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?
English sheep counting, a base-20 number system. Often called Yan Tan Tethera. Lincolnshire is the best version.
Touching nose with my upper lip
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.
Recently there was a thread where a lot of people were expressing their hatred of handwriting, so according to them that was a waste of my time (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ I do even write much neater in normal script compared to handwriting.
Other than that nothing stands out, so either I’m unskilled or super focused
Getting a private pilot certificate. Was fun, but after going to every airport within range, not sure it was worth it.
The cost of leaded gas alone is financially painful.
Customer Service Skills, aka the skill of eating shit.
Cursive I guess.
Even if you don’t end up using it, the process of learning something often shapes us into who we are. So it’s tough to say something isn’t worth the effort.
For example, I learned to read sheet music when I was younger and taking piano lessons. It took a while and I don’t really use that skill today since I mostly play by ear or tab (fretted instruments). However, I appreciate understanding what the notes mean and think it made me more musical overall.
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)
That’s probably the worst part of it. In some places they’re required or very helpful to have, even though they’re still complete bs and a scam. Cisco is the perfect example. Their certs are useless and constantly changing, they’re really expensive, and they don’t really teach you about the general subject (networking). They just shill their products and their proprietary, non compatible way of doing stuff, and you pay thousands for that. Yet jobs still want those certs, even if they don’t work with Cisco.
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.
Any chance you could get licensed in another state using what you know (without an apprenticeship) then seek licensing in your own state via some kind of reciprocity agreement with your home state?
That’s not useless, that’s a corrupt state.
Not your fault at all.
Anyway to get credit via past knowledge? Like, test out of apprenticeship if you can? You may be able to prove experience via hours worked on timecards.
are you anti union or just anti this one school?
Seems like he is anti monopoly.
Probably morse code. It was required for my ham radio license back in the day to read it at 10 WPM. I put quite a few hours into learning it through the koch method.
At the end of the day I’m just not very interested in getting a lot of contacts. I just like building and tinkering with radios.
I have a full UK licence, and I’m thinking of learning it. It’s one of those things, it sounds interesting for QRP etc. However I’m the same, I rarely speak to anyone anyway!
Can’t think of anything.
Life’s a journey, not a destination.
All the useless mathematical technics from studying physics at university. Now working in software engineering, I barely use more than highschool math, sometimes.
Instead of spending weeks writing down equations I wish I had learned more about science history, breakthrough experiments, other sciences etc.
Those maths are only useful for a tiny percentage of the students that will eventually become theoritical physics researchers.
It’s the curse of studying science in France, it’s unnecessarily math heavy.I used to work for a software consulting firm and one of our clients was NASA. Nothing exciting, just replacing an expensive proprietary system written in a commercial language with an open source one used for analyzing data from the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and the then to be launched Interstellar Boundary Explorer (I BEX).
The maths were so far beyond my two time community college drop out, barely graduated high school, self taught background I couldn’t even explain them. Fortunately we used paired programming and had enough mathemagitians on staff I never had to deal with the maths alone. My contribution was mostly UI and data visualization.
EE here and the math was hard. Barely touch any of it now, but I miss it and I wish it was more practical. Maybe it was in training me to be very precise and methodical.
But in solid state physics, having the math to follow and understand maxwells equations, e=mc^2, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Priceless.
Priceless for your current job or your own enjoyment?
I ruined my diaphragm learning how to burp my ABCs
It was only sort of worth it
Wait, that’s a thing?
Maybe ruined is a bit hyperbolic , the diaphragm is actually tough and iirc skeletalbut it strains the muscles so i gave myself acid reflux and burp when i talk sometimes
Worth it? Only when im not having acid reflux
It got better over time though, the secret was simply to stop being a weird dork child who learned to force burp for a parlor trick
Man, I got so lucky, I managed to learn how to burp my ABCs and I can still do it approaching 40 without I’ll effect. Also it turns out it is useful as a skill for managing a trans oesophageal ultrasound, a horrible procedure where you swallow something a bit smaller than a kiwi fruit connected to a tube and then have to just choke on it for 20-30 minutes. You can deal with the sensation because it is not dissimilar to the inhale of the burp but extended for the whole time.
Cursive handwriting
In France, children learn only cursive. It’s kind of strange to learn how to manually write like a typewriter…
I think it’s a matter of how it’s framed.
It was already going out of fashion in schools when I was growing up, and people did not like it when a teacher (usually older) made them practice it. The original argument of it being faster didn’t apply once computers became common in schools/homes, and printed letters (writing like a typewriter) are better for clarity.
However, I think there is value to it when framed as an artistic skill. Calligraphy strengthens motor skills, and if you make the lesson less rigid then kids can have fun with it and figure out how to express themselves.
Why?
How much cursive you using these days? It’s pretty much useless outside of reading old letters.
