Ask HN: What one skill are you proud of developing on your own? Is there any skill that you know that you are good at, but, were really bad at at some point in your life? What is that skill? How did you become good at it? If there are books or tools or other resources that helped you in achieving that please share your story with us? |
I have a feeling that being earnest might be the actual "unlock" that unlocks everything else. A meta unlock if you will.
For the longest time in my life, I was very good at things but because of that I sort of never trained or practiced anything earnestly.
I hit my ceiling when I jumped into entrepreneurship and quickly found out that my skills which helped me with my career weren't enough.
I tried and tried for almost five years but nothing helped till the time I took a hard look at myself and figured out I was sort of skating through life. This is especially troublesome if you are above average in intelligence.
The only way to get my business of the ground and make it what I wanted it to be was for me to develop the skill of being earnest and take things from there.
Last year I had profits of $4 million.
I didn't read any books per se, it was more of taking an honest look at myself and trying to get to the root of why I was stuck.
Essentially it comes down to taking a look at reality as it really is, learning things and testing what you have learnt in the real world. (e.g. I was interested in branding since I think that is a huge hack which is sort of underutilized by smaller companies, but to do it well requires studying branding and it's different variable and how to manipulate them, isolate testing each variable and seeing results which can be a mix of objective and subjective metrics vs The older way would be to read some brand books, apply a few things and call it a day because "branding takes time")
It's also about being clear what you want and making sure that the path you are on will get you there.
Most importantly it's about being honest with yourself. Asking yourself, are you really happy with the path you are going down? If you want to change, and sincerely change, it is hard work but doable. But it needs to start with being intellectually honest and doing the work, taking the notes, collating the information and really working hard.
I learned passing reading comprehension of Chinese in high school. My parents were immigrants and I left China after kindergarten so I never could read or write Chinese - this always rustled me the wrong way because I didn't like the tone my mother used when she called me "illiterate" and I was too proud to go to Sunday Chinese school (also video gaming took its toll on my social development).
What I did was try to memorize five simplified characters a day - I would write them down in my little notebook, copy them out by hand 100 times each. I have stacks of paper with nothing by Chinese characters written on them stashed somewhere.
I based the curriculum on the Chinese language grade school textbooks. At that rate I would still remember maybe 1-2 of the 5 after 6 months, so factoring the attrition by the two year mark I had enough to figure out the meaning of newspaper articles or simple dialogue. From there it was possible to fill in the gaps of unknown characters by logical deduction. Although even today as a grown man reading in Chinese is a pain.
I taught myself Deep Learning. I saved my money until I could afford to take 3 months off, I jumped in the deep end (haha) and immersed myself in practice projects and papers for the whole 3 months -- 12+ hours a day, until I was employable as a Deep Learning engineer.
I taught myself Quantum Chemistry (and computational chemistry in general) by the same method, immerse myself in papers and code and just try stuff out, then I build https://atomictessellator.com to satisfy my own curiosity and scratch my own itch of poor comp. chem tooling.
Same with applied math, sink myself in papers and practice.
I got a job as a quant about 6 months ago, same thing, just immerse myself in the latest papers and code and practice until now - my models are the most profitable in the company.
I'm self taught the whole way, with no university debt, although I would admit that it takes a lot of willpower and disclipline, so isn't for most people.
I really enjoyed that scene in game of thrones when Sam shrugs and just says "I read the books and followed the instructions" -- thats all I do.
I think the thing that stops most people is they resist learning new infomation because every time there's something new there's a non-zero percentage chance in the new thing that they will not understand it and therefore be judged as inadquate, so people prefer the comfort of their little boxes, but once you shed this fear and develop an insatiable (I mean that literally) case of curiosity, everything becomes interesting, then you must develop disclipline so that your attention is not fragmented by the multiplicity of your interests.
I started creating flashcards when I began studying spanish for my wife. --- a very common introduction to flashcards is via language learning.
