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.
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.
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.
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.
Wire stripping and crimping. Especially if you plan to do offgriding homesteading with solar but occasionally comes up in home applications when you want to revive a mangled extension cord or install a fixture. Specialized cables start to add up very quickly its much more cost effective to buy a big bag of connectors, a big roll of decent gauge wire, dig out an old set of wire cutters+needlenose and fire up a 2 minute instructions yt video. Like all other skills it takes time and error to get good at it but its not too terribly difficult as wel as very cool to essentially build your own electrical grid from the ground up with wires and connectors you made yourself…
About a year back I stumbled across these cool products that are a heatshrink sheath with a metal ring coated in low temp solder inside. They made all of my wire joining a million times easier. Just strip the end of two wires, push them into the sheath and blast them with a heat gun for 20 seconds until the ring contracts into a crimp and the solder flows onto the wires. Better physical and electrical connection than a crimp, with none of the futzing that comes with soldering and sheathing.
I’d add simple soldering. It’s amazing how many little gadgets go bad because a little wire inside broke loose when it was dropped. I’ve fixed headphones, a temperature sensor, and even done things with the vehicles.
Effective planning. It’s very easy to say " I’m doing this today and that tomorrow" but how realistic is that? Know how to break something down into its component pieces and be able complete them along a schedule. It’s basically project management, but for everyday stuff. It helps immensely to be able to tackle big projects and recognize that things are progressing even though the project still isn’t done. Hugely helpful for stress management.
So project management on a personal scale is really varied based on what level of detail you need. I’ve worked with people who have ADHD traits and they worked best with a very micromanaged day, like there is a reminder every 15 minutes to keep them on track (that’s a generalization, but not far off).
But if you’re just looking for some broader structure to help organize projects you have to do, you can look at AI assisted planners to remove some of the basic breakdown work. You can ask ChatGPT to create a rough outline for some major projects, give it a time frame, and mention any other circumstances (work, childcare, only work 1 hour at a time, etc.), it will give you a decent outline to start with. You can then break it down further if you need to and refine the time line to best fit your own needs
There are lots of ‘personal project management’ books that can help to break it down, also good youtube videos on the subject. There are 3 primary things to remember though:
create manageable goals, this might take some trial and error to figure out timing.
stick to your plan. Putting off a task because you don’t feel like it defeats the purpose of making a plan.
if you stuck to the plan the best you could and it didn’t work out, don’t beat yourself up. Use it as a learning experience for next time you need to plan stuff out. Figure out why it didn’t work and fix it.
Quick note: reading/other resources won’t hand you the answers, they will only help to provide and explain the tools you would need to be successful. Good luck!
Good advice. And one of the keys is to focus on accomplishing the parts of the project you took care of today, not obsessing about working ahead or what’s on your plate tomorrow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
As someone whose workplace refuses to schedule anything properly, and refuses to respect to any attempts to schedule anything or anyone, I feel this so much.
Shamelessly plugging You Need A Budget. Best app I’ve ever used. My SO and I have been using it for about 3 years now, and the app has been instrumental in us becoming mostly debt-free.
YNAB is a glorified spreadsheet and did not import past data. I found it exceedingly tedious and not helpful. I am currently using Monarch and it’s far, far better. It’s a bit pricey, but so far as I’ve found, it’s the best.
They give you a link that allows others to try monarch for 30 days (rather than their egregiously short trial of like 7 days):
Buckets is a free alternative that I switched to when ynab massively increased the price and dropped their grandfathering agreement. Same principals as ynab, but suited me a lot better and is much much cheaper.
For those in the US: Learn how to file your own taxes. It’s really simple for the large majority of people, and usually just consists of copying numbers into boxes off a sheet your employer made for you. After you’ve done it once, subsequent times you’ll probably have it done yourself in less than half an hour.
You can do it for free on a ton of sites unless you make significant income, freetaxusa is typically the most highly recommended one.
Intuit and H&R Block are the reason we have this depraved, inhumane, anti-consumer tax system. They've created the laws that make it necessary to use tax prep software. They should not be rewarded for this by getting business for that very tax prep software. Everyone should say no to TurboTax.
irs.gov/freefile
There are always a bunch of perfectly good competitors to them listed. Use those competitors. For most people it's totally free.
A better tip is to just maintain and monitor your finances on a regular basis. At least once a month sit down and quickly review all your income and expenses. Then at least two or three times a year do full detailed review just so you know where your money came from and went and when it all happened.
I wish I knew this earlier in life.
Think about it, what did you spend your money on two weeks ago? A month? How much did you make in the past month? What did you spend your money on?
Sure many people can give an estimate off the top of their head but it makes a big difference if you can see it all written out and documented in front of you.
