There’s often a skill that seem interesting, but I can’t see doing anything for me in my day-to-day life. What have you learned that was a lot more effort than the payoff was worth?
I’m a trained electrician. Despite taking and passing a reputable school for it, I can’t get licensed to do it in my state because you have to have 2 years apprenticeship. You get an apprenticeship you have to go through a school supported by the union. The only school supported is the one they own.
Despite being fully capable of wiring a building to code, installing a solar array or electric car chargers I can’t do shit with the information and it way a year and $2k fucking wasted.
That’s not useless, that’s a corrupt state.
Not your fault at all.
Hold my MCSE in NT4 and Novell
Gained the year Win2k dropped
As an old time computer nerd I have uncountable examples of deprecated knowledge. There is no use in knowing how to use the reserved upper memory in autoexec.bat and config.sys, nor how to use Napster or Kazaa.
But all these skills do shape your brain and way of thinking.
Assembly language taught me to be precise and think before typing. Flash taught me that nothing lasts forever, as big as it might seem.
Eventually, all this adds up and creates a profile that is very demanded in my career.
That said, my mom taught me to thread a needle without looking. And I can’t sew, so that’s that.
Wait, how do you thread a needle without looking?
It’s pretty cool to see once mastered because it takes less than a second and not many catch what happened.
You take the thread and wrap it around the needle and pull tight. Grab the thread with two fingers and pinch it. Slide the needle out and shove the needle’s eye into the pinched thread. When the thread goes through, grab it and pull it all the way.
The skill comes into play aiming the eye correctly and doing it fast.
It’s probably easier to understand watching a tutorial video.
I was intrigued and found a video. I think this is what you’re describing.
Yes that is exactly it! I’ve just learnt it’s called the fold method. You can feel the thread and the eye in the fingers it’s impressive to see it done fast in one shot, my mom worked knitting and sewing and probably didn’t even need to think about it.
Functions and derivatives, from late high school to college. They were extremely tedious, and I had to learn tens of formulas I don’t use very often.
I ruined my diaphragm learning how to burp my ABCs
It was only sort of worth it
I honestly can’t think of any, even though I have many examples that objectively seem to not have been worth the effort.
Easiest example is flight school. I went to a tech college for its professional piloting program. Got my private pilot cert and multi engine rating, and completed IFR in the simulator. But when it came time to sign up for IFR in a real plane, I couldn’t get approved for enough student loans to cover the cost, so I dropped out, switched to business school, got a tech job, and dropped out of business school too.
By all accounts, the debt I racked up (like $75k) and the pilot license I haven’t exercised in 14 years are all a huge waste. And my flight instructor was such an impatient ass that I feel mildly scarred from the times he yelled at me.
But, I will never get over the massive feeling of accomplishment I got from earning my private pilot certification. And even more so, earning my multi-engine rating. Even if I failed a part of each of those checkrides and had to retake those portions, I passed them. Even if I never fly again, I am so fucking proud of myself for earning those.
I guess since I never actually graduated from any of the many colleges I’ve dropped out from (three or four depending on how you count), pilot license is my closest analog.
Also have a CDL and skill with docking 53 foot trailers, and tons of forklift experience. Those haven’t been used in a very long time and I may never use them again, but still feel like important parts of me.
I got a bunch of software certs for when I was first job hunting and now they either no longer exist or have been so changed that the certs don’t matter.
certs are scam.
but they pad your resume and make test companies a lot of money.
Depends on the cert and the environment you are already in.
For example, I’m an IT Consultant, we kind of rely on ‘professional certs’ to get work at client projects, especially if a project is covering specific niches and we have consultants that have certifications within those niches.
Also, many of the more mainline certs can definitely be worth getting (especially in the early career stages), as a quick example some of the CompTIA certs like Networking+ (a colleague got his job with us solely with that cert btw)
Cursive handwriting
Connected cursive with the stupid squiggles is terrible, regular cursive where you just join most of the letters is the fastest way to write.
Making tofu from scratch. Also sourdough.
I love cooking in all forms, and there are a lot of things I happily do from scratch. I love baking bread, making my own oat milk, mixing up my own seitan from vital wheat gluten, and a whole bunch of other things.
But making tofu was something I tried a bunch of times and have ultimately given up on. It is extremely time consuming, very difficult to get right, and makes a worse product than what I can buy at the store. It isn’t even cheaper to do, as the cost of the soybeans and the cost of the premade tofu are about the same. I may make it on occasion if I plan on serving it on its own as a dish with soy sauce, but that is about it.
With sourdough, I found it easy to get into, but my husband and I both prefer our baked goods to be not sour, and we both have pretty sensitive tastebuds in that regard. It is easier for me to just use instant yeast whenever I need it and make something we both prefer to eat.
English sheep counting, a base-20 number system. Often called Yan Tan Tethera. Lincolnshire is the best version.
Must. Resist. Rabbit-hole…
Every time I try to get into sheep counting I end up falling asleep…
Taught myself how to snake spit. But now it sometimes happens on its own so I really wish I hadn’t trained my mouth so well.
Gleeking?
Haven’t heard that word since middle school.
