Ok, I might as well go first: I wish I could draw. Not at the level where I could make photorealistic portraits, but I’ve always been envious of those who are able to scetch something together in a few minutes that perfectly captures what they want to convey. Sometimes words aren’t enough to express what I want to say, and for those situations I would love to have a simple drawing do the talking for me.
Go lay down and fall asleep within a few minutes no matter what. I know a few people who can do this and I am so jealous.
Exercise during the day so you’re physically tired. Either that or get a job on night shift so your sleep schedule is continuously messed up.
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I wish I could write better…
Bad handwriting literally runs in my family, and as hard as I’ve tried I’ve never been able to improve it. I’ve resorted to writing in block, and even then it still looks scruffy.
Yet some of my colleagues have wonderful handwriting, and it makes me wonder why I couldn’t have been born with better hands.
I’m going to start trying to learn how to draw in the New Year, so I hope that helps in some way.
Here’s what changed my handwriting: turning it into a hobby
At school, writing stuff all the time was more like a job, so naturally I wasn’t really that interested in it. However when you don’t have to write a ton of stuff every day, you can approach it form a different angle. Go to the library and find a book about calligraphy. Pick a style you find interesting, and start practicing.
Motivation is key. Don’t write stuff you hate in a style you despise. That’s just basically a long way to say: school. Let’s say you fall in love with textura quadrata, so you start practicing that style instead of cursive. Eventually you’ll try italic, humanist, uncial and other styles too. Then you’ll start writing longer things; not just shopping lists, but journaling too. After a while, you start to notice that your handwriting has improved.
BTW don’t go with a dip pen at first. Instead, get a Pilot Parallel Pen, because it’s good for for most styles. Once you’re familiar with a specific writing style, you can start learning how to manage the ink flow of a dip pen, because that’s a completely different ball game.
If you do practice, thicker pens or markers can make shaky printing look nicer. Maybe a fountain pen or a thicker roller pen might help a little.
Focusing on the things I need to actually do.
I swear, if even if I was forced to do something at gunpoint, I’d manage to get distracted anyway.yes and something to control the demon that makes me want to try it this way when I should not try anything new on the task.
Robber: “Why does it take so long to stuff money in the bag?” Bank employee: “Oh, that’s what I was supposed to do.”
Programming. I understand it as a concept, but have no ability to sit down and write code.
I’m a hobbyist programmer myself. I’ve picked up a few languages along the way, and by far the best approach I have found to learning is a simple but real practical use case. Find the smallest task you want your program to do, break it down into even smaller subsections, and then start to figure out how to transform it into code. It usually takes less code and knowledge about a language than you think.
Here’s another quick tip to get anyone started: Find some code written by someone else, and modify it.
Depending on the language, you might be able to just read what it says and experiment with what happens when you change some details here and there. If the code does something that you’re interested in, you’ll also have the motivation to spend a few hours tweaking the code, or even reading the documentation.
Also, nowadays you can ask GPT what different parts of the code does. You can drill down with follow up questions until you understand how a specific detail works in the language you’re working with.
A few years back I got really into Python for a few months as a complete newbie. One day, when I felt ready, I told myself I would put all the python skills I picked up and build a small program that would generate random, solvable sudoko puzzles. After a few weeks trying everything and not getting anywhere, I gave up programming.
Moral of the story is I probably that I should have taken it a bit slower I guess
I wish I was a better piano player
I’m a competent musician in many instruments but I could never get the hang of using my left hand for accompaniment
I’m a guitarist myself. Piano is certainly up there on the list of skills I wish I had.
I wish I could speak a lot of languages fluently.
Any particular languages?
Not op, but French, Russian, and Japanese. They’re all hard for Americans to learn (vs, say, Spanish or German).
French is considered just about as hard as Spanish, maybe a little harder on the phonetics. German is harder than French or Spanish. Russian is harder than German/French/Spanish, but Japanese would be significantly harder than Russian.
am learn french
That’s a good one, I’d love to be able to enjoy things in their native languages rather than butchered (at best) translations.
I wish I could do things carefully. Doesn’t matter how hard I try; if I wash up water goes everywhere, even when I’m trying not to let it. I can’t do cutting in when it’s time to paint a room. I can’t move things around without bumping them, usually. Just incapable of doing things carefully.
ONG this! No matter how many times I measure, something always goes wrong during a project. I get too little. I get too much. I cut too short.
Even with my most careful planning, I get something wrong and have to make extra trips to the hardware store.
One thing that I have learned is that concentrating on something means doing it, whether concentrating on doing it right or wrong. So trying to not do something generally means doing the wrong thing because that is what I’m thinking about.