But these days I put anything into a card that I feel is useful. It could be an actual event (like recently) with the russian attempted putsch. I might create a card like:
----
On {{c1::June 2023}}, {{c2::Yevgeny Prigozhin}} the leader of {{c3::Wagner}} group staged a rebellion by marching his troups towards Moscow after taking {{c4::Rostov-on-don}}.
Within hours a treaty was brokered by {{c5::Belarus}} president {{c6::Alexander Lukashenko}}
----
these facts are all salient after reading about such an important event, in the moment. But now when I talk about this event years from now, it will spring to mind. I will also be forced to think about it from time to time, and remember the crazy (big) things that happened.
I'll also use flashcards these days to study a new API, or learn a domain model in a new company.
Important is to prune and actively delete cards that no longer make sense. So I suppose the skill is realizing how to use anki. It is a bit of a living entity.
It's a habit/skill I've honed for over 10 years now.
Some recommended reading for those wanting to add flashcards into their lives.
1. https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
2. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
3. https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
4. https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...
1. Computer programming, although I was very young. I learned by checking out a book on BASIC from my public library in the '90s. Thankfully, my parents noticed and sent me to computer camp after that.
2. Parliamentary procedure. I learned through active participation in student government when I was in college. There really is no other way to learn it well without being a part of an assembly that uses (and often misuses) it.
3. More recently, accounting, bookkeeping, and basic federal income taxation to support my parents' small business. I learned through books I purchased. One was called "Bookkeeping made easy" and another was something like "Accounting in 100 pages or less". Tax I learned through this book published under the name JK Lasser that goes into detail on taxation. I used to go to Barnes & Noble and read the JK Lasser book to escape from my graduate school studies... which should tell you something about how much I enjoyed grad school.
Most people simply do not believe me. They think you have to spend $200k+ for a decent lifestyle.
This was one of the first truly hard and fully unintuitive "physical" things I taught myself over the course of about a month in 2019.
At the time I was living in New York City and youtube kept showing me cool videos of EUC's and I was curious given how solid an option for transportation they were. More range than an e-bike or scooter, small enough to wheel into elevators / buildings easily and safer than scooters (large wheel and surprisingly more stability).
For the first few days I was barely able to go 2-3 feet, every day I added a bit more. Then turning, then bike lanes, then the ability to stop quickly / recover from large bumps.
It was incredibly hard and I almost broke my wrist learning, but it was cool even at 26 to realize I could still learn something seemingly completely impossible.
The #1 sub-skill in cooking that really keeps me going it is the practice of "mise en place", which is effectively just the preparation you do before you turn on the range. If you break the effort of cooking everything into multiple stages: Preparation, Execution, etc, you can make the overall experience significantly better. The mental barrier to "make stir fry" is pretty big. If you decompose that into "lets dice some chicken and then carrots and we're done for the day", its a lot easier negotiation.
Another theme for me is to batch as aggressively as you can. Even if you skip the pre-prep, economies of scale are amazing if you own a freezer and some pyrex. If you are making 1lb of taco meat, why the hell aren't you making 2? Do you like cooking everything from scratch every day? Most stuff still tastes just as good (and sometimes better) after a trip through the freezer.
Developed personalized markdown snippets for entire work day (Work Journal), and individual tasks (Meeting Notes, Deep Work, Support Tickets, etc.).
Been keeping track of every work day for 2 years. Next steps are to generate static site with search and move this method into personal life.
(I know, it’s sick to regiment one’s life to text. I blame it on being bit by org-mode years back.)
Youtube was helpful. The books I read were unhelpful. I also took a class in college but it was also unhelpful. What helped me the most was the following.
1) Adopt the right mindset. It is not about me; it is about the message that I believe to be so important that I am putting myself out there so the audience can hear it.
2) Understand the physical mechanics of voice projection. There are youtube videos that explain it well. The basic idea is that you want to strengthen your diaphragm muscle so you fill your lungs with air and that bottled-up air will result in a strong voice projection. Also work on pronunciation and enunciation; even if your voice comes across as soft -- correct enunciation will carry you through.
