If one is looking for silver linings in the current situation, I saw some McKinsey data the other week suggesting that doing more home cooking is one of the pandemic behaviors that is likely to last longer term.
I wish I could upvote this twice - I came to say the same thing. Being able to cook is one of the best things I've learned. And not just cooking, but being decently able to cook a variety of things.
I've been able to have wonderfully comforting meals after moving overseas, change my diet while still enjoying my food, and actually eat cheap but good tasting meals, a small joy if you are pretty broke.
I found the America’s Test Kitchen books to be great as a starting point. The recipes are good, and generally made from easily accessible ingredients. There is also always a page or two of discussion about developing the recipe (what worked, what didn’t, etc) that includes some instructions on technique. I often give the Best Recipes book as a gift to younger relatives who are just learning.
I like your list. 2 of the things you included are the 2 things I would put at the top of my list.
I am 58, and I didn't always know how to make a list like this in a way that makes sense to me now.
Would you mind if I ask how old you are, and what you imagine will be important to you when you are looking back on your life, as an old, old, old person?
If you're in an environment where cycling's viable, I'd rank that alongside or even above driving (it can be cheaper, healthier, more sustainable, consumes less parking space at home and in the community, produces less pollution, and generally provides easier self-maintenance options)
I think it's hard as an adult. I never learned as a child (grew up on a very narrow and winding country road) and I did kinda/sorta teach myself as an adult but I never gained the confidence to ride on roads with traffic.
>even above driving
And I have trouble agreeing for most people. Many need cars on a day-to-day basis and even if owning a car doesn't make sense for some people even in the US, being able to rent one and go someplace on the weekend or for a trip opens up a lot of possibilities for many. I wouldn't even have been able to do my first job if I couldn't drive.
Traffic's certainly a large barrier to entry; I learned to cycle as an adult too, and it took a long time to become comfortable cycling on anything other than quiet local roads.
And you're right that many people can't currently practically use a bicycle in preference to a car. Some of that's no doubt due to the logistics involved in more remote communities, some of it could be related to urban infrastructure historically designed with large vehicles in mind, and some of it's likely due to limitations of bicycle travel itself (like the challenges of carrying large loads and dealing with weather conditions). Not to mention that it takes time for people's habits to change.
I'm biased because I would probably say cycling's the most useful non-software-related skill I've learned - so take with a grain of salt - but to me cycling's a vast opportunity: an empowering, open, low-cost technology with the potential to improve lives both individually and collectively.
In that context traffic and other limiting factors become issues to understand and find (genuine, win-win) solutions for, rather than impassable obstacles.
Circumstances certainly matter. I live in a small exurban town and, as a practical matter, I'd never use a bicycle for anything other than pure recreation. I also just don't have great balance in general so the relatively rare occasions when I do ride a bike on a forest road/carriage path, it's always a bit more of an adventure than is probably ideal.
There are adult cycling classes out there, with instructors who have (I am told, I learnt as a kid so I've never taken one) some pretty well-polished programs for getting folks from "never sat on a bike" to "reasonably stable and aware of the rules of the road, both official and unspoken".
Once you start cycling around town regularly, you build a new layer on your city map: what's the shade like on this street? how bad are the potholes on this back street? how dense is the car traffic? can I find effective detours that trade off a few minutes for not having to cross six lanes of traffic coming straight off the end of a highway?
Cycling's pretty useless if you live in a suburban sprawl though. Great for an actual city.
Yep. Probably in part due to a negative and emotional upbringing, I have needed all of my adult life to learn that listening is a foundation skill.
The few great leaders I have known were each great listeners in their own ways, and capable of making decisions based on what they hear without, it seems to me, concern for "ego."
Another benefit of Religion is community. I recall back when we went to Church we had tons of people who took the time to reach out when things weren't going well.
That's easily the difference between being an isolated island of a person, miserable thinking the world is against you. Or being a bit down, and getting a hand up.
Completely agree. It's frustrating to see so many people dismiss the value of a religion when it has the potential to offer so many benefits. Of course there's plenty of dogma but what we've replaced religion with does not seem to be significantly better.
I used to be religious, but I came to a point where I just didn't believe it anymore. Religion is no longer useful to me, not because it was ever real, but because I've convinced myself it's not real.
I've replaced it with philosophy and meditation-- it actually seems to do the job much better, and doesn't require any particular leaps in logic on my part.
Philosophy and meditation are just religion by another name in my opinion. At least in terms of the practical application of religion, which is sadly neglected by most branches of modern Christianity.
> Philosophy and meditation are just religion by another name in my opinion.