Doesn’t help with clumsy stuff that just kinda happens, but at least I stopped focusing on avoiding mistakes and then making those mistakes and reduced the overall number.
Learning to say no. Many times or not to say all my life I have always tried to get along with everyone, and I always say “Yes” to everything, committing myself to things I really don’t want just because I don’t know how to say no.
People pleaser, hey?
Welding. Just useful for occasional projects, and would be nice to know I could weld something if necessary.
I was a welder for a while, and let me tell you, there are few things in life more satisfying than laying down a good weld.
Shoutout to a good, clean, oxy-acetylene cut as well. God I miss that feeling.
Woodworking, or any activity that involves crafting useful and/or beautiful things with my own two hands. I live in a flat so I lack space to do it, but the idea of using an object or a furniture everyday while knowing I actually made it from scratch is just so appealing to me
My wife can read a a cookbook (or a recipe in general) and instantly contextualize what she’s reading. If I could do that, too, there’d be a lot less strain in our marriage.
For that matter, remembering a list of more than three things for more than twenty minutes, that’s abother one.
I wish I could manage my work stress well enough that I could still enjoy doing things when I get home.
you know its not the work stress for me. I can leave that at the door. Its the transition from work stress to home stress that is the real issue and honestly its much harder to leave home stress at the door.
Yeah that’s a rough one. I hope things get better for you.
thanks. its medical issues my wife has had starting over a decade ago so unfortunately thats not going to happen. It would help if I lived in a first world country but I live in the US. Its the old it is what it is thing. again though I appreciate the sentiment.
Change your mindset. Decide to put more effort into your personal life than you do work. Don’t burn all your fuel for a workplace that doesn’t care if you live or die.
I’m actually working on switching to a different team where I won’t have to manage anyone else. I’m hoping that fixes some of it because a lot of the people I’m in charge of require a lot of baby sitting and my team is 24/7. Im already trying to lower the amount of effort I put in but if I do much less it makes things worse for my coworkers. I don’t really care about the company beyond not getting fired but I do not want to create problems for my coworkers.
Sometimes you have to let people struggle. Managing people means delegating tasks. When I was training to be a McDonald’s shift manger in my early 20’s one of the training videos said that you should run a shift with your hands in your pockets. What they meant was that you needed to shift your mindset from being a crew member to a manger. You will never get any of your own work done because you will be focused on helping the other crew members with their tasks rather than focusing on the big picture.
I do understand that. The problem is that my boss doesn’t and when my team fails to deliver something I’m answerable for it. On top of that the company as a whole makes it a pain in the ass to replace people if I fire them so it takes months to get someone new up to speed. It’s a no win situation which is why I’m so stressed out all the time.
You just need to manage your bosses expectations better. If they say they want it done by the end of the week, then you need to tell them that it’s not possible and you can get it done by the end of the month.
aquarium plant growing
every time i buy them they die
I literally wish I had the ability to practice.
That’s really what all my other answers to this come down to. I would love to write better, be a better woodworker, play music, learn languages, learn programming languages, etc. But my mind just… slides right off it. I can’t bring myself to put in the time necessary to cultivate literally any skill.
This may be old advice, and I can’t speak for music or languages (where I myself have the same issue) but for woodworking and programming this is my experience: Once I get some idea for something I want to build, that becomes the goal of the project, not learning the skill itself. It could be carving a small model boat, or writing a sudoku solver, but at least for my part, once I get caught up in some project, I have a hard time letting it go. That’s as opposed to if I sit down and try to systematically learn a skill.
Some suggestions for projects off the top of my head:
- Some kind of simple encryption/decryption method.
- A nice wooden box to put something nice in (possibly without visible metal parts)
- A sudoku solver
- Model car (maybe with wheels and movable doors)
- A little “river steamer” with a rubber-band driven “propeller” (don’t know what the wheel on the back of a river steamer is called)
- A “peg solitaire” solver (because I was really frustrated at not being able to solve it)
The point is just to find something else that interests you, that can motivate you to learn the skill you want :) good luck!
Wow, this was cool to read! I definitely use the goal of the project to motivate myself to learn how to complete it, but I never realized it until you laid it out. I understand what OP says about the skill “sliding off” but the project is usually complete before that happens and only becomes an issue on revisiting it later. Like my Magic Mirror project that I completed but it’s using the Pi and some software that I don’t remember now. But the mirror is still great, hooked up to a PC with wallpaper engine running.
I’m the same way. I’ve found that I need another person to keep me accountible so taking lessons has help me. I started drums this year and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and having a teacher give me things to practice and checking in keeps me going.