3) The first sentence you say is the most important. Jump straight into your argument. Explain the who/when/where/how/why later.
It’s sometimes funny when you tell “okay” to anything supposedly intriguing and they go crazy asking why don’t you care. Enjoy your manipulation failure anxiety.
How
Idk. Probably by self-education in general and by looking at how many things that were uncertain cleared up in a non-obvious way.
During the pandemic I wanted to see what the process is really like for a language that I had no prior experience in. Turns out the entire popular consumer facing industry for this sort’ve thing doesn’t help for anything but tourist phrases (i.e Duolingo).
It took a lot of time and determination to put in the regular exposure every single day to train my ear, as well as 2-3 lessons on the internet every week for the last 2.5 years, but at this point I feel comfortable en disant que je parle français couramment.
Not ultimately that useful in the grand scheme of things being American, but it sure does feel nice to accomplish a goal!
I studied telecoms engineering and after graduating focused mainly in HW design and signal processing. I used to dislike options like web development that used to employ many people.
Years later I thought of creating my website as a hobby. Now I use wordpress, so I am perfectly aware I am not doing anything complicated. It is something simple you can just do reading internet sources. But the tasks of designing the website, and writing technical stuff in the blog, makes me feel good. It helps you a lot to organise your mind and your ideas to transmit concepts.
I learned trial-by-fire after starting our first business, and taking a course helped a lot
Books that helped a lot: - The Charisma Myth - SPIN Selling
Ultimately, learning it not only improved our business but my personal life as well
Odd because I hated school, teachers, and public speaking.
Spent money to learn public speaking.
That was one hurdle that I couldn't figure out without help.
learned by reading a lot, good teachers, and writing a lot. definitely did not get good "on my own".
i also like to not write well as a poetic exercise. luv to get shit on by a reddit user for my poor grammar when doing internet-speak.
Out of curiosity how many cards are you re/viewing per day?
If you are serious about anki and start developing a big library I would recommend as well using: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/tree/mai...
It's a scheduler that's pretty well thought out, and can spread your reviews so they are a bit more balanced.
But as I mentioned (and I think this is where the skill comes in) I prune my cards every day. I'm not afraid to delete cards, I think it's crucial, interests change, circumstances change. So just drop what now seems superfluous.
I started with what I call “bootstrapping” the language, which is learning enough to understand at least a few sentences of unbroken spoken French - this I accomplished with listening to the first 2 seasons of Coffee Break French, as well as grades readers. This I’d say took around 6 months.
The next phase after that was expanding vocabulary and ease of expression. This is when I started listening to the Innerfrench podcast which is a fantastic resource - the first few episodes are much slower than recent material, but even that took time. This was the same time I started consistent Italki lessons. I find trying to start lessons before this point is difficult as you can’t really hold a decent conversation yet. You really need a base.
I’d say that phase lasted… another 6 months? It was around that time I switched jobs and in between spent 6 weeks by myself in France, which as you can imagine was a supercharger of learning. I slept like a baby every night after the mental exhaustion of trying to keep up.
After this point the key has really been lessons, lessons, lessons, and more lessons, at least as far as mastering output goes. You need as many opportunities to practice as possible, and one thing I found that was key was finding tutors who have different favorite subjects. I have one with whom I speak about my daily life, another with whom I discuss the news and society, and another where we watch a movie or read a book and discuss it each time we meet. This is also the point I moved up to real French literature, beginning with Camus but branching out to many other authors I now like quite a bit. Reading is quite challenging since the breadth of vocabulary can be astounding, but the key is to look up whatever you really can’t infer.
At some point in the last year I’d say all this got me from B1 to B2 in the CEFR framework, at least in all skills but writing.
Happy to expand on anything if you find it interesting! I think 2.5 years was probably the fastest I could do this all without a gigantic time investment or moving to a Francophone country.
Edit: Are you learning French or another language?