Ask HN: What are some skills you have that are worth learning?
I sometimes have the feeling, upon learning that someone hasn't yet learned to program or do mathematics, that they're missing out on a whole realm of opportunities.
What are other skills like this, that you have, that you expect many participants on Hacker News lack, and that have greatly expanded the possibilities available to you?
172 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadBecoming 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 directly to learning to dance.
Caveats:
You need to like the music! So pick a form that's compatible with that (if there is one).
Don't go into this looking for a hook-up. Those people are greatly disliked by most of the people in the scene.
Obviously this is open to confident people too, but shy people will likely get more out of it because the structured nature of dance classes compensates for lack of confidence.
(Also, for all the "two left feet" people - if you can clap a rhythm to a song, you can learn to dance just fine)
Which is another skill you could learn in a short amount of time - a basic sense of rhythm. Tapping along with music or a metronome works, doing something more complicated with two hands is also an option. There's both online and offline drum / percussion lessons you could take; doesn't have to be much, you get the basics pretty quickly.
Same can probably be said about basic music theory. I've tried a few times but I still don't really get it though.
If you're approaching dance with a view to finding new realms of aesthetic experience, reserve judgment on whether you like the music. Some genres of music are meant to be enjoyed more in your body than in your head, or may come from an unfamiliar culture, so you'll need to be dancing for a while to get it.
I learned when a friend dragged me to a "taster" class at a local social dance venue. It was fun, so I went the next week. At the beginning of the next month, I enrolled in a "progressive" series (lessons that built on one another, unlike the "taster" classes that start from scratch each time).
Under normal circumstances, I think that's be best way to learn: at a venue where people dance socially. It's really something that's best learned in person and a class at a social dance venue means you can immediately practice what you just learned, with other people who just learned it. (Versus, say, a class at a dance studio, where you may take a class and then just go home.) Unless you live in New Zealand, that's probably not an option right now though.
For many dances, there's good content online. I dance Lindy Hop, so that's what I'm most familiar with. If you enjoy (or, at least, don't hate) Jazz music, I think it's a great option to start with. ilindy.com has a free high-quality intro course, including (last I checked) material you can practice by yourself. I'm less familiar with it, but jaminjackson.com also has a free intro course that I've heard good things about.
Note also that 'male' and 'female' roles don't really exist these days in the dances I do. YMMV with scenes.
* learning to cook and prepare your own food.
* learn proper sleeping habits and make a routine that feels comfortable.
* learn to exercise - pick an activity and do it consistently with some goals in mind.
* learn to budget money and manage expenses.
* learn to groom yourself and maintain a regular cleanliness routine
* learn to entertain yourself alone - without the internet (ex. reading a book, telling a story, etc)
* learn how devices you own work and how to troubleshoot/repair them (ex. fridge, ac, oven, car)
The general theme I have is that "the things you own, end up owning you", if you are not accountable for them. Start with the things you can't get rid of like your body and then question everything else you introduce into your life to eliminate clutter.
Examples: - if you don't know how to prepare food your diet depends on what restaurants offer and you have little control over ingredients, portion size, calorie intake...
- if you pass out in front of the tv and wake up on the couch it is unlikely that you will feel motivated in the morning. Likely you will pick up McDonald's breakfast on the way to work cause you are running late.
- if you give up on exercising your body you will quickly feel powerless when you have to move something heavy.
I am definitely guilty of failing on your second to last bullet, and I should work on that.
In my personal experience, these things have a much great impact on my well-being and quality of life and they are within my control. In contrast with ideal of how I think society/world should be.
If you become accountable to the things that are within your control (ie. thoughts and actions) you will quickly notice that trying to control things beyond that is futile and a source of frustration.
I've tried to fix a deep fryer I got for free, the switch was broken but it was a pretty generic flip switch with a light in it, the local electronics shop had a replacement for like €2 or so. That didn't fix it though, I suspect there's a temperature safety somewhere inside that isn't working right anymore. So far I've had it filled, warmed up, tried out, turned off, cleaned, opened up, etc four or five times already without having fixed it.
It'll be €40 to buy a new one. It's probably fixable, or I could probably replace only the heating unit, but just the heating unit (that is compatible with this one) is likely impossible to get and no cheaper than a new one.