I agree that they may be similar in practice, but I want to make sure you understand that they are fundamentally different in every other aspect. The biggest difference is that religion believes it has a monopoly on an explanation of the metaphysical, and therefore shuts out other philosophies. This is the height of human hubris.
There are many different philosophies, and all of them are merely ideas, and none of them claim to be the exclusive explanation of the metaphysical.
Meditation is just the practice of looking inward, and many studies show benefits. Whereas, many of the reported benefits of religion come from the practice of it, and are most likely due to placebo.
So yes, in practice they are similar and they have many of the same benefits. What I can not get behind are the potential/probable drawbacks of religion. The narrow mindedness and the arrogance come to mind.
Where I went undergrad, they require you to pass a swim test (or take a PE swimming class) to graduate. (Before someone says something, yes, I'm sure there are exceptions for those with disabilities.)
- water and electric installations. Most things that usually break in a typical house can be easily fixed by the average person with some tools, water is easier, electricity is extremely risky if you don't know what you are doing, but fine if you do (you don't need a college to be an electrician). I would also mention some carpentry, but that requires more tools than what people keep around the house.
- build, maintain and repair a bicycle; it is extremely easy if you spend a bit of time doing it and it is extremely useful if you do mountain biking and you have a problem in the middle of nowhere; also it is a lot cheaper and quite fun to fix or upgrade your own bike or spend some good time with friends working on their bikes
- fixing small things on a car or motorcycle, like changing oil, brake pads, bleed the brakes. It does well with the bicycle skills, some are transferable.
- if you like hiking, knowing how to pack light, to find a good place to mount a tent, first aid and a bit of survival skills are useful
If you like hiking, depending on your country and area you spend time it would be a good idea to learn how to properly carry and use a firearm for self-defense against wild life. Where I go there are plenty of bears and boars, they are both stronger and faster than me, I had a few encounters but it was either from a distance or I was not on foot, so I left in a hurry :) Less applicable in West Europe (no bears, some boars) and in Eastern Europe (no guns allowed), but still something to think about
- cooking. It's a hit or miss, but you can try. Anyone knows how to make tea or some eggs, it's trivial to do French fries or a steak (not a good one, but something you can eat), so for me cooking means to do something more complicated than basic food.
Learn not only to drive a car, but a bicycle, a motorcycle, a manual transmission car and even a small truck. You never know when one of these can be useful and they are partially related, so it's not that much to learn.
Here's Lazarus Long's list, from Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love", which I had actually just posted on another thread recently:
"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."
I'd possibly leave out the militaristic stuff, but the rest of it is pretty much spot on :)
Only learn skills that are truly applicable to your life.
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" [Dr. Watson] protested.
"What of the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
I actually sort of agree with that. It doesn't have to be stuff you need to do but you do need to pick and choose.
For example, while I'm not ignorant of how a car works, I did make at least an implicit decision a very long time ago that working on cars wasn't going to be one of the ways I spent my time. And while I do certain things around the house, I get someone in for major jobs and for electricity/plumbing generally.
Completely agree that having a fundamental understanding of most things is good, but that it’s more important to know what you don’t know than to really and truly know something.
Changing a tire? Yes, you should know that (or, honestly, be able to intuit it, it’s not exactly complex). Being able to change the oil, a fan belt, or coolant? Yeah, I know I could if I had to, but with the hazardous waste and all it’s far from worth it for me to try to.
Of course, "run-flat" tires are increasingly common these days and the crap jacks that are almost always the from-the-factory standard can make it near impossible to change a tire in non-ideal situations.
And you should also know how to jump-start a vehicle which is almost certainly something you'll need to do sooner or later. Also add washer fluid.
But yeah, the engine compartment isn't some mysterious magical box to me but the vast majority of things I get done for me.
(My parents also never did any car work and I didn't own a car until I had a professional job.)
I'd argue that at least knowing the basics of splinting is a good skill to have. (I keep up to date on wilderness first aid.) And many people know and sometimes use the basics of sailing/seamanship--it's not something exotic. I wouldn't really say I can "design a building" but I know some basics of construction which I think is pretty common.
My dad was an officer in the Marine Corps and spent time working on contingency planning—basically, planning invasions just in case they had to carry them out. He ended up being resentful about the Grenada intervention because his plan (written in the 1960’s) was far more efficient than what they ended up doing.
The only actionable advice I remember is basically to think critically about the information you’re given. If your plan hinges on storing fuel in a tank that seems to exist in the middle of a farm for no obvious reason, investigate a little more deeply. Maybe it’s a sugar cane farm and a tank of molasses. If so, not a solution for storing fuel.
