Also: cleaning. I've had flatmates who managed to take the same time for cleaning the bathroom or the kitchen and yet it somehow still wasn't clean.
My mom was a fast order cook and when I was a teen she got me to help her run a fast food shop our family ran for a few years. She taught me how to work in a kitchen and how to cook.
Her basic rules were ... if you aren't cooking you're cleaning, if you aren't cleaning you're cooking, and if you aren't cooking or cleaning, get out of the kitchen.
If you aren't cleaning as you go, the food prep area will get gross and unsanitary fast. This goes for cooking at home, too.
once I had a flatmate that every time he was cooking he was leaving the kitchen like a warzone and he had used every utensil available in the kitchen. He somehow thought that it was faster for him to focus only on the cooking and after it is completed, to do all the dishes, pots, utensils, glasses, oven trays, scissors, screwdrivers, hammers, drills or whatever else he may had used.
yes! It saves so much money if you can cook properly and don't have to rely on expensive restaurants for "fancy" food.
Some cooking is much, much easier than others. Making a pizza isn't as much an issue as, say, preparing an exotic bird. Cooking involves a level of aesthetics and physics that I could never master for the very reason I could never scrape the iceberg of those two skills.
For me there are few feelings better in the world than having an entire meal not only cooked by yourself, but grown too! I love grabbing veggies from the garden and making dinner. Something so cool about being almost entirely self sufficient.
Learning how to say no. Having personal boundaries.
Can I have money?
Yes.
No.
But what if he's the tax collector?
I am a tax fraudster
Biblical or modern?
Could be either one, though now that I think about it, Biblical tax collectors were the ones who were, in a 100% literal sense, state sponsored muggers (due to the fact that Ancient Rome didn't have an advanced census system to do it systemically with).
I. AM. A. SOVEREIGN. CITIZEN.
It said easy skill
Learn when to say no. I have missed a lot because of this.
Critical thinking. Not enough people stop and think openly about a given problem, situation, or interaction. If everyone took just a moment or two to take into consideration someone else's perspective, circumstances, or goals, the world would be a lot less divisive.
Sadly, it appears not to be an easy skill for a far too many people to learn.
Thinking itself is not easy for many, and that doesn’t even include the critical .
Critical thinking [...] someone else’s perspective, circumstances, or goals,
Did you mean 'empathy' instead ?
Not really, no.
Empathy is about understanding the other person's feelings or experience, usually by being able to share in those things, or experience them vicariously. Empathy can even be used negatively. I believe Donald Trump has at least some empathy. He knows damn fucking well what his stupid words and actions are doing to some people.
I'm talking about objectively taking into consideration the other person's views, beliefs, and/or desired outcomes and adjusting actions or words based on that.
For example, I don't have to have empathy for someone who is non-binary to be respectful of their situation. I can't really know or understand their feelings, because I'm a heterosexual male. I can't possibly share in their experiences of being confused about gender identity and being ostracised for it. I have no reference point for those feelings.
But I can certainly be objective about their situation and remember that their gender identity and desired pronouns have literally no impact on me. So, rather than be a divisive prick about it and insisting on referring to them in binary gender terms, I can respect those things about them and act accordingly.
Everyone should learn the basics of troubleshooting!
When trying to resolve a problem it's really important to keep as many variables under control as possible so that you can find the root cause and fix it.
I see lots of people who try a bunch of things without isolating the issue first but can't figure out what is wrong. Then because they messed with it so much it's almost impossible to figure out.
This is important for car maintenance, home maintenance, electronics, computers. Just about everything that can break or stop working right in your life.
My skills at troubleshooting are pretty much limited to
"Turn it off and back on again.
The slow way.
Sometimes twice."
But you know what? Mostly it works!
Your troubleshooting skills are above average, tbh.
You've identified that there's an issue. You tried something simple to remedy. You even tried it again to make sure.
You didn't make a bunch of crazy assumptions about what the problem was. You didn't do a bunch of weird shit all at once to try to fix it. You didn't do something to make the problem worse.
You're doing great!
Oh I have to share what just happened! My husband's power wheelchair suddenly wouldn't drive. In tilt mode it would still tilt, but in the driving modes it had an error message. By asking in forums he learned that message could mean it thought it was tilted back too much for safe driving, even though it was fully upright. So he tilted way back, and I looked underneath for anything loose, finally tightened one loose screw that I frankly think was unrelated. Then he tilted upright again, giving it an extra couple seconds of push on the joystick, and I pushed forward on the back of the chair. Nothing moved, it was already fully upright. But it did the trick! It's driving fine now.
Wonderful! And the lesson here is, just fucking try something, anything. Your story made me feel good. Fine job!
There's also unplugging and replugging, that works a lot.
My dad can't do this. I've tried to teach him but it's like, a piece of equipment breaks and I'm like "What have you tried so far?" the answer is always nothing because he doesn't know cars/computers/watches/lights, etc etc.
I don't know half of those things either but I'll go over and press all the buttons, if that doesn't work I google it. I've showed him this so many times but it's like it doesn't go in and he's like "But you're good with these things!" Nope, I'm just hitting it until it works.
A lot of the issues learning to troubleshoot are surrounded around not understanding the problem/not understanding the system enough to determine where the problem is. Generally, if you have no idea what the issues could be, you end up trying a bunch of stuff and messing everything up more and people get frustrated you didn't ask for help sooner, or you do nothing and people get frustrated you haven't tried anything before asking for help. This may be a perpetuated problem if someone doesn't have the foundational knowledge to understand the type of system, or if it's just totally out of their wheelhouse and they don't have them mental capacity to try and understand any aspect. This can be seen when people have little to no understanding of: cooking and/or baking, car repair, computer repair, fruit and vegetable farming, sewing clothes or clothes mending, etc. we can pay people to do these things for us because there is so much complication in modern life most don't know how to do everything.
Swimming. It could save your life.
If only it was as easy as getting to a certain point and learning. In which case maybe I wouldn't have to say I can't.
Learn where all the shut off valves for your waterlines are at your house or apartment. When you have a leak is not the time to find out or rather figure out where your shut off valves are at. if you don’t know where your shut off valves are at, what could’ve been a minor water mess could turn into a major bill.
I wish I’d learned a few useful knots earlier in life. Saves so much time when you know how and which one to use.
The ones I use the most are the square knot, taut line hitch and once a year the truckers hitch for tying down the Christmas tree to the top of the car.
Video guides are nice, but I prefer Grog's Knots. He even has an app for offline knot learning, say, when you're deep in the woods and it's raining hard and your tent's rain cover blows off into the lake and you thankfully brought a tarp and rope but don't know how to make one of those adjustable knots that you can just slip-tighten. You know, theoretically speaking.
On a side note and completely unrelated, bring one of those big grout sponges when you go camping. In addition to mopping up all the water in your tent, it makes a nice pillow if your inflatable pillow decides to run away in the night in a storm and go swimming in the lake.
TL;DR: I hate camping.
TL;DR: I hate camping.
I was a boy scout in serious camping territory. Wow, do I hate camping, now. And, as a poor kid, winter camping can fuck right off.
I love that website. The surgical knots were nice to have in place to reference.
If you can't tie a knot, tie a lot.
And if anyone is having trouble with that last one, here's a useful video guide.
For me, it's sheet bend, bowline, and round turn and two half hitches. I also tuck a lot of eye splices, but that's more just for fun; a bowline will work fine most of the time instead.
Tall ships?
Square knot, Trucker's hitch, and bowline are the ones I use the most.
For others, I use an app, animated knots, where you can have a favorites list.
Man I'm an Eagle Scout and I forgot how to tie the basic knots already. It takes repetition and practice, I mostly use the square knot so that's the only one I probably remember.
Swimming.
It's easy and it will save your life.
Parents threw me in a class when I was 5. Scared shitless, screaming bloody murder, all that.
And I did indeed save my own life. And I was swimming with a certified lifeguard. Read on...
19, second year of college, fucking around with my neighbor, who I got to fuck, because I lived.
Perfectly still pond, nothing crazy. We were a bit drunk but had our wits about us. For some reason, I lost it. No idea what happened.
Went down like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Literally. Hand sinking for the third time.
Thought, "Figure this out or die. This very second."
Remembered my lessons on floating, got my lips above water and took a sip of air. Stopped fighting, floated back up, did it again. After 3 or 4 tries, I had enough air to calm down, lay on my back and breathe. Just dandy after that. Went home, got laid, and here I am typing this dumb comment 30+ years later.
