often even works when I do moves the partner have never done before

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#39

Post by toto444 »

anotheruser11 wrote: post #20

Here are some things i'm thinking carefully about at the moment Combination of: 1) Really thinking about what i value in life (and its monetary cost) 2) Index funds and living cost efficiently (Learning the type of risk here is important - i.e. volatility risk) This is nothing new to many, but to me it was a revelation. When you start plugging numbers into a calculator as opportunity costs of current purchasing decis…

"The rates are debatable but often 7% yearly is quoted. Example, instead of buying a 40,000 car, put it in stock market for 30 years and get just 6% return you've got 229,000. Thats a large percentage of retirement for simply deciding not to buy a new car"

I completely agree with you. Many people would like to have an extra activity generating passive revenue but not spending and saving is exactly the same thing. It can be hard to be consistently frugal though.

Re: Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?

#40

Post by toto444 »

Economics.

Many people have no idea what economists actually work on. Economics is not only Macroeconomics. It is a consistent theory of human behaviour. It tries to understand social behaviour and human interactions using a very small number of hypothesis.

It genuinely gives a new light on how you understand social phenomena.

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