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.
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.
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
It said easy skill
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Love the Heart Runner system in Denmark and Sweden. Wish the US had something like that.
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.
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. :(
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Also check out the Bertinet Method. Slap and Fold, baby.
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.
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.
Personal finance
Couldn’t agree with this more.
