Ok, I might as well go first: I wish I could draw. Not at the level where I could make photorealistic portraits, but I’ve always been envious of those who are able to scetch something together in a few minutes that perfectly captures what they want to convey. Sometimes words aren’t enough to express what I want to say, and for those situations I would love to have a simple drawing do the talking for me.
I’m a hobbyist programmer myself. I’ve picked up a few languages along the way, and by far the best approach I have found to learning is a simple but real practical use case. Find the smallest task you want your program to do, break it down into even smaller subsections, and then start to figure out how to transform it into code. It usually takes less code and knowledge about a language than you think.
A few years back I got really into Python for a few months as a complete newbie. One day, when I felt ready, I told myself I would put all the python skills I picked up and build a small program that would generate random, solvable sudoko puzzles. After a few weeks trying everything and not getting anywhere, I gave up programming.
Moral of the story is I probably that I should have taken it a bit slower I guess
To be fair, I’m a decent programmer: I spend a significant portion of my workdays programming all kinds of things. Writing a program to generate sudoku’s with a unique solution, without copy pasting a bunch of algorithms, but actually making it all up yourself definitely sounds non-trivial to me.
(Read: That sounds like a really hard beginner project, and you should be proud for even trying, and you shouldn’t give up :) )
this is exactly how I started. I looked at my job to see what I can do to solve an issue we were having using python and, even though my final script was a complete mess, it worked. learned SO much along the way
Here’s another quick tip to get anyone started: Find some code written by someone else, and modify it.
Depending on the language, you might be able to just read what it says and experiment with what happens when you change some details here and there. If the code does something that you’re interested in, you’ll also have the motivation to spend a few hours tweaking the code, or even reading the documentation.
Also, nowadays you can ask GPT what different parts of the code does. You can drill down with follow up questions until you understand how a specific detail works in the language you’re working with.
I am a programmer. It’s like riding a bike, the training wheels are follow along projects on Udemy and YouTube. Don’t try to start with massive projects for dream ambitions, make a button fetch some data when clicked then move on from there.
Dude, piano is so simple compared to guitar in a theory sense. The notes are all in a row. If you learn the fretboard on guitar first, it transfers so easily.
Russian actually isn’t that bad. It takes time, but I’ve been learning it because my gf is fluent. She calls it an unga-bunga language because literal word-by-word translation sounds like caveman-speak lol
French is considered just about as hard as Spanish, maybe a little harder on the phonetics. German is harder than French or Spanish. Russian is harder than German/French/Spanish, but Japanese would be significantly harder than Russian.
Other than ALL, Spanish would be very useful. Japanese so I can watch Anime and not miss half of it because I’m reading subtitles. French so I can cuss at you and sound like I’m quoting a love song. German so I can quote you a love song and sound like I’m cussing at you. And Chinese (mandarin?) because that has a lot of business opportunity.
This is my answer also. I wish I was multi-lingual.
I’m regularly on calls with people for whom English is not their primary language. Almost without fail they apologize for their poor English. I regularly tell those people, “please don’t apologize, you do me that courtesy of communicating with me in my native tongue. I am completely unable to reciprocate that courtesy.”
That’s the problem with native lingua franca speakers. They don’t have a foreign language that they really have to learn.
If you don’t speak English people are mostly limited to their own country. German is worthless in France. So we all need to learn English, while you don’t have a lot of benefit of actually learning other languages.
To show my point: My team at work is spread over most of Europe. We don’t have an English native speaker in the team and there are maybe a small handful of them in the whole company. Still, we all speak English at work, because it’s the only language everyone knows.
Look into Comprehensible Input. Dreaming Spanish is a great channel/site.
It’s really not difficult to do per se, it just takes a LOT of time. 1500+ hours. But if you can replace the time you spend watching YouTube videos and doomscrolling, you’ll get there eventually. Especially once you reach the point of understanding media in the language you’re learning. You can then go mindlessly watch YouTube again… but in that language lmao.
Check out this playlist for an explanation of the method (turn on subtitles) youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J… , TL;DW don’t study the language. Don’t do grammar/vocab by rote. Literally just listen to a crap ton of the language. You will learn grammar/vocab naturally with repetition in context. But you must listen/watch at a level you can understand. That starts with content with a lot of hand gestures and simple stories, where maybe you don’t understand the words but you understand the meaning by the rest of the context. After a hundred hours or so you can move on to content with less context clues, and after maybe 400-600 hours start with media meant for native speakers.
I wish I could do things carefully. Doesn’t matter how hard I try; if I wash up water goes everywhere, even when I’m trying not to let it. I can’t do cutting in when it’s time to paint a room. I can’t move things around without bumping them, usually. Just incapable of doing things carefully.
One thing that I have learned is that concentrating on something means doing it, whether concentrating on doing it right or wrong. So trying to not do something generally means doing the wrong thing because that is what I'm thinking about.
Doesn't help with clumsy stuff that just kinda happens, but at least I stopped focusing on avoiding mistakes and then making those mistakes and reduced the overall number.
Learning to say no. Many times or not to say all my life I have always tried to get along with everyone, and I always say “Yes” to everything, committing myself to things I really don’t want just because I don’t know how to say no.
I wish I was better at debate. My wife always comes out ahead in arguments. Maybe it’s because she had a debate class in high school and I never did. I always stumble over my arguments and they are easy to pick apart. Not that I would use that skill against her. I’d still probably let her win, haha. But it would just be a nice skill to have in life.
Being able to detect logical fallacies will help a lot, but it’s not a perfect solution either. If an argument follows a flawed logic, it might also have factual issues as well. The thing is, there are exceptions.