But that's just one example. I for one am interested in seeing products that cost more but that are of provable higher quality and repairability.
There's some youtube channels that disassemble electric tools and point out at all the small or big things that make it good or bad / cheap, things like the kind of plastic used, bushings vs bearings, open vs closed bearings, etc.
It's easy to practice because you have to eat anyway. When you end up with leftover ingredients, come up with a way to use that in a different meal. Repeat every day, and soon you will be a master.
I can almost always improvise a good meal for a group with no recipes, using only ingredients at hand.
People who like to cook don't seem to understand that others (like me) just hate cooking and have zero interest in learning since it wouldn't bring me any benefits. I can order healthy food, I'm not overspending, and I can eat stuff that would be a pain in the ass to cook at home. On the other hand, I also hate exercising, but it brings health and mental benefits that are undeniable.
In summary, just like I don't want to cut my own hair or building my own furniture, I have no problem paying a professional to prepare my food.
Just like you shouldn't depend on someone to dress your, bathe you and wipe your ass for you (even though that's a whole profession too), depending on someone else to cook for you because you can't, puts you in a vulnerable spot.
I've been making an effort to improve myself and it has been rewarding but honestly cooking for myself has been one of the steepest learning curves in my life. It is starting to pay off after months of effort motivated by a once-a-century global disaster.
This is not an approachable skill, at all.
Being a home cook (as opposed to being a chef) is actually a lot like programming. Learn a few simple patterns and you can recombine them in different ways. Look for patterns in any recipes that you follow and then you can reuse them in other situations. I can give some examples.
Basic cream sauce from fat (butter or pan grease), liquid (normally milk or stock), flour and seasoning.
The many ways of cooking eggs.
Basic grilled cheese
Seasoning with salt and pepper
tasting and adjusting as you go
Pancake variations
Biscuit variations
Quick-breads
Temperatures of doneness for meats (there are charts, get a good meat thermometer).
Chopping (you really need at least one good knife).
For example, I can make a very nice sandwich by combining white sauce, a fried egg, and a grilled cheese. (Put a fried egg and cheese and inside the sandwich, lightly coat with white sauce, fry as with grilled cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
I make biscuits, boil pasta or veggies and cover them with a very similar white sauce.
Boil macaroni and some broccoli, add cheese to the white sauce heating until it melts, combine both in a baking pan with some breadcrumbs on top, bake until it looks set (25-35 minutes at 350(f) is a good bet).
Basically the idea is to learn a few basic recipes (each a different ‘sub process’ or function) and use or them combine them with other ingredients that you have.
Taste every so often to ensure that you don’t make something inedible. Give it your full attention.
Sometimes you’ll make something truly weird and other times you’ll make something amazing and different that no one’s ever had before.
Just don’t burn your house down and don’t deep fry anything until you’ve got plenty of experience and know the dangers.
Obviously the recipes I’m giving are very vague, thats kind of the point as it is all up to your taste, which is different from mine. The key is paying attention to what you think is good.
Understanding "why" this step is before that step, or "why" the temperature needs to be as it suggests, or "why" the ingredients are in that ratio... that unlocks an entirely new level of cooking. Now you can go off-recipe or make ingredient replacements to accommodate what's in the fridge or try something you've never even seen before with reasonably high confidence that it will come out well.
It is like the difference between memorizing your multiplication table and really understanding multiplication. Or the difference between being able to follow directions from point A to point B and knowing the area well enough to chart a path to the destination regardless of roadblocks.
In any case, I am a science nerd (as I assume many of you are). For me, the show Good Eats (or honestly, most of what Alton Brown does) was a refreshing and educational angle that developed and supported a lot of my understanding about "why" as it relates to food.
It certainly takes a lot of time to learn, especially as an adult without another person to teach them, and the wasted time and money from a failed dish can be greatly discouraging.
Buy a cheap food that you can stand that is boxed (mac and cheese, canned soup, ramen) and add some vegetables or pre-cooked meat you like to fill it out. Cook the vegetables with the meal and follow the directions on the box. Even after eight years, I still do this several times a week to have easy cooking days.