Learn to swim no matter if it scares you or not.
When I was a pre-teen I was trying out a Boogie Board and a wierd current pulled me much further out into the ocean with much more force than any of the other waves, but years of swim lessons had me more focused on finding upward and trying to stay in place than panicking so I got dumped back onto the beach conscious instead of needing the lifeguard to drag me out
CPR. You may not think about it in your day to day life, but in an emergency it's a very low hanging fruit to save someone's life. If someone is not breathing, chest compressions baby... go to town.
And FYI for anyone reading this, mouth to mouth isn't really recommended anymore.
First call 911 or have someone else do it. Then start chest compressions for as long as you can. Switch off with another person if you need to. But keep going until paramedics arrive.
Exactly. I've never actually seen anyone do mouth to mouth in real life, only in movies.
have someone else do it.
I feel this kicks the ball down the field a bit. It definitely fails strong induction.
Usually, it would be you telling someone "call 911 right now" while you start chest compressions.
It's important to direct your command to a specific person rather than "someone" because of the bystander effect.
First aid! I did a four day course many years ago and I still use the training in so many things. The final day we had to navigate a bus crash scenario and the part that stuck with me was the taking ownership and delegating roles when other people might be scared to act. I think it really instilled in me an ability to turn panic into action, and you can use the triage playbook in so many ways.
I learned that too... knowing what to do in an emergency also reduces the level of panic you experience while you do it.
I did a course 2/3 weeks ago, highly recommend it.
Love the Heart Runner system in Denmark and Sweden. Wish the US had something like that.
Active listening and validating someone's emotions. Relationship skills in general honestly! Like how to adress the core attachment need in a disagreement instead of just the surface issue.
For those in the US: Learn how to file your own taxes. It's really simple for the large majority of people, and usually just consists of copying numbers into boxes off a sheet your employer made for you. After you've done it once, subsequent times you'll probably have it done yourself in less than half an hour.
You can do it for free on a ton of sites unless you make significant income, freetaxusa is typically the most highly recommended one.
FreeTaxUSA is the best. TurboTax can eat my ass.
Intuit and H&R Block are the reason we have this depraved, inhumane, anti-consumer tax system. They've created the laws that make it necessary to use tax prep software. They should not be rewarded for this by getting business for that very tax prep software. Everyone should say no to TurboTax.
irs.gov/freefile
There are always a bunch of perfectly good competitors to them listed. Use those competitors. For most people it's totally free.
Indeed.
A better tip is to just maintain and monitor your finances on a regular basis. At least once a month sit down and quickly review all your income and expenses. Then at least two or three times a year do full detailed review just so you know where your money came from and went and when it all happened.
I wish I knew this earlier in life.
Think about it, what did you spend your money on two weeks ago? A month? How much did you make in the past month? What did you spend your money on?
Sure many people can give an estimate off the top of their head but it makes a big difference if you can see it all written out and documented in front of you.
Isn't the IRS rolling out an actual free filing program this year?
Yes, I'm not sure if it'll be ready by this year's tax season or not, but it was happening. Last I heard they were doing some limited runs on it.
Sewing, by hand or by machine.
Pollution from "fast fashion" is one of the most insidious types of pollution and one of the highest source of microplastics.
Knowing how to sew has allowed me to keep some garments looking new for over 15 years.
I still have a "snakes on a plane" themed hoodie from 2007 that is still going strong, thanks to sewing and proper washing/drying.
Knowing how to separate your clothing for washing is also helpful in this regard, because it also can make clothes last longer. T-shirts can last a decade if they're washed on a delicates cycle and hung out to dry.
I honestly could give a flying fuck if everything I own is out of style, I'm fucking old anyway.
Most locks are so garbage they don't have to be picked. There's a guy on Youtube that opens locks by whacking them together.
Oh yeah, LockpickingCaveman, great channel. :-P (it's actually LockpickingLawyer.)
Raking a lock, even. So easy. Doesn't always work on all locks, but enough of them.
If 'the economy' is why you 'need' to overcome access restrictions, then you were a criminal before 'the economy made you do it' too.
Mindfulness. You may not be able to turn off the (insert negative feeling here), but you absolutely can turn off the suffering.
I tried guided meditation daily for two months and didn't really notice a difference. Do you have any recommendations?
EDIT: I should mention this was with the Headspace app, following their mindfulness uh... lessons.
It took about a year to make a difference for me.
I guess they call it mindfulness practice for a reason
A year! I didn't really know what to expect, so two months seemed like more than enough.
... With an app...
Oh man I tried meditation with Headspace too and I couldn't hack it. For some reason meditation made me so angry! Like this weird rage would come out of nowhere.
I did find it frustrating that the narrator would give a prompt for what to do, then just enough quiet time to begin, and then interrupt my effort with his talking. Aggravating! But the anger was a separate thing.
I always thought meditation was supposed to help you feel calm and grounded but all it did was frustrate me. :(
It made you feel something. Now sit there quietly and think about why that is. What are you getting frustrated with? Why is it bothering you? Unfounded rage is trying to tell you something about yourself. There's a reason, but you have to be able to be honest with yourself to figure out what it is. Once you can begin to understand it, you can begin to find ways to manage it.
I feel frustration because it sounds like you are right and that is not helping.
Lol that's really funny...I actually hate yoga too, but it doesn't provoke rage, just annoyance because the last thing I wanna do is listen to some white lady done on about chakras! But for it to provoke anger in inmates is disturbing.
I've had good experience with the Waking Up app, which is primarily Insight Meditation. If you can, a multi-day silent retreat allows you to be truly immersed in the practice of just watching your mind and all of its silliness.
When I was little, meditation was the buzz. I've tried it many times and I just found myself "sitting in style". Meditation is described as inspired by hypnosis but they never tell you what to do when you're from the small percentage of people immune to hypnosis.
I have no doubt some people struggle more than others to get to the point where they can sit back and watch. It wasn't immediately obvious to me either, but a couple of months of short daily practice enough to start seeing what the fuss was.
For this topic, it's far from what I would call an easy skill; I'm going on six years and it still feels like a weak muscle. But it can be really helpful.
I mean, mental illness is still going to exist, no matter how much power you give your mind.
Mental illness is treatable, and being aware of the symptoms as they're happening is a major part of the treatment for many such illnesses.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean it completely goes away. Mental illness is the human equivalent of software issues, the very definition entails you can't be like Neo from the Matrix and seize one's own mind.
I'm not understanding your comment. Mindfulness is paying close attention to the actual experiences in consciousness, as opposed to just being carried along by thoughts. It's not about taking control of your mind.
Oh. Yeah that makes sense then. The way you described it in your original comment made it seem like gnostic-esque advice.
Touch typing, if you spend more than an hour a day in front of a computer screen.
I wish being kind was easy. Sometimes I feel like kindness is one of the hardest things to do.
Sometimes it is, but that's part of why it's so valuable.
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Rewind.
Baking bread. At first, your results will be uneven. (brick like, over baked, underbaked, too much yeast, not enough kneading, etc.) Just don't give up, the first time you get it close to "right", you'll be addicted to home made bread. It's about training your hands and other senses until you don't need a recipe any more.
Literally eating a homemade bun right now.
Can confirm, it's addictive and my stomach is having a very conflicting love/hate relationship with me for it lol
The one thing that got me into home made bread was getting a bread machine and using it exclusively for kneading. Machine made bread is weird and uneven to me, but taking the dough and baking it the traditional way makes brilliant bread and saves a lot of time.
I completely agree. Plus I like the shape from a tradional loaf pan vs the odd cube from the bread maker.
Also check out the Bertinet Method. Slap and Fold, baby.
Cooking
I see so many posts, "I don't know how to cook!"
Of fucking course you do. Can't boil water or make toast?! Start and practice. You can only get better.
Programming or scripting; usually Python would be enough to reduce the average repetitive workload of office workers by about 20%.
Especially with ChatGPT you don’t really need to be that good at it, just good enough to read the script over and to know how to execute it.
I'd love to hear about it! Any idea how to get started?
This one is excellent, by university of Helsinki:
programming-23.mooc.fi
Years ago, I learned to shave with just about any sharp, straight edge (yes, I even practiced with a razor sharp axe). It’s interesting how the ‘fine edge control’ transfers to other activities; using a kitchen knife, swinging an axe, cutting with a Xacto, etc.
