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.
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.
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.
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.
Cooking
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.
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.
I learned one of my best cooking lessons from Hell’s Kitchen: taste taste taste!
As long as your food is safe to taste (i.e. not raw poultry or something), taste it, at every stage of cooking. You’ll find you get better at tasting foods and predicting what things your dish needs.
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.
I’d love to hear about it! Any idea how to get started?
Good stuff, thanks
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
This one is excellent, by university of Helsinki: programming-23.mooc.fi
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ADHD sufferers feeling the pain right about now.
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.
Couldn’t agree with this more.
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!
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.
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
First aid.
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.
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.
Indeed.
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.
There are always a bunch of perfectly good competitors to them listed. Use those competitors. For most people it’s totally free.
Isn’t the IRS rolling out an actual free filing program this year?
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.
With the number of misaligned/undirected led lights I get blinded by, I’d be okay if you needed a phd to change them.
Last time I visited LA it seemed like high beams were the default
My Filipina wife is new to driving. Had to drill her on when to use and not use high beams. Yet, we both forget sometimes.
And don’t start me on the assholes with “permanent” high beams and blinding LEDs.
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
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.
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.
And if anyone is having trouble with that last one, here’s a useful video guide.
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.
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?
If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.
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.
installing a privacy custom rom onto your android phone
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.
Any good tutorials?
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.
LOL, the ‘key’ is literally called a “water key”. Good job!
(Pliers, of most sorts, work as well, but they’re a PITA vs. an actual tool for the job.)