Cooking (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)...
Practice mindfulness. You don't have to actually meditate, but just try and take some time each day to conciously think about something that made you feel emotional, and why you reacted the way you did; I normally do it while taking a shower. Eventually it'll become a habit where something happens that would normally trigger an emotional response, and you'll be able to react in a way that helps with the situation instead of just having an emotional outburst. You don't have to stop feeling emotional, but you shouldn't act purely on emotion.
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.
Losing weight/maintaining proper weight (without being miserable, eg not juice dieting), meeting people (since your high school/college friends will move away), good posture/technique (don't get carpal tunnel), the importance of stretching.
Granted, 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 efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
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.
Not only how to handle them, but the theory behind finance, and how it works. What inflation is, what net present value is, what an "asset" is, how interest rates and compounding work.
I admit I could be mistaken, but often when I hear people complain that they wish they had been taught to handle their finances or learned about budgeting, it reduces down to "I wish I had been taught not to spend outside my means." Which reduces down further to "I wish I had been taught self-control." To me, the fundamentals have always seemed relatively straightforward: don't spend more than you have, and only take credit or a loan if you have a plan for paying it back on time.
I was raised by parents with limited education, one of whom was an immigrant, and so I was largely on my own when figuring out the minutia of opening a bank account, getting a credit card, saving up for emergencies, etc. But the general lesson of "don't spend more than you have" was imparted. It seems like a pretty obvious thing, but I guess if your parents or guardians are setting bad examples in that regard, it might not be as obvious as it appears to me.
I sort of agree with that. I have some quibbles with what's taught in high school (e.g. surely basic statistics/probability would be more useful for most people than some of the math that is taught). But MBA capital budgeting and accounting classes aren't really needed. Maybe a penny saved is a penny earned could be updated to a penny saved is a penny earned plus compound interest. But the common problem is, as you say, people spending more money than they have because they want to--as aided by installment plans and the like. (And a lot of people just having genuinely little money.)
If people knew how the stock market actually worked then you would see far less retail investors losing their money. Many people think it's equivalent to gambling and that it is a zero sum game. There is also the common misconception that stocks that don't pay dividends (e.g. they do stock buybacks) can never actually return their investments and therefore every investor is looking for a greater fool until the stock plummets. Lots of people think buying the stock from another investor does nothing for the company unless they issue new stock for financing purposes. Obviously, if you knew even the tiniest bit about the stock market you would know that all of these are wrong.
Stock trading makes money and produces value by providing liquidity but it has diminishing returns therefore it is slightly positive sum. Stock investing makes money off of company growth. Investors can sell their shares via stock buybacks directly to the company (no greater fool needed). Buying stock from another investor increases the market cap of the company which helps it secure funding through traditional means such as a line of credit from a bank even if the company does not sell stocks.
No one on this planet is going to teach you this. You'll have to figure it out by yourself and this is merely information an outside observer needs to know to understand news articles regarding the stock market. Actual investment requires far more in-depth knowledge.
How 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.
That's a problem with a lot of home-related tasks. You often do them slowly and poorly the first time around and then you don't have an occasion to do them again for another decade or two.
How to learn: if you learn well, you can acquire new skills more quickly and easily.
Some keys: be calm and stay in the beginner's mindset. If you're frustrated and reactionary, you will learn much less effectively. Be like a happy child, curious about new things, and be interested in self improvement always.
Yeah this something i have been trying to improve. Taken Barbara Oakley's "Learning to learn" course and read the book(it is essentially the transcript of the book). It def help me better understand theory behind learning. On top of it i have been using Anki - spaced repetition tool - to solidify what i learned.
Having a knowledge repo or a collection of notes that are written with your own words helps immensely as well.
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, maintenance, organization, managing money, taxes, investing, personal grooming, shopping, transportation (public transit, biking, driving etc.), reading a map, looking for work, putting something together from instructions.
PS: Maintaining physical and mental heath is not really a specific skill, but much of the above falls under that category.
Social etiquette drives me up the wall sometimes. I get it, it's necessary, and I do follow it, but there are some that just make zero sense.
In fact, most of them make no sense. It's just social constructs made by people, and some go to war over it. Ridiculous. I don't want to shake hands, I don't want to smile, I don't want to sit down if you do.
It's like, why does it matter to you? I literally couldn't give half a fork about it, so if I can learn to forget the more detailed bullshit, so can you. Focus on what matters, not whether I'm slouching or not.