In the apocalypse, I will be the clean-shaven villain, who is surrounded by all the hot mutant ladies who adore my pretty jowls!
Edit: I use cannabis daily. I found I can shave quickly with a straight razor (after years if practice), or I can shave high. But not both. FTR: cutting yourself a bit here and there simply isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Don't forget the shiny jumpsuits and garages full of sports cars. You never know when you might want to upgrade to being a Bond villain.
Already have the jumpsuit. Crotchless, silver, soft on the inside.
Shamelessly plugging You Need A Budget. Best app I've ever used. My SO and I have been using it for about 3 years now, and the app has been instrumental in us becoming mostly debt-free.
I tried YNAB, but found the UI confusing. Lunch Money is super friendly and still gives me a great overview of my finances
YNAB is a glorified spreadsheet and did not import past data. I found it exceedingly tedious and not helpful. I am currently using Monarch and it's far, far better. It's a bit pricey, but so far as I've found, it's the best.
They give you a link that allows others to try monarch for 30 days (rather than their egregiously short trial of like 7 days):
I get a discount if you buy after the trial, but there's no need.
I'll have to check out lunch money too
Buckets is a free alternative that I switched to when ynab massively increased the price and dropped their grandfathering agreement. Same principals as ynab, but suited me a lot better and is much much cheaper.
Couldn't agree with this more.
Some basic first aid
Even a quick YouTube session on some common cases should help. If you want, getting certified is pretty easy and it looks good on resumes (or at work, you could be the designated person in emergencies)
If someone close to you has an emergency, it's nice to have an idea of what to do while you wait.
On the flip side, I had someone open up about regret from not learning; it was heartbreaking hearing it. Their family member may have died anyways, but they felt like a few extra minutes could have helped the odds, and regretted not knowing what to do
Cooking.
It's shocking to me the number of people I've come across who've no idea how to cook or find it to be too troublesome to do. Moreover, feeding yourself should be the single most primal skill for anyone to have.
I realize there's a lot to unpack here. Some people are taught / learn to cook at a young age while some people have parents who've never cooked for themselves. Personal preference, finances, and scheduling play a huge part. The definitions of "cooking" and "feeding yourself" can vary widely. So, I'm not claiming everyone should know how to make a roast chicken dinner for four with sides and dessert. Although, I do think people should be at a level above boxed mac and cheese and microwaved air-fried chicken nuggets.
Cooking is, in my opinion, shopping for fresh foods and turning them into a meal. It's about your health, your pleasure, and your finances.
When my best friend first moved in with me I had to teach her how to cook lol. When I was a teen my mom forced my brothers and me to cook dinner a few times a week which I'm really thankful for
Valuable! I never had to cook at home, so I never learned it. I still don't like cooking - because I am bad at it!
To me it's a chore. I use to say it's like brushing my teeth - it's no fun but we have to do it every day.
Taking regular breaks. Whether it's a quick hourly stretch or a longer weekly break, stepping away from your activities can help you avoid burnout and stay on top of your game.
Surprisingly this improved my overall gameplay in competitive games. And I am not exhausted from work anymore.
Effective planning. It's very easy to say " I'm doing this today and that tomorrow" but how realistic is that? Know how to break something down into its component pieces and be able complete them along a schedule. It's basically project management, but for everyday stuff. It helps immensely to be able to tackle big projects and recognize that things are progressing even though the project still isn't done. Hugely helpful for stress management.
ADHD sufferers feeling the pain right about now.
Do you have a good resource to read up on that?
So project management on a personal scale is really varied based on what level of detail you need. I've worked with people who have ADHD traits and they worked best with a very micromanaged day, like there is a reminder every 15 minutes to keep them on track (that's a generalization, but not far off).
But if you're just looking for some broader structure to help organize projects you have to do, you can look at AI assisted planners to remove some of the basic breakdown work. You can ask ChatGPT to create a rough outline for some major projects, give it a time frame, and mention any other circumstances (work, childcare, only work 1 hour at a time, etc.), it will give you a decent outline to start with. You can then break it down further if you need to and refine the time line to best fit your own needs
There are lots of 'personal project management' books that can help to break it down, also good youtube videos on the subject. There are 3 primary things to remember though:
create manageable goals, this might take some trial and error to figure out timing.
stick to your plan. Putting off a task because you don't feel like it defeats the purpose of making a plan.
if you stuck to the plan the best you could and it didn't work out, don't beat yourself up. Use it as a learning experience for next time you need to plan stuff out. Figure out why it didn't work and fix it.
Quick note: reading/other resources won't hand you the answers, they will only help to provide and explain the tools you would need to be successful. Good luck!
I think the content says it all really.
Break projects into small tasks and track your progress.
I mean there's a billion self help books explaining how someone else did it, but none of those will work for you.
I used to use the same software I use as a developer for planning things. It's was massively helpful.
Jira? Admit it, you're a scrum master.
Good advice. And one of the keys is to focus on accomplishing the parts of the project you took care of today, not obsessing about working ahead or what’s on your plate tomorrow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Hugely helpful for stress management.
As someone whose workplace refuses to schedule anything properly, and refuses to respect to any attempts to schedule anything or anyone, I feel this so much.
Sewing on a button
Change a tire on your vehicle. Sure beats waiting for AAA or whatever. (Although some newer cars don't come with spare tires).
Jumpstart a car. With jumper cables or one of those battery jumpstart boxes.
Changing your oil can save some money. Add chassis lubrication too while you're at it. Can save quite a bit on service costs. (Just don't skip other regular services, lest your car fail you which will be expensive in the long run)
Repair a toilet by replacing internal parts such as: valve, flapper, float, flush lever.
Related: dont pay for AAA.
Tow companies aren't paid enough by AAA for them to prioritize you in any way. You will get lesser quality service from people who are frustrated their workplace contracts with AAA.
As much as it sucks, try to save money for vehicle emergencies and/or be able to fix minor vehicle issues yourself.
More importantly, learn your vehicles maintenance schedule and follow it religiously. If you are only maintaining it when something goes wrong, you are missing the forest for the trees.
If you are only maintaining it when something goes wrong, you are missing the forest for the trees.
On the coast we have a ferry system, a public-private partnership - aw fuck, right? - that "runs to failure" and only maintains when things are actually broken.
It's become such an unreliable mess, now. But the CEO gets a bonus.
Wire stripping and crimping. Especially if you plan to do offgriding homesteading with solar but occasionally comes up in home applications when you want to revive a mangled extension cord or install a fixture. Specialized cables start to add up very quickly its much more cost effective to buy a big bag of connectors, a big roll of decent gauge wire, dig out an old set of wire cutters+needlenose and fire up a 2 minute instructions yt video. Like all other skills it takes time and error to get good at it but its not too terribly difficult as wel as very cool to essentially build your own electrical grid from the ground up with wires and connectors you made yourself..
About a year back I stumbled across these cool products that are a heatshrink sheath with a metal ring coated in low temp solder inside. They made all of my wire joining a million times easier. Just strip the end of two wires, push them into the sheath and blast them with a heat gun for 20 seconds until the ring contracts into a crimp and the solder flows onto the wires. Better physical and electrical connection than a crimp, with none of the futzing that comes with soldering and sheathing.
Thank you for sharing, this looks awesome! Will have to look into getting some.
I'd add simple soldering. It's amazing how many little gadgets go bad because a little wire inside broke loose when it was dropped. I've fixed headphones, a temperature sensor, and even done things with the vehicles.
fermenting? to make healthy, cheap, useful, durable and more importantly delicious foods?
Got me on that one, I'm lacking. Made plenty of my own hot sauces from scratch, never learned to ferment.
Install a well anchored level shelf.
Plaster, sand the holes and repaint when you remove the shelf.
Very basic tools, very easy techniques, yet mind blowing how many people don't know how to do these things.
Very basic tools, very easy techniques, yet mind blowing how many people don’t know how to do these things.
To be fair, most millennials aren't and haven't been homeowners. It took until 2022 for just over half of millennials to become homeowners.
If you have lived in apartments your whole life, you're most likely disallowed from doing anything of the sort.
When you're pushing 40 and you finally own a house, and for the first time in you're life you're allowed to modify the place you live, this is the first time you've had an opportunity to learn and practice such a skill.
