Ask HN: Essential life skills to function as a human being?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757396

by ahmaman • 6 years ago

38 59 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

In your opinion, what are some of the essential skills to have to function as a balanced human being?

Examples that come to mind: cooking food, driving a car, computer programming, reading books, and maintenance of home utilities.

The skill can be related to any of the following: - Human capital and necessary personal assets - Physiological - Intellectual - Economic - Emotional - Social - Technical - Ecological

danesparza2• 6 years ago

Knowing how to:

- Get a job (including something as simple as getting a summer job mowing grass)

-Manage your money in a budget

-Practice saving money in a savings account

-Plan meals

-Drive a car

-Go grocery shopping

-Prepare food / cook

-Perform basic house repairs with hand tools (hammer a nail, use a screwdriver, understand how a tape measure works)

-Be in relationship with yourself (journaling, learning new things, going to therapy / counseling for unresolved issues)

-Be in relationship with others (communication / conflict resolution / counseling for unresolved issues)

-Be generous with your time / money / life

I'm reminded of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- which might be a good outline for 'essential skills to function as a human': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

noodlesUK• 6 years ago

I think it’s funny how driving has become such a “required skill” in the states. I have a lot of friends who are in their 30s or older who haven’t ever been behind the wheel. It shows how what one person perceives as an essential skill is nothing to another person.

bootloop2• 6 years ago

I think it also depends on the ROI. I paid in total ~2400€ (2000€ driver license + 400€ mandatory safety training) for my car+bike license and assume it will not be much different in the UK.

In the city where I live now I know quite a few people for whom it's not worth it to invest that kind of money because the public transport is good enough. However on the country side where I come from there is not a single person who doesn't have a driver license.

quicklime• 6 years ago

Basic financial literacy. Everyone should understand how to budget, and save for retirement.

rjkennedy98• 6 years ago

That excludes like 75% of adults and our government

danesparza2• 6 years ago

Yes. Yes it does.

0xy• 6 years ago

I wish people were better at this skill.

I know a not-insignificant amount of people who are under the impression that by earning extra money to kick them into a higher tax bracket they'll earn less net money. People actually turn down promotions over this.

Also, almost everyone doesn't understand corporate taxation (especially journalists). I've seen way too many articles proclaiming that companies paid $0 in tax on $X revenue. Doesn't matter if they lost money by investing in people or R&D -- still evil somehow.

lcall2• 6 years ago

Agreed. I collected some resources: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854604770.html

...and more generally...

http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854592298.html

ForHackernews• 6 years ago

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-Robert A. Heinlein

seemslegit6• 6 years ago

But how many of these can be practiced simultaneously ?

grenoire2• 6 years ago

I wager that's the intended exaggeration; many of the listed do share some fundamentals, however. I don't think it's unreasonable to be baseline able to do most of the listed.

You don't have to be a great butcher and a programmer simultaneously, obviously.

noelwelsh• 6 years ago

I don't feel qualified to answer this question in its entirety. I'm sure I could do better at being me than I currently do, and I feel this is a question for which people such as developmental psychologists might be experts.

However I have two things that I think I do know enough about to add here:

- Presenting. Doing work is not sufficient is no-one knows about it. In most work contexts being able to present your work is important for getting recognition for it. This doesn't necessarily mean formal presentation with slides etc., but being able to speak up for yourself in a group setting is a good minimum. It's also useful for interacting with govt officials like the police.

- Maintaining your body. Know enough about your body to keep it working well (exercise, stretching, and so on) and recognise common problems before they become big issues (e.g. identifying skin cancers)

Finally, I think any answer is going to be biased by context. As someone has already noted in this thread, driving is an essential skill in some places but not in others. It would be better to give context for the people who you might be teaching.

ahmaman3• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing. Agreed, context is important.

About being an expert, I feel that everyone should be qualified to share what skills they think are essential. There is no right answer here.

Perhaps everyone could briefly mention their context along side the skills they recommend.