Etiquette is really a language. If you mean red and say blue people can only go by what you said. Specific words have specific meanings because of convention not some innate property of the universe.
Similarly, body language has a specific meaning based on convention, so people will assume you mean what your saying.
PS: The posture convention is based on norms of physical fitness and body weight which make standing up strait close to the default. Assuming being overweight becomes the long term norm things may change.
Eh, isn't that why language was invented? Late Stephen Hawking would've had a hard time with body language and even intonation. Fortunately, we have words that convey exactly what we want.
Edit: To your point, physical disabilities are meaningful, but hawking is in large part known for his difficulties communicating not being rude. Etiquette still applies to the written word for example.
Anyway, you can’t speak without interrupting the speaker, but you can gesture. Similarly, people don’t constantly walk around repeating I am angry/sad/happy/etc. Etiquette is a constant framework and channel of communication where spoken language is for specifics. The words you say can be less important than the volume, timing, etc of how you say them. Grunts may work assuming they fit in with social conventions.
The grammar of etiquette is similarly important. Prisoners may fight each other, but the vast majority of the time their doing something else. Fail to communicate well, and it may just get you killed.
PS: Though I may be overusing the etiquette as language analogy, it’s a very close fit.
> Fortunately, we have words that convey exactly what we want.
Words can be just as fuzzy as body language. Sometimes, this can be done intentionally, for dramatic effect (e.g. "The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose"). English can have syntactic ambiguity, which limits the understanding of a phrase. In the sentence "I saw the man on the mountain with the telescope.", was I using a telescope to see the man on the mountain, or did I observe that the man on the mountain was himself looking through a telescope? [0]
Whether words are to be taken literally or metaphorically depends entirely on the context and the audience. Heck, the same word can be functioning both literally and metaphorically within the same sentence [1]. In the sentence "He took his hat and his leave", the word "took" is literal in the phrase "took his hat", but metaphorical in the phrase "took his leave".
There's an entire class of errors [2] related to encoding of thoughts to speech not matching the decoding of speech to thoughts.
Edit: This may have come off a bit harsh, but that was not my intent. I had the same understanding ten years ago, that the uncertainty of communication can only be shackled by the rigidity of language. I found that I had built my house upon sand, for there is nothing sturdy to be found within language, and seekers will find only chaos and descriptivism.
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.
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. Etiquette and other social skills allow for continued cooperation in social circumstances with many moving parts and competing interests. Doing things like sitting down when others sit down, etc. are really just table stakes. If you don't have the basics of reading a situation and applying rudimentary social norms appropriately you're kind of socially radioactive and will be treated accordingly, i.e. you won't move on to the more interesting interactions and you'll be placed in a baby zone unless people need to negotiate with you for specific resources. Programmers can get away with this better than most because it's a skill people need, but it's still kind of a disaster not to get decent with this stuff and you probably won't even understand how much it's damaging you.
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.
And if they did something more extreme like for example literally eat like a walrus? That wouldn't weird you out even a little bit? Nothing in the back of your mind would say "watch out for that guy, he seems a bit psychopath-y"?
I guess it is if you treat it as a game. I'm kinda surprised that even things like shaking hands and smiling are treated with so much disdain by some people. It just seems like Being Friendly 101 to me.
> 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...)
Once you accept human nature for what it is, etiquette makes sense.
Truthfully, to not accept the scientific findings on the human animal (social, not always rationally, powerfully influenced by appearances, emotion, etc, you know — human) is irrational.
Lol which doesn’t make it any easier sometimes ;).
Social etiquette is about respect and care for others as well as yourself, lack of etiquette in my mind is a display of lack of self awareness at best, and self centered/narcissism at worst.
Etiquette is often about social status, and social signalling of group/clique belonging: perhaps that is the part you rail against?
A sibling comment says: “I think it telegraphs if you care about us or not“, but I would translate that to mean whether you care to show you belong to their group or not.
I also loath some etiquette because it is meaningless: more about exclusion than politeness or showing you care.
It is extremely similar to dressing appropriately for the social crowd you are interacting with: you can use your own social norms but people won’t accept you so easily.
The average life expectancy for a girl born in the UK today is ~90 years. The bodies of our children are nearly century long projects. Health is a real concern for them.
Keep in mind that etiquette is highly subjective and culture-specific. As English speakers a lot of ours is derived from traditional British customs, even if you’re not a native of a former colony.
For instance, saying “excuse me” before you barge in front of someone to get something off the shelf at a shop. I’m American, so that is obvious. I live in Estonia, and here you either 1) stand awkwardly and wait for them to move because you don’t want to interact with them or 2) just shove in front of them and grab what you want and leave.
