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.
Thinking itself is not easy for many, and that doesn’t even include the critical .
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.
CPR. You may not think about it in your day to day life, but in an emergency it’s a very low hanging fruit to save someone’s life. If someone is not breathing, chest compressions baby… go to town.
And FYI for anyone reading this, mouth to mouth isn’t really recommended anymore.
First call 911 or have someone else do it. Then start chest compressions for as long as you can. Switch off with another person if you need to. But keep going until paramedics arrive.
Exactly. I’ve never actually seen anyone do mouth to mouth in real life, only in movies.
have someone else do it.
I feel this kicks the ball down the field a bit. It definitely fails strong induction.
Usually, it would be you telling someone “call 911 right now” while you start chest compressions.
It’s important to direct your command to a specific person rather than “someone” because of the bystander effect.
I did a course 2/3 weeks ago, highly recommend it.
First aid! I did a four day course many years ago and I still use the training in so many things. The final day we had to navigate a bus crash scenario and the part that stuck with me was the taking ownership and delegating roles when other people might be scared to act. I think it really instilled in me an ability to turn panic into action, and you can use the triage playbook in so many ways.
I learned that too… knowing what to do in an emergency also reduces the level of panic you experience while you do it.
Love the Heart Runner system in Denmark and Sweden. Wish the US had something like that.
Learning how to say no. Having personal boundaries.
It said easy skill
Learn when to say no. I have missed a lot because of this.
Cooking
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.
yes! It saves so much money if you can cook properly and don’t have to rely on expensive restaurants for “fancy” food.
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.
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.
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.
In this economy? Lock picking.
Most locks are so garbage they don’t have to be picked. There’s a guy on Youtube that opens locks by whacking them together.
Oh yeah, LockpickingCaveman, great channel. :-P (it’s actually LockpickingLawyer.)
Raking a lock, even. So easy. Doesn’t always work on all locks, but enough of them.
If ‘the economy’ is why you ‘need’ to overcome access restrictions, then you were a criminal before ‘the economy made you do it’ too.
Baking bread. At first, your results will be uneven. (brick like, over baked, underbaked, too much yeast, not enough kneading, etc.) Just don’t give up, the first time you get it close to “right”, you’ll be addicted to home made bread. It’s about training your hands and other senses until you don’t need a recipe any more.
Literally eating a homemade bun right now.
Can confirm, it’s addictive and my stomach is having a very conflicting love/hate relationship with me for it lol
The one thing that got me into home made bread was getting a bread machine and using it exclusively for kneading. Machine made bread is weird and uneven to me, but taking the dough and baking it the traditional way makes brilliant bread and saves a lot of time.
I completely agree. Plus I like the shape from a tradional loaf pan vs the odd cube from the bread maker.
Also check out the Bertinet Method. Slap and Fold, baby.
Swimming. It could save your life.
Cooking.
It’s shocking to me the number of people I’ve come across who’ve no idea how to cook or find it to be too troublesome to do. Moreover, feeding yourself should be the single most primal skill for anyone to have.
I realize there’s a lot to unpack here. Some people are taught / learn to cook at a young age while some people have parents who’ve never cooked for themselves. Personal preference, finances, and scheduling play a huge part. The definitions of “cooking” and “feeding yourself” can vary widely. So, I’m not claiming everyone should know how to make a roast chicken dinner for four with sides and dessert. Although, I do think people should be at a level above boxed mac and cheese and
microwavedair-fried chicken nuggets.Cooking is, in my opinion, shopping for fresh foods and turning them into a meal. It’s about your health, your pleasure, and your finances.
When my best friend first moved in with me I had to teach her how to cook lol. When I was a teen my mom forced my brothers and me to cook dinner a few times a week which I’m really thankful for
Valuable! I never had to cook at home, so I never learned it. I still don’t like cooking - because I am bad at it!
To me it’s a chore. I use to say it’s like brushing my teeth - it’s no fun but we have to do it every day.
Taking regular breaks. Whether it’s a quick hourly stretch or a longer weekly break, stepping away from your activities can help you avoid burnout and stay on top of your game.
Surprisingly this improved my overall gameplay in competitive games. And I am not exhausted from work anymore.deleted by creator
Technically not, perhaps, but I’d argue it functionally kind of is. Lots of people aren’t good at it, and it takes practice to get better at it.
Skill - an ability to do an activity or job well, especially because you have practised it
Seeing that almost nobody around me can take proper breaks because of all sorts of habitual factors it does seem like something you have to practise. Also, it’s an activity of actively not focusing on a stressor is still an activity. (Debatable in a tricky zen master way I know, but are you actually a tricky zen master?)
Seems like a skill to me.
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Apply the same at work
Sewing, by hand or by machine.
Pollution from “fast fashion” is one of the most insidious types of pollution and one of the highest source of microplastics.
Knowing how to sew has allowed me to keep some garments looking new for over 15 years.
I still have a “snakes on a plane” themed hoodie from 2007 that is still going strong, thanks to sewing and proper washing/drying.
Knowing how to separate your clothing for washing is also helpful in this regard, because it also can make clothes last longer. T-shirts can last a decade if they’re washed on a delicates cycle and hung out to dry.
I honestly could give a flying fuck if everything I own is out of style, I’m fucking old anyway.
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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/
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.
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.
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NATO alphabet, or any phonetic alphabet for that matter.
It will take you less than an hour to learn it and doesn’t need to be perfect, Mark or Mike, your interlocutor will know you mean the letter M
What about the pasta phonetic alphabet? It takes a while to master:
- Alphabeto
- Biggoli
- Cappelini
- Ditalini
- Elicoidali
- Farfalle
- Gnocchi
- Linguine
- Macaroni
- Orzo
- Penne
- Quadrefiore
- Ravioli
- Spaghetti
- Tortellini
- Uzun
- Vermicelli
- Xiti
- Zitoni
I’m learning this tonight
H I J K W Y 😢
Now I’m hungry.
Filosophy Xtra Y-fi Citi
Be kind
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
I wish being kind was easy. Sometimes I feel like kindness is one of the hardest things to do.
Sometimes it is, but that’s part of why it’s so valuable.
Rewind.