Next, try cooking something a little more involved but use a prepared base. Buy pasta or a pizza crust and add your own toppings plus store-bought tomato sauce, for example. Again, the directions should be on the packaging.
Next, choose some foods that you like but don't know how to make yourself. Find a simple recipe and pair it down to the bare minimum. For example, I like lasagna so I found a simple recipe that only had a half-dozen ingredients and bought noodles that don't need to be pre-cooked.
Mix it up with a fully prepared meal (either order take-out or a frozen pizza or something) once or twice a week. When you get started cooking, it can be easy to miss a key nutrient that you need and having a cheat-day where you eat something you're more used to and can't mess up makes things much easier.
When you're starting up, stick to 1-2 cuisine types. Each cuisine has its own staples and commonly used spices, that they combine in different ways. Figure out what makes good staples for your chosen cuisine and how to prepare them (not necessarily from scratch). Find the commonly-used spices and add them to everything, experimenting to see how much you want to add.
For example, Italian food uses a lot of pasta or pizza crusts. Fresh pasta tastes much better than boxed pasta, but isn't shelf-stable. Pasta cooking times are short but generally somewhat precise. To cook Italian pasta, you'd want to learn how to tell that pasta is fully cooked.
Mexican food uses rice and tortillas instead of pasta and pizza crusts. Pre-cooking your tortillas makes a huge difference. Cooking rice in a rice-cooker is easy, and it's do-able in a pot. The trick to cooking rice in a pot is that, since it's steam-cooked, checking the rice early can really slow down and mess-up the process. The first several times will be slow and messy, but once you figure out how long to wait it's actually quite low effort.
Then start with the basics, as they translate between meat and most non-starch vegetables:
Learn to fry. Learn to grill. Learn to broil. learn to roast. learn to stew.
breading and frying a mushroom is no different than breading and frying a chicken strip other than some temp adjustments and length of time. Frying is not the healthiest but it can be offset some with better healthier oil. That being said, it covers up a multitude of food sins. As log as you let fried food drain and dry it's hard to mess it up.
Second learn the 5 basic tastes salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami and how they blend. Sweet and salty blend, sweet and sour blend to tart, sweet and bitter cancel each other to brine. Sweet will dominate umami, salty will enhance umami, bitter and sour will compound each other. Once you know these it is really easy to taste ingredients and know if they will go together. It also gives you the knowledge of how to undue over flavoring. If it's too sour you can usually offset with sweet to get it to tart. If it is too bitter you can usually balance it with salty and sweet to mute it.
Learn to make a starch, take your pick noodles, rice, potatoes etc. Then learn to enhance them with your 5 basic tastes.
Learn to make 3-4 vegetables, green beans, broccoli, squash are all really safe and hard to get wrong. They can be bland without enough salt but are pretty safe, they still don't really taste bad if you overcook them.
So basically learn to cook meat, a starch and some vegetables and flavor it, you would be surprised how far you can get with a steak, salt and pepper (salty, bitter, umami). Same with a piece of chicken, a lemon, salt and pepper (sour, salty, bitter). Stick to your basic ingredients for flavor, salt, pepper, sugar, lemon, msg or soy sauce (but remember soy sauce brings salty and umami in one package), should cover the basic flavors. Once you have this you can taste other ingreedients and know how they will blend into a flavor profile. Take the chicken example what if we reduce the lemon and pepper and add mustard. Mustard brings both sour and bitter. I honestly never tried it, but I know I could make it into a dish that taste good.
Most vegetables can be treated like meat when seasoning, starches not so much stick to salty and umami for now with starches.
Once you are comfortable with that, learn to use butter creams, eggs and cheeses in dishes particularly your starches.
Once you are comfortable with that expand on spices and learn how to make a mirepoix and the Cajun variant. You would be surprised how much this mix enhances even the most simple dish. This is where you level up, people will talk about how good you cook when you get to this basic level of cooking. At this point you will have the knowledge to decide if you want to keep going or if you are comfortable with your skills. You will be able to create a decent meal no matter the ingredients you have on hand at this point. From here it is really if you want to get into more nuanced disciplines of cooking e.g bread baking, BBQ, sous vide, etc.
If you get your meat to temp without overcooking, have a good handle on the basic tastes, can make a handful of vegetables and a starch, you will have a good foundation. This can be achieved in 2-3 months of cooking at least 2 times a week.