The first time I took my then girlfriend to the UK she did that and the woman she dove in front of looked at me like “WTF?”. I apologized and then had to explain to my girlfriend that that isn’t acceptable in English-based countries. She was genuinely confused and asked how she should do it instead. Even though she speaks English fluently, there is only so much you learn from Cartoon Network (I kid you not, many have learned English that way) and YouTube. She wasn’t trying to be rude, she just genuinely had no idea it was coming off that way.
The same also applies to standing in lines, getting on and off public transit, and many other things.
Edit: oh, and table manners. My $diety, the table manners... I don’t expect you to be able to set a formal place setting (though I can), but we aren’t animals, you should know how to use a napkin, not to double dip your chips, etc.
True - but I’d also say that part of good etiquette is to make an effort to learn the basics of the culture in which you’re participating. If I’m traveling to China for business it’s incumbent upon me to learn the order in which people should be introduced, how to exchange business cards etc.
Table manners too are so culture specific though. Who am I (a Briton) to insist that roti should be eaten with fork and knife, rather than finger-formed into a shovel, at an Indian restaurant? Or to object to slurping from bowls hovering off the table at a Chinese one?
That said, if the setting is English, (/French/¿European?) I despise seeing, for example, fork and knife cack-handed.
(I wouldn't worry about your chip 'double-dipping' being a snobbishly high bar!)
Spending 70% of what you make(either make more or spend less). Save 30% of what you make (make more or spend less)(see the pattern?)
Read books. Minimum 6 per year. Aim for 1 per month and see how it works out.
Pick your news sources carefully. Don't read ALL the news. Reading about the imports of Beetroots in Slovenia has zero impact to your life (unless you are in the beetroot business in Ljubljana).
Chose what to click/read. Everyone and everything wants your attention/time/money. Give it to the things that YOU will benefit from (to avoid misunderstandings: volunteering for -unpaid- charity work is good for YOU/your soul).
Edit - News: I scroll in the "front page" of 5-6 websites, read just the titles. I only read the analyses that seem intelligent, opinion articles that will challenge me. Just the facts, without aby analysis and or historical references can be misleading.
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?
Etiquette is a signal to others that you are a good person and follow the rules of society. This is extremely important in a world with an increasing population, in which you only have a few seconds of contact with most people. In these few seconds, people judge your character based on the only information they have available:
1. How you dress
2. How physically fit you are
3. How you conform to societal standards
I would argue that most people should not judge a person's character by 1 and 2 (although they are good measures of affluence). What is left is number 3.
If you are someone that breaks some small societal standards, how do I know you won't break larger ones? If we don't share the same assumptions on how we should behave, how can I possibly feel safe around you?
With the exception of listening every single one of the skills you've listed is about yourself. There's nothing about empathy, sympathy, helping other people, or even understanding other people.
If you want to really get ahead in life, learn to understand other people, know what pains they're suffering, and figure out how to solve them. You will never do that well if you're entirely focused on yourself.
How do you think it’s possible to create and maintain relationships without empathy, sympathy, helping other people, or even understanding them? I genuinely don’t understand why you think these are separate.
Honestly, I believe don't specific individual skills matter that much, so whatever aligns with your happiness and curiosity. I think it's more important to focus on the skills that make everyone else's lives better, so: understanding how we all feel and react differently and making your work and communication as accessible to others as possible.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadI've been able to have wonderfully comforting meals after moving overseas, change my diet while still enjoying my food, and actually eat cheap but good tasting meals, a small joy if you are pretty broke.
I am 58, and I didn't always know how to make a list like this in a way that makes sense to me now.
Would you mind if I ask how old you are, and what you imagine will be important to you when you are looking back on your life, as an old, old, old person?
>even above driving
And I have trouble agreeing for most people. Many need cars on a day-to-day basis and even if owning a car doesn't make sense for some people even in the US, being able to rent one and go someplace on the weekend or for a trip opens up a lot of possibilities for many. I wouldn't even have been able to do my first job if I couldn't drive.
And you're right that many people can't currently practically use a bicycle in preference to a car. Some of that's no doubt due to the logistics involved in more remote communities, some of it could be related to urban infrastructure historically designed with large vehicles in mind, and some of it's likely due to limitations of bicycle travel itself (like the challenges of carrying large loads and dealing with weather conditions). Not to mention that it takes time for people's habits to change.