+1 for presenting (sales).

zkirill• 6 years ago

Human being living in isolation needs very different skills than a human being living among other human beings. The latter's ability to integrate into society is essential.

leonardaustin• 6 years ago

Kite surfing (or some other hobby that you can throw infinite enjoyable hours behind and still have more to learn).

fennecfoxen• 6 years ago

Willing to say "knowing a good way to enjoy yourself" is essential in exactly the way that kite surfing itself is not.

odshoifsdhfs• 6 years ago

I don't think we can say 'essential' without know where you live, conditions, etc.

If you live in the middle of the jungle, essential life skills will be much different than in SF.

I think we should divide skills into three types and then into three categories and adapt for your situation.

You should be very very good at 3 things:

- something that makes you money (programming, accounting, etc)

- a physical activity (lifting weights, soccer, etc)

- something you do for fun (woodworking, cooking, etc)

(for some woodworking can be making money and programming the fun part, switch as needed)

Then you should do the same but have 2/3 in each category but just as an ok/good level (can cook a normal veggies a steak meal or fix an electrical socket)

Then again, do the same for each category but for a very minimal understanding about it, but have as many as you can. You may not know how to so a butt joint, but can saw a piece of wood or drill a hole, etc etc.

This way, you are a more rounded human being, but also open your mind to other activities you wouldn't normally which may even go up in the hierarchy, but even if not, it may help you with other ones.

It also means you will almost always have something to talk about with anyone.

grenoire2• 6 years ago

Love this philosophy and it is roughly what I found to be my most reasonable 'top-performing' limit too. Whenever I tried to have more than three at each level, I was overly stressed and just broke down (so to say, and ended up dropping the thing in excess).

ahmaman3• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing. The idea of prioritising is a great approach. Eventually one would learn how to pick more skills but most essential ones would come first.

lcall2• 6 years ago

I agree with the prioritizing and need to be rounded, and have thought a lot about the details of that. I have written a bunch, hopefully skimmable and detailed at my simple (no JS still) site: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854760791.html

(and more generally: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854592298.html )

tomcooks• 6 years ago

Spend 7 days alone in a tarp or tent in the woods and live out of a backpack; all the problems that will inevitably arise will teach you valuable skills and, most importantly, show you that you can be content even when you're very close to scratching rock bottom.

This will give you superpowers.

thorin• 6 years ago

I guess this will be very easy for some and difficult for others. Given a reasonable food supply, water purification and no dangerous animals etc I'd probably happy with doing this indefinitely and have been since I'm about 15. There aren't too many skills to consider, it's more a case of state of mind / logical thinking. Most of my friends would be OK doing this and maybe it does give them a certain degree of self-reliance.

rlpb• 6 years ago

Negotiation.

Just about every resource you might ever want is controlled by someone else. Every interaction you have with someone else to acquire resource is a negotiation, whether you think about it that way or not. Most other skills are learnt through others.

muzani2• 6 years ago

Kids are where negotiation comes in most useful. I was looking through some old notes and found out that my negotiation skill went up drastically in the last 3-5 years, after I quit doing business and sales. It turns out that getting kids to do their homework, take a shower, go to bed, share the toy -- these require incredible negotiation ability. There's no win/win or Getting to Yes. You have to convince them to give up everything, get nothing in return, and appreciate the process.

bootloop2• 6 years ago

- Being able to call and talk to someone on the phone.

rman666• 6 years ago

How to control your emotions in the face of disputes with others in order to avoid showing on social media as an idiot and to avoid physical confrontation, injury, and death.

pogorniy• 6 years ago

Manage resources (time, money, mood). Keep self healthy enough. Plan. Set goals and work towards those (not necessary to my opinion, but good to have). Process data (search, synthesize, categorize, derive knowledge). Learn (understanding what is required to learn and how to approach learning, be open to learn from new situations). Understand self (where are own thoughts, what is own values, what is external to you). Communicate and cooperate with others. Reading, counting.

---

The rest can be derived.

kfreds3• 6 years ago

Managing resources is key. Personally I use the triad Time-Money-Attention, but I think I like yours better. Attention presumes the requisite mood or motivation.

Time, money, and mood seems to me like the three most important limited resources we have. The next natural step is to apply cognitive tools from economics on each of them. The etymological origin of the word is basically "allocation of limited resources" after all. I've found this to be immensely useful.

vwcx• 6 years ago

The practice of compassion and empathy. Many people will tell you these are soft skill that doesn't need practicing, but the more you engage with these qualities in person, the richer your life can be.

aaron695• 6 years ago

Learn to shoot a gun.

muzani2• 6 years ago

Mindfulness. Not necessarily meditating.