I kind of don't really blame millennials for this one, although it is arguably an important skillset. Most of us haven't had living situations where we could do this, it's as simple as that.
I've never lived in an apartment where I was able to hang shelves, let alone paint the walls.
I was a lucky one, bought my house 12 years ago and went to town doing whatever I wanted, holes, paint, ripping up old carpet, etc... then 1 month ago found out my work wants to me move half way across the country in 3 months. Now I've got to fix 12 years worth of fucking with my home in a month so I can sell this shit and move lol. Luckily I was a carpenter back in the day (family business) so I know how to fix it all but it's still shitty. I would suggest not moving forward on projects you can't quickly finish when you own a home as my thing for this thread lol.
I’m sure happy they just made us perm WFH. My flooring replacement project is hovering on 4 years now at about halfway done.
I feel you. I'm the same. Now it's all in overdrive lol.
Tell us you intend to skive off work without using phrases like 'wage theft' and 'lie'.
This is so absurd to me how can anyone disallow painting and drilling into walls of an apartment, I'm very glad that tenancy laws here basically say that if you rent a place you can do whatever you want with it, as long as reasonably it's restore-able.
For a lot of the younger folks in the EU if your rental contract tells you you can't do something it's probably bullshit. And even if it isn't at worst you'll lose your deposit.
Some US rental contracts even regulate what spices you can cook with, which is arguably something that could be akin to racism since its squarely aimed at certain cultures foods over others.
However, since its not explicitly racism, in the US its totally okay. You basically have to use a racial slur while doing it for it to count as "racism" here.
I agree with you to a point, some spices used in cultural dishes are extremely potent and permeates into everything when cooked even semi-frequently. Even worse than cigarette smoke IMO. Indian curry is delicious, but the cooking process of it...not so much.
It's not completely unreasonable to class these spices as having similar damage to property as cigarette smoke and often it takes similar remediation methods to get rid of it.
When my wife and I bought our first house, I was able to clean the entire rest of the house in the time it took her to clean the wall where the previous owners had done their cooking.
Good thing is there’s a video tutorial for almost anything like that on the internet at least. One of the more essential, helpful things this age of information sharing has contributed to.
If you have lived in apartments your whole life, you’re most likely disallowed from doing anything of the sort.
This. I've had a mortgage for exactly 4 years in my life, and when we panic-sold to move across the country for work we got nothing back for the investment (less, if you count renos we had done on move-in). And there's nothing I want to do as an amateur in a 50-year-old house that involves opening a wall.
How to change your vehicle's tire SAFELY.
Basic home maintenance or at the very least troubleshooting and diagnostics when something breaks so you can give the repair tech better info when they arrive.
Basic home cleaning. This one might sound obvious but the number of people I've worked with who've never held a mop before astounds me. Learn to do your own laundry and clean your bathroom and kitchen well and efficiently. Learn what it takes to do a quick clean and a deep clean and do them on a schedule.
NATO alphabet, or any phonetic alphabet for that matter.
It will take you less than an hour to learn it and doesn't need to be perfect, Mark or Mike, your interlocutor will know you mean the letter M
What about the pasta phonetic alphabet? It takes a while to master:
lock picking i guess? its not that hard and useful
I feel like I need someone to teach me in person. I've watched videos, read articles, I understand the science but can't get the feel.
Have you tried a clear practice lock to pick? You can watch the pins as you get the feel for it. Once you can pick it easily, cover it with painter's tape so you can't see the pins, and try again.
It's purely practice and persistence. No one can take that from you.
I bought a bunch of locks from goodwill and took them apart down to the mechanism, just kept practicing until I got it down.
I've been lockpicking for a year or two, I don't think ever actually used it in the field at all though.
Do you have a goto seller for lockpicking supplies? I would like to learn lock picking but I don't trust the official stuff!
Just buy a southern ordinance kit, they are worth it and way better than budgets kits.
Formal Logic. Please, can this be a full k-12 course like English and Math? Just learn to think, analyse, and correlate ideas in ways that are communicable. Learn what the logical fallacies are and how to avoid them. Train a functional bullshit detector. This world would be so much better off if the bulk of the population could understand what a confirmation bias was. As much as I hate to link to a Grammarly blog post, it gives good examples. Obviously all of it needs to be made age appropriate, but we never bother to actually teach people how to think, we just expect them to know and that has not been working out too well.
that's informal logic. formal logic is mathematical.
You are correct, I have studied both (math degree). Both need to be trained though. Informal logic helps a lot to notice the nonsensical statements that can be made that satisfy the rules of formal logic, but still don't operate in reality.
Sewing. I've saved a lot of shirts putting buttons back on and fixing holes. You can also do your own alterations on clothes but I'm not brave enough to try that yet.
CPR, first aid, basic self defense.
First aid.
Learn a dance or two nothing too complicated but being able to bust out a dance at a wedding really impressed everyone.
Learn only to waltz, adapt to current melody.
Yeah but I feel at least at weddings circle dancing is more common and that requires going in the middle and showing your moves not really partner dancing. I haven't been to a wedding where there's partner dancing with enough room to do a waltz.
Assert dominance, waltz.
sewing with a needle and thread. nothing complicated, the bare minimum is useful in a lot of ways.
i keep a small kit in my car because my pants waistlines keep shrinking mysteriously and i'm starting to randomly lose buttons and getting blowouts in the crotch. [likely due to far-reaching, nefarious, conspiracies and not b/c of the other kit in my car that's full of snacks].
what used to be my crippling, irrational fear of inadvertently exposing myself at like a job interview or in an uber with a cute driver, is now an easy fix i can do in a minute AND it's certain to make an impression.
old winter jackets with a lot of zippered pockets are especially great practice. try unstitching and removing a few of the pockets, then add them to other jackets or whatever you can think of.
Does your gun have trouble shooting? Why not try troubleshooting.
installing a privacy custom rom onto your android phone
Any good tutorials?
YouTube.com
piped.video
odysee.com
For some people it's easy, for others it isn't, and/or they're afraid of messing it up.
This is the secondary reason why I created SwapMyOS, a GrapheneOS installation service that kicks back a percentage of every order to the GrapheneOS nonprofit to keep it funded.
Primary reason was to keep GrapheneOS alive and funded.
Someone blow my mind with it and since then my life wasn't colplete without it... just listen me out .... You are in a rush maybe your train is leaving or something like that ... So you run right ... Yeah and if u encounter a pair of stairs climbing up you still rush by skipping steps right ... And if the stairs are going down ? Yeah you might jump the last steps but you ain't gonna gain much especially if the stairs are long or wiredly segmented ... And if I told you it's possible to descend 2 steps with a single step ? You climb stairs in a pair why not descend them in a pair too ...
It isn't that hard to learn you might slip some time while learning but I have never fell ... It's all a game of weight transfer ... Just move your weight a little back and move the leg a bit forward... Btw I found it easier with a heavy backpack too...
I was in Milan rushing for the underground train and a man in a blue suit passed me whit ease on the stairs ... Now I'm ready ... I'm waiting for you I'm waiting for revenge !!!
Ok? How much time does this realistically save, 3-5 seconds? Isn't worth the possible gruesome injury.
Yeah so why did u run ?
I also skip steps going down. Essential life skill.
Thanks man appreciate some support I was starting to think I'm the only one to acknowledge the usefulness of this skill
Basic setup of an electric guitar or bass. It's stupid simple.
Edit: Stay stupid, folks.
Does everyone need to learn that though? How often do people come across guitars that are not set up and find themselves desperate to do it?
Hey man, when you're lost on the savannah and a pack of lions or hyena could descend upon you at any minute, you'll need to have that guitar strung and ready. Use the Lion Guitar and hope you didn't pack the Shark Guitar instead.
(I kid. My favourite uncle helped end the Sierra Leonean rebellion in 2005 with a beat up guitar ... maybe he had the Unity Guitar that day?)
Cooking
Also: cleaning. I've had flatmates who managed to take the same time for cleaning the bathroom or the kitchen and yet it somehow still wasn't clean.
My mom was a fast order cook and when I was a teen she got me to help her run a fast food shop our family ran for a few years. She taught me how to work in a kitchen and how to cook.
Her basic rules were ... if you aren't cooking you're cleaning, if you aren't cleaning you're cooking, and if you aren't cooking or cleaning, get out of the kitchen.