Some people actually have something factual to say, but they mess up the wording and end up saying something paradoxical. Someone trained in detecting logical fallacies might dismiss the argument as complete nonsense, even though the core of the argument was true.
Also, the reverse is true. If you know what you’re doing, you can craft a beautiful and logical argument that isn’t actually grounded in reality. Someone not trained to wield this sword, may be defenseless against it.
These kinds of arguing tools are definitely useful, but they don’t always lead to the right answer. Mistakes happen on both sides of the debate.
Music. Probably singing and acoustic guitar. I really like singing, even if I’m really bad at it, and I like getting lost in music. Yes I can listen to some music, but I feel like doing it yourself gives it something more. Someday I’ll get classes haha, I need more hours in my day
I’ve been playing guitar and singing for 20 something years. When you really hit a groove and nail a song, it’s an indescribable feeling. You kind of travel outside yourself. Now, when you get others involved and make music, it’s transcendental.
I have been blessed with zero rhythm or musical ability. I’ve never been able to clap on beat for example.
We watch family feud and I can be clapping along (to make my wife laugh primarily) all on my own not even beat with the audience, and I don’t even notice I’m off!
The great irony is I have much better hearing than the average person.
My wife can read a a cookbook (or a recipe in general) and instantly contextualize what she’s reading. If I could do that, too, there’d be a lot less strain in our marriage.
For that matter, remembering a list of more than three things for more than twenty minutes, that’s abother one.
Bad handwriting literally runs in my family, and as hard as I've tried I've never been able to improve it. I've resorted to writing in block, and even then it still looks scruffy.
Yet some of my colleagues have wonderful handwriting, and it makes me wonder why I couldn't have been born with better hands.
I'm going to start trying to learn how to draw in the New Year, so I hope that helps in some way.
I’ve found that people who worry that they have bad handwriting typically have very good, legible handwriting. This is true with a lot of things actually. If you care about it, chances are you’re above average already. It’s only people who don’t care and thus you don’t hear from at all about it who are truly bad at something.
Here’s what changed my handwriting: turning it into a hobby
At school, writing stuff all the time was more like a job, so naturally I wasn’t really that interested in it. However when you don’t have to write a ton of stuff every day, you can approach it form a different angle. Go to the library and find a book about calligraphy. Pick a style you find interesting, and start practicing.
Motivation is key. Don’t write stuff you hate in a style you despise. That’s just basically a long way to say: school. Let’s say you fall in love with textura quadrata, so you start practicing that style instead of cursive. Eventually you’ll try italic, humanist, uncial and other styles too. Then you’ll start writing longer things; not just shopping lists, but journaling too. After a while, you start to notice that your handwriting has improved.
BTW don’t go with a dip pen at first. Instead, get a Pilot Parallel Pen, because it’s good for for most styles. Once you’re familiar with a specific writing style, you can start learning how to manage the ink flow of a dip pen, because that’s a completely different ball game.
Have you tried reading in bed? It’s not just a few minutes but it definitely helps me make the eyes tired and heavy which makes me know when I can close the book and fall asleep in a matter of minutes.
Home Depot rents out gas-less mig welders surprisingly cheap. You could spend a fun 3-4 hours noodling around trying simple welding of angle iron pieces!
I bet you could find a class on it somewhere. Trade school or adult edu or even a local car club might have occasional offerings. This one is on my list too.
I could go to a community college around me (I know they teach it), but scheduling it around work might take some work. You know, I think I might actually look and see if they have an occasional weekend course. I don't have to be a professional welder, just good enough.
Woodworking, or any activity that involves crafting useful and/or beautiful things with my own two hands. I live in a flat so I lack space to do it, but the idea of using an object or a furniture everyday while knowing I actually made it from scratch is just so appealing to me
Change your mindset. Decide to put more effort into your personal life than you do work. Don't burn all your fuel for a workplace that doesn't care if you live or die.
I’m actually working on switching to a different team where I won’t have to manage anyone else. I’m hoping that fixes some of it because a lot of the people I’m in charge of require a lot of baby sitting and my team is 24/7. Im already trying to lower the amount of effort I put in but if I do much less it makes things worse for my coworkers. I don’t really care about the company beyond not getting fired but I do not want to create problems for my coworkers.
Sometimes you have to let people struggle. Managing people means delegating tasks. When I was training to be a McDonald's shift manger in my early 20's one of the training videos said that you should run a shift with your hands in your pockets. What they meant was that you needed to shift your mindset from being a crew member to a manger. You will never get any of your own work done because you will be focused on helping the other crew members with their tasks rather than focusing on the big picture.
I do understand that. The problem is that my boss doesn’t and when my team fails to deliver something I’m answerable for it. On top of that the company as a whole makes it a pain in the ass to replace people if I fire them so it takes months to get someone new up to speed. It’s a no win situation which is why I’m so stressed out all the time.
You just need to manage your bosses expectations better. If they say they want it done by the end of the week, then you need to tell them that it's not possible and you can get it done by the end of the month.
The expectations are based off known metrics of what we can accomplish based off years of data. The high performers on my team consistently double the output that is expected of them while also handling escalation of more difficult issues. I can’t just tell them to lower their expectations because the only thing that’s changed is the people doing the work.
you know its not the work stress for me. I can leave that at the door. Its the transition from work stress to home stress that is the real issue and honestly its much harder to leave home stress at the door.
thanks. its medical issues my wife has had starting over a decade ago so unfortunately thats not going to happen. It would help if I lived in a first world country but I live in the US. Its the old it is what it is thing. again though I appreciate the sentiment.
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