I'm biased because I would probably say cycling's the most useful non-software-related skill I've learned - so take with a grain of salt - but to me cycling's a vast opportunity: an empowering, open, low-cost technology with the potential to improve lives both individually and collectively.
In that context traffic and other limiting factors become issues to understand and find (genuine, win-win) solutions for, rather than impassable obstacles.
Once you start cycling around town regularly, you build a new layer on your city map: what's the shade like on this street? how bad are the potholes on this back street? how dense is the car traffic? can I find effective detours that trade off a few minutes for not having to cross six lanes of traffic coming straight off the end of a highway?
Cycling's pretty useless if you live in a suburban sprawl though. Great for an actual city.
The few great leaders I have known were each great listeners in their own ways, and capable of making decisions based on what they hear without, it seems to me, concern for "ego."
To me, this seems like a superpower.
How to take advantage of people... that way they are less likely to be taken advantage of
Restraint enough that, though they know how, they don’t take advantage of others
How to look for sense of self satisfaction within yourself rather than in the approval of others
Not really a skill, but a habit of intense exercise at least 30m a day. Running and swimming are great for this.
Similarly, a habit of reading books.
Personal finance
This is a place where, in my opinion, religion is seriously overlooked in modern culture.
The times when my religious upbringing have been most useful to me have all been in the face tragedy.
That's easily the difference between being an isolated island of a person, miserable thinking the world is against you. Or being a bit down, and getting a hand up.
I've replaced it with philosophy and meditation-- it actually seems to do the job much better, and doesn't require any particular leaps in logic on my part.
Philosophy and meditation are just religion by another name in my opinion. At least in terms of the practical application of religion, which is sadly neglected by most branches of modern Christianity.
I agree that they may be similar in practice, but I want to make sure you understand that they are fundamentally different in every other aspect. The biggest difference is that religion believes it has a monopoly on an explanation of the metaphysical, and therefore shuts out other philosophies. This is the height of human hubris.
There are many different philosophies, and all of them are merely ideas, and none of them claim to be the exclusive explanation of the metaphysical.
Meditation is just the practice of looking inward, and many studies show benefits. Whereas, many of the reported benefits of religion come from the practice of it, and are most likely due to placebo.
So yes, in practice they are similar and they have many of the same benefits. What I can not get behind are the potential/probable drawbacks of religion. The narrow mindedness and the arrogance come to mind.
- Recognizing when someone may not be acting in your own best interest
- Setting personal boundaries with other people (esp. people who may be doing the former)
- water and electric installations. Most things that usually break in a typical house can be easily fixed by the average person with some tools, water is easier, electricity is extremely risky if you don't know what you are doing, but fine if you do (you don't need a college to be an electrician). I would also mention some carpentry, but that requires more tools than what people keep around the house.
- build, maintain and repair a bicycle; it is extremely easy if you spend a bit of time doing it and it is extremely useful if you do mountain biking and you have a problem in the middle of nowhere; also it is a lot cheaper and quite fun to fix or upgrade your own bike or spend some good time with friends working on their bikes
- fixing small things on a car or motorcycle, like changing oil, brake pads, bleed the brakes. It does well with the bicycle skills, some are transferable.
- if you like hiking, knowing how to pack light, to find a good place to mount a tent, first aid and a bit of survival skills are useful
If you like hiking, depending on your country and area you spend time it would be a good idea to learn how to properly carry and use a firearm for self-defense against wild life. Where I go there are plenty of bears and boars, they are both stronger and faster than me, I had a few encounters but it was either from a distance or I was not on foot, so I left in a hurry :) Less applicable in West Europe (no bears, some boars) and in Eastern Europe (no guns allowed), but still something to think about
- cooking. It's a hit or miss, but you can try. Anyone knows how to make tea or some eggs, it's trivial to do French fries or a steak (not a good one, but something you can eat), so for me cooking means to do something more complicated than basic food.
Learn not only to drive a car, but a bicycle, a motorcycle, a manual transmission car and even a small truck. You never know when one of these can be useful and they are partially related, so it's not that much to learn.
"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."
I'd possibly leave out the militaristic stuff, but the rest of it is pretty much spot on :)
Only learn skills that are truly applicable to your life.
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." "But the Solar System!" [Dr. Watson] protested.
"What of the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
For example, while I'm not ignorant of how a car works, I did make at least an implicit decision a very long time ago that working on cars wasn't going to be one of the ways I spent my time. And while I do certain things around the house, I get someone in for major jobs and for electricity/plumbing generally.
Changing a tire? Yes, you should know that (or, honestly, be able to intuit it, it’s not exactly complex). Being able to change the oil, a fan belt, or coolant? Yeah, I know I could if I had to, but with the hazardous waste and all it’s far from worth it for me to try to.