If you aren't cleaning as you go, the food prep area will get gross and unsanitary fast. This goes for cooking at home, too.
once I had a flatmate that every time he was cooking he was leaving the kitchen like a warzone and he had used every utensil available in the kitchen. He somehow thought that it was faster for him to focus only on the cooking and after it is completed, to do all the dishes, pots, utensils, glasses, oven trays, scissors, screwdrivers, hammers, drills or whatever else he may had used.
yes! It saves so much money if you can cook properly and don't have to rely on expensive restaurants for "fancy" food.
Some cooking is much, much easier than others. Making a pizza isn't as much an issue as, say, preparing an exotic bird. Cooking involves a level of aesthetics and physics that I could never master for the very reason I could never scrape the iceberg of those two skills.
For me there are few feelings better in the world than having an entire meal not only cooked by yourself, but grown too! I love grabbing veggies from the garden and making dinner. Something so cool about being almost entirely self sufficient.
Learning how to say no. Having personal boundaries.
Can I have money?
Yes.
No.
But what if he's the tax collector?
I am a tax fraudster
Biblical or modern?
Could be either one, though now that I think about it, Biblical tax collectors were the ones who were, in a 100% literal sense, state sponsored muggers (due to the fact that Ancient Rome didn't have an advanced census system to do it systemically with).
I. AM. A. SOVEREIGN. CITIZEN.
It said easy skill
Learn when to say no. I have missed a lot because of this.
Critical thinking. Not enough people stop and think openly about a given problem, situation, or interaction. If everyone took just a moment or two to take into consideration someone else's perspective, circumstances, or goals, the world would be a lot less divisive.
Sadly, it appears not to be an easy skill for a far too many people to learn.
Thinking itself is not easy for many, and that doesn’t even include the critical .
Did you mean 'empathy' instead ?
Not really, no.
Empathy is about understanding the other person's feelings or experience, usually by being able to share in those things, or experience them vicariously. Empathy can even be used negatively. I believe Donald Trump has at least some empathy. He knows damn fucking well what his stupid words and actions are doing to some people.
I'm talking about objectively taking into consideration the other person's views, beliefs, and/or desired outcomes and adjusting actions or words based on that.
For example, I don't have to have empathy for someone who is non-binary to be respectful of their situation. I can't really know or understand their feelings, because I'm a heterosexual male. I can't possibly share in their experiences of being confused about gender identity and being ostracised for it. I have no reference point for those feelings.
But I can certainly be objective about their situation and remember that their gender identity and desired pronouns have literally no impact on me. So, rather than be a divisive prick about it and insisting on referring to them in binary gender terms, I can respect those things about them and act accordingly.
Everyone should learn the basics of troubleshooting!
When trying to resolve a problem it's really important to keep as many variables under control as possible so that you can find the root cause and fix it.
I see lots of people who try a bunch of things without isolating the issue first but can't figure out what is wrong. Then because they messed with it so much it's almost impossible to figure out.
This is important for car maintenance, home maintenance, electronics, computers. Just about everything that can break or stop working right in your life.
My skills at troubleshooting are pretty much limited to
"Turn it off and back on again. The slow way. Sometimes twice."
But you know what? Mostly it works!
Your troubleshooting skills are above average, tbh.
You've identified that there's an issue. You tried something simple to remedy. You even tried it again to make sure.
You didn't make a bunch of crazy assumptions about what the problem was. You didn't do a bunch of weird shit all at once to try to fix it. You didn't do something to make the problem worse.
You're doing great!
Oh I have to share what just happened! My husband's power wheelchair suddenly wouldn't drive. In tilt mode it would still tilt, but in the driving modes it had an error message. By asking in forums he learned that message could mean it thought it was tilted back too much for safe driving, even though it was fully upright. So he tilted way back, and I looked underneath for anything loose, finally tightened one loose screw that I frankly think was unrelated. Then he tilted upright again, giving it an extra couple seconds of push on the joystick, and I pushed forward on the back of the chair. Nothing moved, it was already fully upright. But it did the trick! It's driving fine now.
Wonderful! And the lesson here is, just fucking try something, anything. Your story made me feel good. Fine job!
There's also unplugging and replugging, that works a lot.
My dad can't do this. I've tried to teach him but it's like, a piece of equipment breaks and I'm like "What have you tried so far?" the answer is always nothing because he doesn't know cars/computers/watches/lights, etc etc.
I don't know half of those things either but I'll go over and press all the buttons, if that doesn't work I google it. I've showed him this so many times but it's like it doesn't go in and he's like "But you're good with these things!" Nope, I'm just hitting it until it works.
Print this out for him: https://xkcd.com/627/
I actually sent that to him, multiple times.
How do I print this out?
A lot of the issues learning to troubleshoot are surrounded around not understanding the problem/not understanding the system enough to determine where the problem is. Generally, if you have no idea what the issues could be, you end up trying a bunch of stuff and messing everything up more and people get frustrated you didn't ask for help sooner, or you do nothing and people get frustrated you haven't tried anything before asking for help. This may be a perpetuated problem if someone doesn't have the foundational knowledge to understand the type of system, or if it's just totally out of their wheelhouse and they don't have them mental capacity to try and understand any aspect. This can be seen when people have little to no understanding of: cooking and/or baking, car repair, computer repair, fruit and vegetable farming, sewing clothes or clothes mending, etc. we can pay people to do these things for us because there is so much complication in modern life most don't know how to do everything.
Swimming. It could save your life.
If only it was as easy as getting to a certain point and learning. In which case maybe I wouldn't have to say I can't.
Learn where all the shut off valves for your waterlines are at your house or apartment. When you have a leak is not the time to find out or rather figure out where your shut off valves are at. if you don’t know where your shut off valves are at, what could’ve been a minor water mess could turn into a major bill.
I wish I’d learned a few useful knots earlier in life. Saves so much time when you know how and which one to use.
The ones I use the most are the square knot, taut line hitch and once a year the truckers hitch for tying down the Christmas tree to the top of the car.
https://scoutlife.org/outdoors/176401/how-to-tie-the-7-basic-scout-knots/
Video guides are nice, but I prefer Grog's Knots. He even has an app for offline knot learning, say, when you're deep in the woods and it's raining hard and your tent's rain cover blows off into the lake and you thankfully brought a tarp and rope but don't know how to make one of those adjustable knots that you can just slip-tighten. You know, theoretically speaking.
On a side note and completely unrelated, bring one of those big grout sponges when you go camping. In addition to mopping up all the water in your tent, it makes a nice pillow if your inflatable pillow decides to run away in the night in a storm and go swimming in the lake.
TL;DR: I hate camping.
I was a boy scout in serious camping territory. Wow, do I hate camping, now. And, as a poor kid, winter camping can fuck right off.
I love that website. The surgical knots were nice to have in place to reference.
If you can't tie a knot, tie a lot.
And if anyone is having trouble with that last one, here's a useful video guide.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
here's
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
For me, it's sheet bend, bowline, and round turn and two half hitches. I also tuck a lot of eye splices, but that's more just for fun; a bowline will work fine most of the time instead.
Tall ships?
Square knot, Trucker's hitch, and bowline are the ones I use the most.
For others, I use an app, animated knots, where you can have a favorites list.
Man I'm an Eagle Scout and I forgot how to tie the basic knots already. It takes repetition and practice, I mostly use the square knot so that's the only one I probably remember.
Swimming.
It's easy and it will save your life.
Parents threw me in a class when I was 5. Scared shitless, screaming bloody murder, all that.
And I did indeed save my own life. And I was swimming with a certified lifeguard. Read on...
19, second year of college, fucking around with my neighbor, who I got to fuck, because I lived.
Perfectly still pond, nothing crazy. We were a bit drunk but had our wits about us. For some reason, I lost it. No idea what happened.
Went down like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Literally. Hand sinking for the third time.
(At this point, I would recommend you all watch a video of what drowning looks like. It probably ain't what you think. You might save someone's life.)
Thought, "Figure this out or die. This very second."
Remembered my lessons on floating, got my lips above water and took a sip of air. Stopped fighting, floated back up, did it again. After 3 or 4 tries, I had enough air to calm down, lay on my back and breathe. Just dandy after that. Went home, got laid, and here I am typing this dumb comment 30+ years later.
Learn to swim no matter if it scares you or not.