The path to happiness is not always the highest paying job or early retirement. Sometimes the most efficient solution is realizing that the problem is not worth solving. Sometimes there's a low hanging source of wealth that nobody has ever tried for. Sometimes you're always tired and burnt out because your source of entertainment is not entertaining.

It's a key skill to always check yourself. Are you really staying in late at work to do work or is it because you're used to doing 8 hours of work in 15 minutes? Do you really want the soda over the bottle of water or is it because the water is unfairly priced?

And from that self-awareness, actually build your own identity instead of having your identity built by others.

herio• 6 years ago

For me, learning how to listen. This is something I'm struggling with myself but getting better at.

rawoke083600• 6 years ago

Mental-health (maintenance, acquiring, keeping it etc).

As a technical person growing up, I always put mental-health stuff in the "soft-science" mental-basket, right next to marriage counselling and green tea for weight-loss. These days(i'm 38 now) I'm appalled at how "for granted" I took mental health(depression, focus, motivation, work-life-balance) and spend a great amount of time looking into it and trying to better mine.

OH and as a 2nd skill it will be "communication" also something I neglected as a "super-tech-nerd". Writing good code in teams, is as much an exercise in social-structure and etiquette. Doing code reviews I've noticed I'm more or less critical depending on who the author is of the code and if I like them or not. We really should be doing code-reviews anonymously.

Coding in a multi person team can be hard if you can't get your point across or get social buy in from your team and of course when the differences happens, you need some kick-ass communication skills. I younger me would have just sworn and walk away calling everyone stupid :)

I've been saying for years every comp.sci program should have at least 2nd year communication courses, right next to calculus.

Edit:"Super-tech-nerd" refers to me being really really into tech. Not that I'm on equal footing of say Linus Trovalds or Jeff Dean in terms of tech-skills. Afrikaans is my first language. English very-far-distant second.

thelastinuit• 6 years ago

- Learn to hunt. - Basically learn whatever you can from hunting-gathering people.

artsyca5• 6 years ago

Not one person in this thread is going to say "how to dress" that's how far we've come as a civilization.

seemslegit6• 6 years ago

You should probably account for the demographic bias of HN before crediting the entire civilization.

artsyca5• 6 years ago

I appreciate the civility of your comment. My theory is that our technologies have made us weak and plunged us into a new dark age and we don't even know it yet.

I'd like to believe the HN crowd is only slightly more refined than the hoi polloi but yea.

deoco• 6 years ago

An underrated one is being able to bullshit convincingly: that is, being able to quickly read around a topic, get a feel for expected content and style, and talk confidently about it. Antithetical to most nerds, but much of the world is run by people with this skill, so it's necessary to understand it (though one shouldn't ever rely on it)

chasd00• 6 years ago

personal finance is a big one.

find out what makes you happy, obvious but difficult in practice.

RickJWagner• 6 years ago

To learn about yourself. You are unique, there is no owner's manual. You have to learn why you behave like you do.

Once you figure out a little bit about why you do what you do, then you can begin to motivate yourself, react less fearfully, etc.

kfreds3• 6 years ago

Having tools to process our thoughts and emotions, well integrated both intellectually and emotionally.

We can’t affect where we are, but we can affect in which direction we go. There is a space between stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl said.

Some of the feelings and thoughts we have are automatically generated by our mind based on previous experience. They are the homo sapiens equivalent of speculative execution. To the extent that we choose to listen to them they will continue to weave the story of our life. Some of our neural networks are pattern matching for an environment that no longer exists. We should accept their presence for what they are, optional perspectives with an uncertain basis in reality.

I remind myself of this daily. Knowing that I have the ability to grow, cope, and learn new things. This wisdom has given me the courage and temperance to adjust the patterns in my life that are no longer serving me.

Does anyone else think like this? Comments are much appreciated.

ahmaman3• 6 years ago

Plus one for the importance of this.

Some things that I found very valuable to learn more about:

- Being more aware (present) of your thoughts and emotions. - Ability to get de-attached from an emotional situation. - Ability to tame the brain's obsessive thoughts. - How our bias affects our reality. - Separating what can be controlled from what is outside ones control.