And you should also know how to jump-start a vehicle which is almost certainly something you'll need to do sooner or later. Also add washer fluid.
But yeah, the engine compartment isn't some mysterious magical box to me but the vast majority of things I get done for me.
(My parents also never did any car work and I didn't own a car until I had a professional job.)
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, build a wall, set a bone, or pitch manure.
And recognizing that these aren't personally valuable skills is a worthwhile skill.
Plenty of awesome people with valuable skills would be unable to do half of those things.
I've got the first one down, but lose steam at "plan an invasion".
The only actionable advice I remember is basically to think critically about the information you’re given. If your plan hinges on storing fuel in a tank that seems to exist in the middle of a farm for no obvious reason, investigate a little more deeply. Maybe it’s a sugar cane farm and a tank of molasses. If so, not a solution for storing fuel.
To be continued... nice thread!
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.
> 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 efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man)
She mentioned this and I had to tell her it's also something else. She was surprised she hadn't heard of the other meaning before.
I can't believe this basic lesson wasn't taught to me at all during my formative years, either by my parents or in school.
I was raised by parents with limited education, one of whom was an immigrant, and so I was largely on my own when figuring out the minutia of opening a bank account, getting a credit card, saving up for emergencies, etc. But the general lesson of "don't spend more than you have" was imparted. It seems like a pretty obvious thing, but I guess if your parents or guardians are setting bad examples in that regard, it might not be as obvious as it appears to me.
Stock trading makes money and produces value by providing liquidity but it has diminishing returns therefore it is slightly positive sum. Stock investing makes money off of company growth. Investors can sell their shares via stock buybacks directly to the company (no greater fool needed). Buying stock from another investor increases the market cap of the company which helps it secure funding through traditional means such as a line of credit from a bank even if the company does not sell stocks.
No one on this planet is going to teach you this. You'll have to figure it out by yourself and this is merely information an outside observer needs to know to understand news articles regarding the stock market. Actual investment requires far more in-depth knowledge.
That's a problem with a lot of home-related tasks. You often do them slowly and poorly the first time around and then you don't have an occasion to do them again for another decade or two.
Floor tiles are the worst, a real pain in the arse. I don't want to do that again, ever.
* identifying weakness: embarrassment, offense, narcissism, intimidation, hostility (I am deliberately excluding fear from this list)
* writing
* personal finances/accounting
* product design: accessibility, usability, performance, engagement, organization (I am deliberately excluding vanity from this list)
* emergency car repair
* house maintenance
* horticulture
* accuracy with a rifle
* philosophy
* history
* homeopathy (plant chemistry kind, not the pseudo science kind)
* leadership
* listening
* benevolence
* maintaining a healthy marriage
* honesty
* automation
Some keys: be calm and stay in the beginner's mindset. If you're frustrated and reactionary, you will learn much less effectively. Be like a happy child, curious about new things, and be interested in self improvement always.
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, maintenance, organization, managing money, taxes, investing, personal grooming, shopping, transportation (public transit, biking, driving etc.), reading a map, looking for work, putting something together from instructions.
PS: Maintaining physical and mental heath is not really a specific skill, but much of the above falls under that category.
In fact, most of them make no sense. It's just social constructs made by people, and some go to war over it. Ridiculous. I don't want to shake hands, I don't want to smile, I don't want to sit down if you do.
It's like, why does it matter to you? I literally couldn't give half a fork about it, so if I can learn to forget the more detailed bullshit, so can you. Focus on what matters, not whether I'm slouching or not.
Similarly, body language has a specific meaning based on convention, so people will assume you mean what your saying.
PS: The posture convention is based on norms of physical fitness and body weight which make standing up strait close to the default. Assuming being overweight becomes the long term norm things may change.
Anyway, you can’t speak without interrupting the speaker, but you can gesture. Similarly, people don’t constantly walk around repeating I am angry/sad/happy/etc. Etiquette is a constant framework and channel of communication where spoken language is for specifics. The words you say can be less important than the volume, timing, etc of how you say them. Grunts may work assuming they fit in with social conventions.
The grammar of etiquette is similarly important. Prisoners may fight each other, but the vast majority of the time their doing something else. Fail to communicate well, and it may just get you killed.
PS: Though I may be overusing the etiquette as language analogy, it’s a very close fit.