When I was a pre-teen I was trying out a Boogie Board and a wierd current pulled me much further out into the ocean with much more force than any of the other waves, but years of swim lessons had me more focused on finding upward and trying to stay in place than panicking so I got dumped back onto the beach conscious instead of needing the lifeguard to drag me out
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
watch a video of what drowning looks like
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
CPR. You may not think about it in your day to day life, but in an emergency it's a very low hanging fruit to save someone's life. If someone is not breathing, chest compressions baby... go to town.
And FYI for anyone reading this, mouth to mouth isn't really recommended anymore.
First call 911 or have someone else do it. Then start chest compressions for as long as you can. Switch off with another person if you need to. But keep going until paramedics arrive.
Exactly. I've never actually seen anyone do mouth to mouth in real life, only in movies.
I feel this kicks the ball down the field a bit. It definitely fails strong induction.
Usually, it would be you telling someone "call 911 right now" while you start chest compressions.
It's important to direct your command to a specific person rather than "someone" because of the bystander effect.
First aid! I did a four day course many years ago and I still use the training in so many things. The final day we had to navigate a bus crash scenario and the part that stuck with me was the taking ownership and delegating roles when other people might be scared to act. I think it really instilled in me an ability to turn panic into action, and you can use the triage playbook in so many ways.
I learned that too... knowing what to do in an emergency also reduces the level of panic you experience while you do it.
I did a course 2/3 weeks ago, highly recommend it.
Love the Heart Runner system in Denmark and Sweden. Wish the US had something like that.
https://heartrunner.com/about-the-system/
First off, love this question!
Active listening and validating someone's emotions. Relationship skills in general honestly! Like how to adress the core attachment need in a disagreement instead of just the surface issue.
For those in the US: Learn how to file your own taxes. It's really simple for the large majority of people, and usually just consists of copying numbers into boxes off a sheet your employer made for you. After you've done it once, subsequent times you'll probably have it done yourself in less than half an hour.
You can do it for free on a ton of sites unless you make significant income, freetaxusa is typically the most highly recommended one.
FreeTaxUSA is the best. TurboTax can eat my ass.
Intuit and H&R Block are the reason we have this depraved, inhumane, anti-consumer tax system. They've created the laws that make it necessary to use tax prep software. They should not be rewarded for this by getting business for that very tax prep software. Everyone should say no to TurboTax.
irs.gov/freefile
There are always a bunch of perfectly good competitors to them listed. Use those competitors. For most people it's totally free.
Indeed.
A better tip is to just maintain and monitor your finances on a regular basis. At least once a month sit down and quickly review all your income and expenses. Then at least two or three times a year do full detailed review just so you know where your money came from and went and when it all happened.
I wish I knew this earlier in life.
Think about it, what did you spend your money on two weeks ago? A month? How much did you make in the past month? What did you spend your money on?
Sure many people can give an estimate off the top of their head but it makes a big difference if you can see it all written out and documented in front of you.
Isn't the IRS rolling out an actual free filing program this year?
Yes, I'm not sure if it'll be ready by this year's tax season or not, but it was happening. Last I heard they were doing some limited runs on it.
Sewing, by hand or by machine.
Pollution from "fast fashion" is one of the most insidious types of pollution and one of the highest source of microplastics.
Knowing how to sew has allowed me to keep some garments looking new for over 15 years.
I still have a "snakes on a plane" themed hoodie from 2007 that is still going strong, thanks to sewing and proper washing/drying.
Knowing how to separate your clothing for washing is also helpful in this regard, because it also can make clothes last longer. T-shirts can last a decade if they're washed on a delicates cycle and hung out to dry.
I honestly could give a flying fuck if everything I own is out of style, I'm fucking old anyway.
In this economy? Lock picking.
Most locks are so garbage they don't have to be picked. There's a guy on Youtube that opens locks by whacking them together.
Oh yeah, LockpickingCaveman, great channel. :-P (it's actually LockpickingLawyer.)
Raking a lock, even. So easy. Doesn't always work on all locks, but enough of them.
If 'the economy' is why you 'need' to overcome access restrictions, then you were a criminal before 'the economy made you do it' too.
Mindfulness. You may not be able to turn off the (insert negative feeling here), but you absolutely can turn off the suffering.
I tried guided meditation daily for two months and didn't really notice a difference. Do you have any recommendations?
EDIT: I should mention this was with the Headspace app, following their mindfulness uh... lessons.
It took about a year to make a difference for me.
I guess they call it mindfulness practice for a reason
A year! I didn't really know what to expect, so two months seemed like more than enough.
... With an app...
Oh man I tried meditation with Headspace too and I couldn't hack it. For some reason meditation made me so angry! Like this weird rage would come out of nowhere.
I did find it frustrating that the narrator would give a prompt for what to do, then just enough quiet time to begin, and then interrupt my effort with his talking. Aggravating! But the anger was a separate thing.
I always thought meditation was supposed to help you feel calm and grounded but all it did was frustrate me. :(
It made you feel something. Now sit there quietly and think about why that is. What are you getting frustrated with? Why is it bothering you? Unfounded rage is trying to tell you something about yourself. There's a reason, but you have to be able to be honest with yourself to figure out what it is. Once you can begin to understand it, you can begin to find ways to manage it.
I feel frustration because it sounds like you are right and that is not helping.
I've heard of people having similar reactions to yoga.
Lol that's really funny...I actually hate yoga too, but it doesn't provoke rage, just annoyance because the last thing I wanna do is listen to some white lady done on about chakras! But for it to provoke anger in inmates is disturbing.
I've had good experience with the Waking Up app, which is primarily Insight Meditation. If you can, a multi-day silent retreat allows you to be truly immersed in the practice of just watching your mind and all of its silliness.
When I was little, meditation was the buzz. I've tried it many times and I just found myself "sitting in style". Meditation is described as inspired by hypnosis but they never tell you what to do when you're from the small percentage of people immune to hypnosis.
I have no doubt some people struggle more than others to get to the point where they can sit back and watch. It wasn't immediately obvious to me either, but a couple of months of short daily practice enough to start seeing what the fuss was.
I use the Great Meditation Youtube channel.
For this topic, it's far from what I would call an easy skill; I'm going on six years and it still feels like a weak muscle. But it can be really helpful.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Great Meditation Youtube channel
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I mean, mental illness is still going to exist, no matter how much power you give your mind.
Mental illness is treatable, and being aware of the symptoms as they're happening is a major part of the treatment for many such illnesses.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean it completely goes away. Mental illness is the human equivalent of software issues, the very definition entails you can't be like Neo from the Matrix and seize one's own mind.
I'm not understanding your comment. Mindfulness is paying close attention to the actual experiences in consciousness, as opposed to just being carried along by thoughts. It's not about taking control of your mind.
Oh. Yeah that makes sense then. The way you described it in your original comment made it seem like gnostic-esque advice.
Touch typing, if you spend more than an hour a day in front of a computer screen.
Be kind
I wish being kind was easy. Sometimes I feel like kindness is one of the hardest things to do.
Sometimes it is, but that's part of why it's so valuable.
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Rewind.
Baking bread. At first, your results will be uneven. (brick like, over baked, underbaked, too much yeast, not enough kneading, etc.) Just don't give up, the first time you get it close to "right", you'll be addicted to home made bread. It's about training your hands and other senses until you don't need a recipe any more.
Literally eating a homemade bun right now.
Can confirm, it's addictive and my stomach is having a very conflicting love/hate relationship with me for it lol
The one thing that got me into home made bread was getting a bread machine and using it exclusively for kneading. Machine made bread is weird and uneven to me, but taking the dough and baking it the traditional way makes brilliant bread and saves a lot of time.
I completely agree. Plus I like the shape from a tradional loaf pan vs the odd cube from the bread maker.
Also check out the Bertinet Method. Slap and Fold, baby.
Cooking
I see so many posts, "I don't know how to cook!"
Of fucking course you do. Can't boil water or make toast?! Start and practice. You can only get better.
Programming or scripting; usually Python would be enough to reduce the average repetitive workload of office workers by about 20%.
Especially with ChatGPT you don’t really need to be that good at it, just good enough to read the script over and to know how to execute it.
I'd love to hear about it! Any idea how to get started?
https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
Grateful
Also codeacademy or sololearn. Tons of alternatives too.
The former is byte sized lessons followed by practice, the latter I'd explain as duolingo for coding.