Meal prep IIFYM style can be super easy. I cook a lot of things in my pressure cooker for 4 servings at a time (oats, chickpeas). I often just get veggie soup and add chickpeas for lunch. It’s way more satisfying than most of the quick things you can get near an office.
A lot of the staples that are disappointing when bought are amazing when you cook from scratch (aforementioned steel cut oats and chickpeas). Don’t get instant anything... it’s just too sad.
> learn to budget money and manage expenses.
if you've never done this before, i very, very strongly suggest you look at how much eating out is costing you.
my wife and i are saving literally thousands of dollars a month.
As for food I can't really help there. I ended up writing my own app to manage/track expiration dates for what I have but that's barely the tip of the ice-burg. I hope to integrate with my recipe app (Paprika) to work on meal-planning and picking recipes I like while trying to use up the stuff that will go bad first.
The app is, I think, a natural evolution for the YNABer who got the discipline and now doesn't need to track every single dollar all the time.
[0] https://lunchmoney.app
we look at statements from our various accounts, enter into a data tab, then group expenses into categories: house (elec, water, cable, etc), food, vehicles (gas, tolls, oil, loan, etc) fun (spotify, netflix, etc).
as the saying goes, you cant manage what you dont measure.
If I don’t have prepared food or a snack it’s very easy to be tempted to grab something quick and overeat.
One thing that is a bit hard to get around is that we live in a city, and some friends are single, and that going "out" to a public place like a bar or restaurant gives them the feeling that they haven't "given up" on meeting someone for the night, but going to someone's house means its orders of magnitude less likely that someone will just pop up. Even amongst married friends, the spontaneity of having someone just happen to be at the same place you are is a big thrill that just isn't going to happen if they are sitting in my living room. I live in a neighborhood where there is a main drag where most bars/restaurants are, so this happens fairly often.
But taking a step back, my discretionary spending has dropped by 95% and my bank account has swelled at a rate that I could have never imagined without much drop in my overall happiness at all and this is likely to lead to changes in spending patterns for years to come.
this is somewhat inherent in the system. they message you that you need to be out and about to be happy. it's the capitalistic way. Also a bit of why a lot of jobs work you so hard so you are too tired to form any thoughts on the system at large.
I think a more sustainable economy is what america (and the world) needs. the growth at all costs has been very, very bad for our world. for instance, one unintended consequence of mass manufacturing of food is that to get reliable, consistent bread they stripped everything that made it good (including time spent fermenting) and then added in a few choice macro nutrients and now, I suspect, those types of products are causing problems health wise on a macro scale. if people went down to their local baker and bought naturally leavened breads with more wholesome flours instead of wonder bread et al we might as a country be less sick. there are other examples of long term costs associated with short term thinking. (rise in allergies and planting male only trees because of a 1940s department of agriculture recommendation come to mind but there are others) not to say it's all been bad but there have been many bad outcomes.
I do a lot of cooking, and agree there as well. We have a lot of processes that sped up our food preparation and maintained say 90% of the original quality of the product, but those losses add up and while there is much we can measure in terms of what makes our food good in terms of taste and nutrition, there seems to be much we can not. There may only be a subtle difference between chicken soup made with canned stock or bullion when you are sitting at the table, but I make my own stock, and often find a bowl of soup made from it for lunch will fill me until dinner easily, a can of Campbell's, not so much.
Especially since quarantine started, I have done tons more cooking, often of rich "slow" food. My friends have asked how much weight I have gained, and I have actually lost a few pounds despite getting much less activity in. I find myself much more content with smaller portion sizes, perhaps the net calories are actually fewer.
> those types of products are causing problems health wise on a macro scale
I suspect the same thing with most of the food supply in the US. Markets are very good at driving the price of good down while maintaining the quality just "good enough" to satisfy the consumer. Ex. you can get a hamburger for $1 at McD's or 6 nuggets for $1 at BurgerKing. I don't think large scale agriculture can provide high quality food to the masses.
I feel like this mindset is not shared in today’s society to our detriment.