Words can be just as fuzzy as body language. Sometimes, this can be done intentionally, for dramatic effect (e.g. "The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose"). English can have syntactic ambiguity, which limits the understanding of a phrase. In the sentence "I saw the man on the mountain with the telescope.", was I using a telescope to see the man on the mountain, or did I observe that the man on the mountain was himself looking through a telescope? [0]
Whether words are to be taken literally or metaphorically depends entirely on the context and the audience. Heck, the same word can be functioning both literally and metaphorically within the same sentence [1]. In the sentence "He took his hat and his leave", the word "took" is literal in the phrase "took his hat", but metaphorical in the phrase "took his leave".
There's an entire class of errors [2] related to encoding of thoughts to speech not matching the decoding of speech to thoughts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma_and_syllepsis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberrant_decoding
Edit: This may have come off a bit harsh, but that was not my intent. I had the same understanding ten years ago, that the uncertainty of communication can only be shackled by the rigidity of language. I found that I had built my house upon sand, for there is nothing sturdy to be found within language, and seekers will find only chaos and descriptivism.
[1] https://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/meaning...
How so? Surely "took his leave" is quite literal, meaning he left. See https://www.lexico.com/definition/take_one%27s_leave
I care about the person and the work. Not about whether they hold their spoon and knife in the right hand.
Which is why it's an important skill to learn. Because you too can exploit it for personal gain.
Evidence?
This assumes that “the etiquette game” is fundamentally untrustworthy, unimportant, or trivial.
But I don’t use the word game as a pejorative.
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...)
Truthfully, to not accept the scientific findings on the human animal (social, not always rationally, powerfully influenced by appearances, emotion, etc, you know — human) is irrational.
Lol which doesn’t make it any easier sometimes ;).
My two cents.
A sibling comment says: “I think it telegraphs if you care about us or not“, but I would translate that to mean whether you care to show you belong to their group or not.
I also loath some etiquette because it is meaningless: more about exclusion than politeness or showing you care.
It is extremely similar to dressing appropriately for the social crowd you are interacting with: you can use your own social norms but people won’t accept you so easily.
The average life expectancy for a girl born in the UK today is ~90 years. The bodies of our children are nearly century long projects. Health is a real concern for them.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
For instance, saying “excuse me” before you barge in front of someone to get something off the shelf at a shop. I’m American, so that is obvious. I live in Estonia, and here you either 1) stand awkwardly and wait for them to move because you don’t want to interact with them or 2) just shove in front of them and grab what you want and leave.
The first time I took my then girlfriend to the UK she did that and the woman she dove in front of looked at me like “WTF?”. I apologized and then had to explain to my girlfriend that that isn’t acceptable in English-based countries. She was genuinely confused and asked how she should do it instead. Even though she speaks English fluently, there is only so much you learn from Cartoon Network (I kid you not, many have learned English that way) and YouTube. She wasn’t trying to be rude, she just genuinely had no idea it was coming off that way.
The same also applies to standing in lines, getting on and off public transit, and many other things.
Edit: oh, and table manners. My $diety, the table manners... I don’t expect you to be able to set a formal place setting (though I can), but we aren’t animals, you should know how to use a napkin, not to double dip your chips, etc.
That said, if the setting is English, (/French/¿European?) I despise seeing, for example, fork and knife cack-handed.
(I wouldn't worry about your chip 'double-dipping' being a snobbishly high bar!)
Spending 70% of what you make(either make more or spend less). Save 30% of what you make (make more or spend less)(see the pattern?)
Read books. Minimum 6 per year. Aim for 1 per month and see how it works out.
Pick your news sources carefully. Don't read ALL the news. Reading about the imports of Beetroots in Slovenia has zero impact to your life (unless you are in the beetroot business in Ljubljana).
Chose what to click/read. Everyone and everything wants your attention/time/money. Give it to the things that YOU will benefit from (to avoid misunderstandings: volunteering for -unpaid- charity work is good for YOU/your soul).
Edit - News: I scroll in the "front page" of 5-6 websites, read just the titles. I only read the analyses that seem intelligent, opinion articles that will challenge me. Just the facts, without aby analysis and or historical references can be misleading.
Does anyone have any good resources to point me to?
1. How you dress
2. How physically fit you are
3. How you conform to societal standards
I would argue that most people should not judge a person's character by 1 and 2 (although they are good measures of affluence). What is left is number 3.
If you are someone that breaks some small societal standards, how do I know you won't break larger ones? If we don't share the same assumptions on how we should behave, how can I possibly feel safe around you?
If you want to really get ahead in life, learn to understand other people, know what pains they're suffering, and figure out how to solve them. You will never do that well if you're entirely focused on yourself.