Python is also fairly straightforward comparatively. A lot of the key words make it read almost like sentences
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-python-free-python-courses-for-beginners/
Good stuff, thanks
This one is excellent, by university of Helsinki: programming-23.mooc.fi
Years ago, I learned to shave with just about any sharp, straight edge (yes, I even practiced with a razor sharp axe). It’s interesting how the ‘fine edge control’ transfers to other activities; using a kitchen knife, swinging an axe, cutting with a Xacto, etc.
In the apocalypse, I will be the clean-shaven villain, who is surrounded by all the hot mutant ladies who adore my pretty jowls!
Edit: I use cannabis daily. I found I can shave quickly with a straight razor (after years if practice), or I can shave high. But not both. FTR: cutting yourself a bit here and there simply isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Don't forget the shiny jumpsuits and garages full of sports cars. You never know when you might want to upgrade to being a Bond villain.
Already have the jumpsuit. Crotchless, silver, soft on the inside.
Personal finance
Shamelessly plugging You Need A Budget. Best app I've ever used. My SO and I have been using it for about 3 years now, and the app has been instrumental in us becoming mostly debt-free.
Also, you're a college student, you get a free year!
Another shameless plug for Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app/)
I tried YNAB, but found the UI confusing. Lunch Money is super friendly and still gives me a great overview of my finances
YNAB is a glorified spreadsheet and did not import past data. I found it exceedingly tedious and not helpful. I am currently using Monarch and it's far, far better. It's a bit pricey, but so far as I've found, it's the best.
They give you a link that allows others to try monarch for 30 days (rather than their egregiously short trial of like 7 days):
https://www.monarchmoney.com/referral/pereb3twgc
I get a discount if you buy after the trial, but there's no need.
I'll have to check out lunch money too
Buckets is a free alternative that I switched to when ynab massively increased the price and dropped their grandfathering agreement. Same principals as ynab, but suited me a lot better and is much much cheaper.
Couldn't agree with this more.
Some basic first aid
Even a quick YouTube session on some common cases should help. If you want, getting certified is pretty easy and it looks good on resumes (or at work, you could be the designated person in emergencies)
If someone close to you has an emergency, it's nice to have an idea of what to do while you wait.
On the flip side, I had someone open up about regret from not learning; it was heartbreaking hearing it. Their family member may have died anyways, but they felt like a few extra minutes could have helped the odds, and regretted not knowing what to do
Cooking.
It's shocking to me the number of people I've come across who've no idea how to cook or find it to be too troublesome to do. Moreover, feeding yourself should be the single most primal skill for anyone to have.
I realize there's a lot to unpack here. Some people are taught / learn to cook at a young age while some people have parents who've never cooked for themselves. Personal preference, finances, and scheduling play a huge part. The definitions of "cooking" and "feeding yourself" can vary widely. So, I'm not claiming everyone should know how to make a roast chicken dinner for four with sides and dessert. Although, I do think people should be at a level above boxed mac and cheese and
microwavedair-fried chicken nuggets.Cooking is, in my opinion, shopping for fresh foods and turning them into a meal. It's about your health, your pleasure, and your finances.
When my best friend first moved in with me I had to teach her how to cook lol. When I was a teen my mom forced my brothers and me to cook dinner a few times a week which I'm really thankful for
Valuable! I never had to cook at home, so I never learned it. I still don't like cooking - because I am bad at it!
To me it's a chore. I use to say it's like brushing my teeth - it's no fun but we have to do it every day.
Taking regular breaks. Whether it's a quick hourly stretch or a longer weekly break, stepping away from your activities can help you avoid burnout and stay on top of your game.
Surprisingly this improved my overall gameplay in competitive games. And I am not exhausted from work anymore.
Apply the same at work
Changing brake pads. You do it for $50, they do it for $500
Until they make it so hard to do it yourself, and you have to pay them. …even more.
Eg. removing the fucking bumper to put in a new headlight.
You already need a scan tool for many models in order to retract the electric handbrake.
Most of the cost is labor (and the garage's cut).
Effective planning. It's very easy to say " I'm doing this today and that tomorrow" but how realistic is that? Know how to break something down into its component pieces and be able complete them along a schedule. It's basically project management, but for everyday stuff. It helps immensely to be able to tackle big projects and recognize that things are progressing even though the project still isn't done. Hugely helpful for stress management.
ADHD sufferers feeling the pain right about now.
Do you have a good resource to read up on that?
So project management on a personal scale is really varied based on what level of detail you need. I've worked with people who have ADHD traits and they worked best with a very micromanaged day, like there is a reminder every 15 minutes to keep them on track (that's a generalization, but not far off).
But if you're just looking for some broader structure to help organize projects you have to do, you can look at AI assisted planners to remove some of the basic breakdown work. You can ask ChatGPT to create a rough outline for some major projects, give it a time frame, and mention any other circumstances (work, childcare, only work 1 hour at a time, etc.), it will give you a decent outline to start with. You can then break it down further if you need to and refine the time line to best fit your own needs
There are lots of 'personal project management' books that can help to break it down, also good youtube videos on the subject. There are 3 primary things to remember though:
Quick note: reading/other resources won't hand you the answers, they will only help to provide and explain the tools you would need to be successful. Good luck!
I think the content says it all really.
Break projects into small tasks and track your progress.
I mean there's a billion self help books explaining how someone else did it, but none of those will work for you.
I used to use the same software I use as a developer for planning things. It's was massively helpful.
Jira? Admit it, you're a scrum master.
Good advice. And one of the keys is to focus on accomplishing the parts of the project you took care of today, not obsessing about working ahead or what’s on your plate tomorrow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
As someone whose workplace refuses to schedule anything properly, and refuses to respect to any attempts to schedule anything or anyone, I feel this so much.
Sewing on a button
Change a tire on your vehicle. Sure beats waiting for AAA or whatever. (Although some newer cars don't come with spare tires).
Jumpstart a car. With jumper cables or one of those battery jumpstart boxes.
Changing your oil can save some money. Add chassis lubrication too while you're at it. Can save quite a bit on service costs. (Just don't skip other regular services, lest your car fail you which will be expensive in the long run)
Repair a toilet by replacing internal parts such as: valve, flapper, float, flush lever.
Related: dont pay for AAA.
Tow companies aren't paid enough by AAA for them to prioritize you in any way. You will get lesser quality service from people who are frustrated their workplace contracts with AAA.
As much as it sucks, try to save money for vehicle emergencies and/or be able to fix minor vehicle issues yourself.
More importantly, learn your vehicles maintenance schedule and follow it religiously. If you are only maintaining it when something goes wrong, you are missing the forest for the trees.
On the coast we have a ferry system, a public-private partnership - aw fuck, right? - that "runs to failure" and only maintains when things are actually broken.
It's become such an unreliable mess, now. But the CEO gets a bonus.
Wire stripping and crimping. Especially if you plan to do offgriding homesteading with solar but occasionally comes up in home applications when you want to revive a mangled extension cord or install a fixture. Specialized cables start to add up very quickly its much more cost effective to buy a big bag of connectors, a big roll of decent gauge wire, dig out an old set of wire cutters+needlenose and fire up a 2 minute instructions yt video. Like all other skills it takes time and error to get good at it but its not too terribly difficult as wel as very cool to essentially build your own electrical grid from the ground up with wires and connectors you made yourself..
About a year back I stumbled across these cool products that are a heatshrink sheath with a metal ring coated in low temp solder inside. They made all of my wire joining a million times easier. Just strip the end of two wires, push them into the sheath and blast them with a heat gun for 20 seconds until the ring contracts into a crimp and the solder flows onto the wires. Better physical and electrical connection than a crimp, with none of the futzing that comes with soldering and sheathing.
Thank you for sharing, this looks awesome! Will have to look into getting some.
These are so cool! Do you have a link to buy?
Edit: Found them! These are crimpless solder sleeves. Crimpless Solder Sleeve Heat Shrink Variety Kit - 90 Piece
I'd add simple soldering. It's amazing how many little gadgets go bad because a little wire inside broke loose when it was dropped. I've fixed headphones, a temperature sensor, and even done things with the vehicles.
fermenting? to make healthy, cheap, useful, durable and more importantly delicious foods?
Got me on that one, I'm lacking. Made plenty of my own hot sauces from scratch, never learned to ferment.
Install a well anchored level shelf.