++ Learn to meditate
++ Creativity is fostered by learning deep and wide. Learn something outside of computers... etc
“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.” ~ Robert Anson Heinlein
- Negotiation + game theory. Learn the traditional methods, and then forget everything you know about them because the real world has changed and broken the assumptions that went into the formal theories, but you need it as a foundation.
- Basic vehicle maintenance and repair. Even if it's just buying an ODBII connector for fault reading and being able to trace fuse box connections. Also, learn to drive stick, or be dependent in an emergency on someone who does.
- 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 always people better than you.
But for me the physical challenge of playing the piano scratches a totally different itch than the physical challenge of rock climbing.
Even if you're just more into the kinesthetic work, dance will pay more dividends and be more useful for basically the same reasons. Breaking is especially fundamental and nearly always works.
Again, do whatever works for you. But martial arts are really very rarely a useful thing to have learned. (And to be fair, performing monologues per the OP's suggestion is about as un-useful as martial arts relative to singing and dancing.)
Not being afraid of a confrontation makes you more confident, serene, and less likely to have a confrontation. I am skilled in a martial art that's quite popular these days, and which had an unmistakeable, positive effect on my demeanor; you don't use the martial art once in a lifetime, but every day for a lifetime without actually using it. (I also enjoy dancing. Both martial arts and dancing are good activities to make friends)
Depends on your perspective. On the one hand, I haven't had to fight anyone, and would like to keep it that way. On the other, I'd like to be able to if necessary.
Martial arts is the only activity other then programming in which I have reached flow state. I suspect dancing/yoga/etc also reach this state, but I don't know because I've never done any of these seriously enough to get to that point.
Aside from these, like borroka said, it has an affect on your demeanour and world view, which is honestly the biggest benefit.
> very rarely a useful thing to have learned.
Also, it makes good resume filler if you're just barely getting your career started. Not quite as good as being an Eagle Scout, but non negligible.
I've just made a lot of personal improvement through martial arts, and figured I'd bring it up in case someone else would enjoy it.
Re: martial arts. What type do you recommend?
However, I have friends who have had good experiences with MMA, and Capoeira is on my bucket list to learn.
I honestly don't think the particular style is as important as the fact that you have proper training in that style.
People who haven't read laterally in it tend to only have one or two tools that have worked for them up to their level. Haggling, bargaining, and auction models aren't really negotiation. Reality is, it's the process of price discovery, often with people who are looking for rules they can break and points of leverage.
Also, have you heard anything on salience models?
To understand salience models, I think people need a background in traditional negotiation so that they can have the tools to apply to the model once they develop it. It's the why behind the model. Negotiation overlaps with organizational psychology and business strategy, and these days, political tactics as well, but for someone who doesn't have a background in this and who are the sort of person who still tells recruiters and hiring managers their current/last salary, it's not useful to throw them into the deep end.
Go camping, hiking, trekking, canoeing etc. It keeps you in shape, and is great to decompress and enjoy yourself.
Eventually, you may want to do more/go on a hike further out then is a reasonable drive. At that point, find a campground near where you want to hike. If they offer rentals of some sort, great! If not, you may want to purchase a tent. If you do this, be sure to test it for a night by your house. Nothing quite as miserable as trying to figure out new gear in production (Yeah, the phrasings weird, but I couldn't figure out the right way to say it).
Most of this I kinda rephrased from my time in scouting, so my apologies if I translated it to words badly.
https://www.tripsavvy.com/setting-up-a-campsite-498429 - Setting up camp 101. Doesn't go over how to pitch a tent, but that'll get covered with the tents documentation.
https://veggievagabonds.com/camping-for-beginners/ - Camping 102, bit more in depth.
https://thebackpackinghiker.com/hiking-and-wild-camping-in-s... - Assumes experience, but covers Switzerland specifically, so you may find it useful.
https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-us/destinations/swiss-natio... - The Swiss National Park appears to have campsites and hiking trails. I've had good experiences with the US National Parks, but haven't been out of the states (yet).
trails: https://map.wanderland.ch/?lang=en&photos=yes&logo=yes&seaso...
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/hiking-switzerland/45239794 (TIL that trail maintenance is
refuges: https://www.sac-cas.ch/en/
We don't usually bother with trail maps (as everything is well signposted and difficulty-graded[1], and we do dayhikes so rarely leave a drainage) but they're readily available in analog and digital formats. PostAuto allows you to do through-hikes as well as loop-hikes or there-and-back-agains. I find Swisscom to have the best backcountry coverage, if that's important to you.