Journaling has been extremely helpful to learn more about oneself and reflect. It is also fun to have a more detailed reference for a normal day you had 10 years ago.

P.S: Any book recommendations about the topic?

kfreds3• 6 years ago

Wow, that does sound fun. I don't keep a daily journal but I have kept track of my goals, visions, main priorities and associated strategic plans for over 10 years. It is by no means a complete anthology, but it is fun to reflect that far back and see how much has changed.

You are probably already aware, but what you describe bears many similarities to mindfulness, Buddhistic philosophy, and Stoicism.

From a neurological perspective I personally focus on quality sleep, exercise, and fasting as a way to increase neuroplasticity to speed up adaptation. On that note, it's amazing how feedback and adaptation seems to reoccur on most abstraction levels of reality.

Recommendations:

* What Makes an Effective Executive

* Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

* The Obstacle is the Way

* On the Shortness of Life

* https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

* https://dailystoic.com/4-stoic-virtues/

uhhyeahdude• 6 years ago

the homo sapiens equivalent of speculative execution...

The entire comment is fantastic.

C0n57an71n• 6 years ago

-Don't hurt or kill for fun (ok, maybe except fishing...) -Plant a tree. -Work. Something. Anything -Listen the world around you and pay attention. -Listen to your intuition, but use your head. -Read and write. -Learn a foreign language: math, programming, etc. -Travel. -Make friends. -Pick your trash. -Don't spit while in public. -Say HELLO, THANK YOU and GOODBYE! -Don't put music on your speaker in public and get your dirty shoes off from the chair. -DO NOT WATCH TV!!! -Try not to leave to much of a mess behind you after you're dead.

xwdv• 6 years ago

Essential? Knowing how to not get killed by another human being. Say the wrong thing, step in the wrong neighborhood, get in the wrong car, and you’re a dead man.

rhn_mk1• 6 years ago

Listening and conveying your thoughts clearly to others.

ixxie• 6 years ago

Continuously reflecting on yourself, on others, on the relationships between people, on the institutions that formalize them and on the values and motivations behind all of the above.

This should be done with mindful attention to the edge of your awareness, determination and grit towards achieving your goals, openness to changing direction and values, compassion to the situation of all involved and skeptical suspension of beliefs - particularly your own.

I guess you can call put this in the category of metaskills.

blaser-waffle• 6 years ago

- Empathy, sympathy, and a willingness to see other points of view. Not politics per se, but just asking "what does $PERSON feel right now? why?" on the regular

- Communication skills -- too many to list, but uber-critical for most jobs / relationships / contexts. Only 10% of my job is actual tech; 90% is communication

- Cooking -- you're gonna have to eat for the rest of your life, so get some basic skills

- Basic understanding of cars -- still going to be a thing for the forseeable future and worth knowing a little bit about

- Basic understanding of computers -- like cars, this is a tech that's going to define your life, likely for the foreseeable future. Most of HN are tech focused, but if you're not, understand it as much as possible

- Basic understanding of housing tasks -- too many skills to list, but you're gonna have to live somewhere as a renter or owner for the rest of your natural life, so learn a bit about how your plumbing, electrical, drainage, etc. works.

- Basic finance -- you're gonna have to buy shit for the rest of your life. Understand how mortgages, credit cards, interest, inflation, etc. works. Learn enough to be confident and skeptical, since there is a lot of snake oil and obfuscation here.

- Make something with your hands -- candles, woodworking, cooking, welding, pottery, whatever.

- Something physical -- sports, gyms, running, even if just long walks with the dog. Take a weightlift course, or do some soccer training clinics, or just read a runner's mag sometimes, whatever.

dkenshu• 6 years ago

1. Love - yourself and others 2. Comfort - the ability to generate and manage sufficient resources to be comfortable 3. Challenge - yourself to be, do, learn, experience the new always

kazinator• 6 years ago

To function as a balanced human being, you need a functioning set of semi-circular canals.

lcordier• 6 years ago

I am working on this very idea (loosely). http://www.louiscordier.com/book/

Ask HN: Essential life skills to function as a human being?

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