I feel like people are just driving around with their full beams lately not knowing that's an issue. It feels like every 5th car is blinding me now. I've had to pull over at times because I have stars in my eyes.
Years ago, I learned to shave with just about any sharp, straight edge (yes, I even practiced with a razor sharp axe). It’s interesting how the ‘fine edge control’ transfers to other activities; using a kitchen knife, swinging an axe, cutting with a Xacto, etc.
In the apocalypse, I will be the clean-shaven villain, who is surrounded by all the hot mutant ladies who adore my pretty jowls!
Edit: I use cannabis daily. I found I can shave quickly with a straight razor (after years if practice), or I can shave high. But not both. FTR: cutting yourself a bit here and there simply isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Switching to double edge safety razors changed shaving for me.
My beard hairs are so thick even a 3 blade cartridge clogs and slips. I’ve had multiple barbers comment on how tough my beard hair is.
For a better shave: 1) switch from canned shave creams to a higher quality cream or a shave soap with brush. 2. Switch to a DE razor and buy a sample pack until you find a blade you really like.
Cartridges are faster still, but I always get rash or burn from them. A good DE blade I might nick myself but an after a little styptic and it’s not noticeable.
I’ve never tried a straight edge, it sounds cool but I’ve been told to expect to cut yourself when learning and I’m happy enough with my setup.
I find shaving much more mediative with brush and hard soap. It took a little while to learn the technique and the directions my hair grows in but it’s a much more enjoyable process than with a cartridge razor and canned soap. Plus I can change my blade every 4 shaves or so and it’s like 10p a shave so much cheaper than cartridges.
I bought myself a scuttle and some nice shave bowls, I’ve got a brush I like and an adjustable razor that I start with open and close for my final passes. It’s a nice way to start the morning for sure.
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.
Video guides are nice, but I prefer Grog’s Knots. He even has an app for offline knot learning, say, when you’re deep in the woods and it’s raining hard and your tent’s rain cover blows off into the lake and you thankfully brought a tarp and rope but don’t know how to make one of those adjustable knots that you can just slip-tighten. You know, theoretically speaking.
On a side note and completely unrelated, bring one of those big grout sponges when you go camping. In addition to mopping up all the water in your tent, it makes a nice pillow if your inflatable pillow decides to run away in the night in a storm and go swimming in the lake.
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.
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.
Even a quick YouTube session on some common cases should help. If you want, getting certified is pretty easy and it looks good on resumes (or at work, you could be the designated person in emergencies)
If someone close to you has an emergency, it’s nice to have an idea of what to do while you wait.
On the flip side, I had someone open up about regret from not learning; it was heartbreaking hearing it. Their family member may have died anyways, but they felt like a few extra minutes could have helped the odds, and regretted not knowing what to do
sewing with a needle and thread. nothing complicated, the bare minimum is useful in a lot of ways.
i keep a small kit in my car because my pants waistlines keep shrinking mysteriously and i’m starting to randomly lose buttons and getting blowouts in the crotch. [likely due to far-reaching, nefarious, conspiracies and not b/c of the other kit in my car that’s full of snacks].
what used to be my crippling, irrational fear of inadvertently exposing myself at like a job interview or in an uber with a cute driver, is now an easy fix i can do in a minute AND it’s certain to make an impression.
old winter jackets with a lot of zippered pockets are especially great practice. try unstitching and removing a few of the pockets, then add them to other jackets or whatever you can think of.
Someone blow my mind with it and since then my life wasn’t colplete without it… just listen me out … You are in a rush maybe your train is leaving or something like that … So you run right … Yeah and if u encounter a pair of stairs climbing up you still rush by skipping steps right … And if the stairs are going down ? Yeah you might jump the last steps but you ain’t gonna gain much especially if the stairs are long or wiredly segmented … And if I told you it’s possible to descend 2 steps with a single step ? You climb stairs in a pair why not descend them in a pair too …
It isn’t that hard to learn you might slip some time while learning but I have never fell … It’s all a game of weight transfer … Just move your weight a little back and move the leg a bit forward… Btw I found it easier with a heavy backpack too…
I was in Milan rushing for the underground train and a man in a blue suit passed me whit ease on the stairs … Now I’m ready … I’m waiting for you I’m waiting for revenge !!!
Ha, I’ve never heard hunt and peck called “chicken typing” before, I kinda like it!
I learned to type in junior high on a Wang (with the black and spinach-green screen), and our typing teacher would tape a piece of paper to the top of the keyboard. Our fingers went under the paper so that we couldn’t see what keys we were touching. It made you learn quickly to find your home row keys, and after that learning to type was pretty fun and painless.
Do kids not get a typing class anymore?
ETA: before my typing class I ‘taught’ myself on a Selectric at my mom’s office - man did I have to unlearn some bad habits!