Plaster, sand the holes and repaint when you remove the shelf.
Very basic tools, very easy techniques, yet mind blowing how many people don't know how to do these things.
To be fair, most millennials aren't and haven't been homeowners. It took until 2022 for just over half of millennials to become homeowners.
If you have lived in apartments your whole life, you're most likely disallowed from doing anything of the sort.
When you're pushing 40 and you finally own a house, and for the first time in you're life you're allowed to modify the place you live, this is the first time you've had an opportunity to learn and practice such a skill.
I kind of don't really blame millennials for this one, although it is arguably an important skillset. Most of us haven't had living situations where we could do this, it's as simple as that.
I've never lived in an apartment where I was able to hang shelves, let alone paint the walls.
I was a lucky one, bought my house 12 years ago and went to town doing whatever I wanted, holes, paint, ripping up old carpet, etc... then 1 month ago found out my work wants to me move half way across the country in 3 months. Now I've got to fix 12 years worth of fucking with my home in a month so I can sell this shit and move lol. Luckily I was a carpenter back in the day (family business) so I know how to fix it all but it's still shitty. I would suggest not moving forward on projects you can't quickly finish when you own a home as my thing for this thread lol.
I’m sure happy they just made us perm WFH. My flooring replacement project is hovering on 4 years now at about halfway done.
I feel you. I'm the same. Now it's all in overdrive lol.
Tell us you intend to skive off work without using phrases like 'wage theft' and 'lie'.
This is so absurd to me how can anyone disallow painting and drilling into walls of an apartment, I'm very glad that tenancy laws here basically say that if you rent a place you can do whatever you want with it, as long as reasonably it's restore-able.
For a lot of the younger folks in the EU if your rental contract tells you you can't do something it's probably bullshit. And even if it isn't at worst you'll lose your deposit.
Some US rental contracts even regulate what spices you can cook with, which is arguably something that could be akin to racism since its squarely aimed at certain cultures foods over others.
However, since its not explicitly racism, in the US its totally okay. You basically have to use a racial slur while doing it for it to count as "racism" here.
I agree with you to a point, some spices used in cultural dishes are extremely potent and permeates into everything when cooked even semi-frequently. Even worse than cigarette smoke IMO. Indian curry is delicious, but the cooking process of it...not so much.
It's not completely unreasonable to class these spices as having similar damage to property as cigarette smoke and often it takes similar remediation methods to get rid of it.
When my wife and I bought our first house, I was able to clean the entire rest of the house in the time it took her to clean the wall where the previous owners had done their cooking.
Good thing is there’s a video tutorial for almost anything like that on the internet at least. One of the more essential, helpful things this age of information sharing has contributed to.
This. I've had a mortgage for exactly 4 years in my life, and when we panic-sold to move across the country for work we got nothing back for the investment (less, if you count renos we had done on move-in). And there's nothing I want to do as an amateur in a 50-year-old house that involves opening a wall.
How to change your vehicle's tire SAFELY.
Basic home maintenance or at the very least troubleshooting and diagnostics when something breaks so you can give the repair tech better info when they arrive.
Basic home cleaning. This one might sound obvious but the number of people I've worked with who've never held a mop before astounds me. Learn to do your own laundry and clean your bathroom and kitchen well and efficiently. Learn what it takes to do a quick clean and a deep clean and do them on a schedule.
NATO alphabet, or any phonetic alphabet for that matter.
It will take you less than an hour to learn it and doesn't need to be perfect, Mark or Mike, your interlocutor will know you mean the letter M
What about the pasta phonetic alphabet? It takes a while to master:
H I J K W Y 😢
Now I'm hungry.
I'm learning this tonight
lock picking i guess? its not that hard and useful
I feel like I need someone to teach me in person. I've watched videos, read articles, I understand the science but can't get the feel.
Have you tried a clear practice lock to pick? You can watch the pins as you get the feel for it. Once you can pick it easily, cover it with painter's tape so you can't see the pins, and try again.
It's purely practice and persistence. No one can take that from you.
I bought a bunch of locks from goodwill and took them apart down to the mechanism, just kept practicing until I got it down.
I've been lockpicking for a year or two, I don't think ever actually used it in the field at all though.
Do you have a goto seller for lockpicking supplies? I would like to learn lock picking but I don't trust the official stuff!
Just buy a southern ordinance kit, they are worth it and way better than budgets kits.
Formal Logic. Please, can this be a full k-12 course like English and Math? Just learn to think, analyse, and correlate ideas in ways that are communicable. Learn what the logical fallacies are and how to avoid them. Train a functional bullshit detector. This world would be so much better off if the bulk of the population could understand what a confirmation bias was. As much as I hate to link to a Grammarly blog post, it gives good examples. Obviously all of it needs to be made age appropriate, but we never bother to actually teach people how to think, we just expect them to know and that has not been working out too well.
that's informal logic. formal logic is mathematical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic#Formal_logic
You are correct, I have studied both (math degree). Both need to be trained though. Informal logic helps a lot to notice the nonsensical statements that can be made that satisfy the rules of formal logic, but still don't operate in reality.
Sewing. I've saved a lot of shirts putting buttons back on and fixing holes. You can also do your own alterations on clothes but I'm not brave enough to try that yet.
CPR, first aid, basic self defense.
First aid.
Learn a dance or two nothing too complicated but being able to bust out a dance at a wedding really impressed everyone.
Learn only to waltz, adapt to current melody.
Yeah but I feel at least at weddings circle dancing is more common and that requires going in the middle and showing your moves not really partner dancing. I haven't been to a wedding where there's partner dancing with enough room to do a waltz.
Assert dominance, waltz.
sewing with a needle and thread. nothing complicated, the bare minimum is useful in a lot of ways.
i keep a small kit in my car because my pants waistlines keep shrinking mysteriously and i'm starting to randomly lose buttons and getting blowouts in the crotch. [likely due to far-reaching, nefarious, conspiracies and not b/c of the other kit in my car that's full of snacks].
what used to be my crippling, irrational fear of inadvertently exposing myself at like a job interview or in an uber with a cute driver, is now an easy fix i can do in a minute AND it's certain to make an impression.
old winter jackets with a lot of zippered pockets are especially great practice. try unstitching and removing a few of the pockets, then add them to other jackets or whatever you can think of.
Does your gun have trouble shooting? Why not try troubleshooting.
installing a privacy custom rom onto your android phone
Any good tutorials?
YouTube.com
piped.video
odysee.com
For some people it's easy, for others it isn't, and/or they're afraid of messing it up.
This is the secondary reason why I created SwapMyOS, a GrapheneOS installation service that kicks back a percentage of every order to the GrapheneOS nonprofit to keep it funded.
Primary reason was to keep GrapheneOS alive and funded.
Someone blow my mind with it and since then my life wasn't colplete without it... just listen me out .... You are in a rush maybe your train is leaving or something like that ... So you run right ... Yeah and if u encounter a pair of stairs climbing up you still rush by skipping steps right ... And if the stairs are going down ? Yeah you might jump the last steps but you ain't gonna gain much especially if the stairs are long or wiredly segmented ... And if I told you it's possible to descend 2 steps with a single step ? You climb stairs in a pair why not descend them in a pair too ...
It isn't that hard to learn you might slip some time while learning but I have never fell ... It's all a game of weight transfer ... Just move your weight a little back and move the leg a bit forward... Btw I found it easier with a heavy backpack too...
I was in Milan rushing for the underground train and a man in a blue suit passed me whit ease on the stairs ... Now I'm ready ... I'm waiting for you I'm waiting for revenge !!!
Ok? How much time does this realistically save, 3-5 seconds? Isn't worth the possible gruesome injury.
Yeah so why did u run ?
I also skip steps going down. Essential life skill.
Thanks man appreciate some support I was starting to think I'm the only one to acknowledge the usefulness of this skill
Basic setup of an electric guitar or bass. It's stupid simple.
Edit: Stay stupid, folks.
Does everyone need to learn that though? How often do people come across guitars that are not set up and find themselves desperate to do it?
Hey man, when you're lost on the savannah and a pack of lions or hyena could descend upon you at any minute, you'll need to have that guitar strung and ready. Use the Lion Guitar and hope you didn't pack the Shark Guitar instead.
(I kid. My favourite uncle helped end the Sierra Leonean rebellion in 2005 with a beat up guitar ... maybe he had the Unity Guitar that day?)