(if you'd rather learn in a group, I'm sure you have a local hiking club.)
a short guide to the types of people you're likely to encounter on the trail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBDSHMQWvXA
Finally, if you start hiking you'll be able to start participating in the Swiss National Sport: guessing where people come from based on their trail greetings.
(guessing is easy mode, hard mode is playing what in the States is known as the Mennonite Game: figuring out a possible personal connection to people you've just met)
[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/hiking-switzerland/45239794 TIL hiking trails were recently added to the Constitution by referendum. https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/...
Statistics and bug reports only tell part of the story. I've learned a lot just from watching someone else work with the app I worked on back when with a camera mounted to the phone.
(Slight aside: I started with Lindy Hop, which is typically danced to Jazz music. It has its roots in a variety of Black dances and grew out of the Savoy ballroom in Harlem starting in the late 20s. It's certainly not the only dance that teaches these skills, but I think it's a good choice.)
At the core, it's about communication and collaboration; communication and collaboration with the person you're dancing with is the essence of a partner dance. You want to make space in the dance for a balance your ideas and your partner's, and so whether you're leading (initiating movement) or following (responding), you want to share your ideas and listen to your partner's. Non-verbally. In real time. Over a lossy communication channel.
Beyond that, you're communicating and collaborating with other dancers sharing the floor. Unlike some dances, there's no macro-level choreography that keeps dancers from running into each other. You need to pay attention to your surroundings, understand how your movements are going to affect others, and adjust as the situation changes.
During classes or practice sessions, communication and collaboration with peers and instructors is also important. It's silly, but dance classes were the first time I ever really learned how to listen to and give constructive feedback in a kind and effective way.
All of that said: it's a bit like math. You'll start by counting (literally, perhaps), not with an understanding algebra or combinatorics. It won't feel revolutionary at first. You may not have any epiphanies until your instructors take of the "kid gloves" and at least reveal that "improper" fractions are just fractions and that it's a-okay to subtract a larger number from a smaller number. (And just like math, you can go as deep down any rabbit hole as you'd like. One day, after a few years of dancing and hundreds of hours of classes, I spent a full hour-long lesson exploring the complex topic of: walking forwards and backwards.)
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 decisions the numbers are incredible. Ben felix - youtube (9/10) Mr money mustache - blog (7/10) - imperfect but useful for putting things in context
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
To me this seems like a cheat code for turning the difficulty down on life. We've got enough things to worry about other than personal finance.
I personally feel strongly about this, some might disagree: News. Have a look here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/529060/uk-newspaper-mark...
Makes it clear why so much of the most read and quotes articles are of such bad quality. (There are still many good news outlets!, just large swathes of the largest ones are terrible) Something like 70% of the uk new market is owned by 3 papers or something like that.
I'm sure you can quibble with some of the things ive written here but i feel the general direction holds.
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.
- Writing posts or making video tutorials is really great. Can be profitable, lead to professional growth, but also it's a great hobby and a fun way to create some value. Even if you don't become a successful/professional blogger/youtuber, it feels awesome to record a tutorial, see the views go up, and receive comments from people who found your video helpful. Also it develops writing/speaking skills, motivates you to learn the topic in more depth, clarifies your thoughts and understanding, gives you valuable feedback from more experienced people, grows your audience.
- Gamedev and Computer Graphics are REALLY fun to do. For people here I recommend Godot and Houdini, it's incredibly interesting, entertaining, and satisfying.
Here's a quick tutorial that I've made on procedurally generating a pretty landscape with Houdini:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=o3mbIRZhv20
Become a volunteer as a first-aid responder. You will learn and practice how to react in a lot of unusual situations (kids choking, burns, wounds, people fainting...), learn more about healthcare-related subjects, and live incredibly unusual experiences. It's a highly rewarding skillset.
-> 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.
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.
For example learn to service your car, repair your home, etc.
Your things may last longer, you can save a bunch of money, your better half will be impressed, you learn how basic stuff in the real world works and you’ll get some time off the screen.