I’d trade my car repair skill for house repair, and my musical ability for math ability. Both of those are far more useful in life. Maybe also trade my computer ability for welding or woodworking.
I’d trade 90’s computer skills for 90’s social skills. Because 90’s social skills are relevant today, while it’s been a while since I’ve had to resolve IRQ conflicts via jumpers. And switches no longer have a
Chasey Laindaisy chain port thanks to multiplexing.You’ve had a Lotta dick
Had a Lotta dick
I’ve had a Lotta time
I have a tangent related to 90’s social skills: I wish I had attended university before the high-speed internet era. We collectively replaced so much face-to-face interaction with stupid Flash games and scrolling ebaumsworld.
I’m with you.
I’ll trade my skill with DOS6.2 for the ability to fix my own car brakes. That’d be enough.
Id trade the skill of knowing how many carbs are in any dish with the skill to naturally release insulin to process the carbs of any dish. Or am i trading a skill for a perk?
I’d trade the ability to pick up my underwear with my foot and toss it into the laundry hamper for invisibility.
I would trade my accumulated engineering training and skills in order to be a great musician. I’m done with office work, staring at a screen all day, and coming home mentally exhausted. I want to be able to go to a jam session and shred with the best.
If you have a job like that, you have the money to get basically any gear and lessons you want!
I’m at a point in life where money isn’t the issue. The bottlenecks are always time and energy. Someday I’ll have time to focus on music (and skiing, and backpacking, and drawing, and …).
I’d save some money and do that now. You never know when you’re going to get a disease or cancer , or just get old.
At least thats how I look at it. Cancer is a 50% chance, so may as well plan on that taming me out!
I have the jack-of-all-trades skill.
I can play guitar, piano, cello, oboe, drums and sing, write computer programs, poetry and short stories, read at a fairly fast pace (I’ve clocked myself at over 1800 pages a day, 4 full novels, without skipping sleep), I have decent eidetic memory, I’ve read multiple encyclopedia’s from A to Z, I am apparently unable to get lost, I can do carpentry and electrical work, home repairs, automobile repairs, fix electronics, toys, gewgaws and gadgets, I know dozens of stupid human tricks like folding joints out of place and flipping eyelids, crossing eyes and flexing tongue.
I have literally never run into anything that I cannot do to some degree other than a pull-up or play the classical flute.
If I had to trade that skill for something else, I do not know how to properly value it. All I know is that everyone around me considers it basically worthless.
I wonder how one gets your skills of all skills! Did you grow up without fear of failure and ADHD perhaps? Did you have good parents? Curious.
Massive fear of failure and incredibly abusive parents.
Also, practically no support from them beyond food and shelter. Even clothing was a once a year if they remember kind of thing.
I’m also vigilantly self-reliant, to the point that when I ask other people for help, they are often shocked.
That’s great you’re able to do all those things!
Also, as far as how to get those skills, part of it is just being born with it. Both me and my dad are hyperlexic.
We taught ourselves to read.
My first words were “M-I-L-K, that spells milk”, which shocked the hell out of my mom because apparently we were driving around in a car and I saw the billboard and it clicked in my head.
I was like nine months to a year old.
The rest of it is just boredom. I was offered to skip grades multiple times, but my mom didn’t want to embarrass my older half-brother by having me be in the same grade or ahead of his grade, so I got held in place, and I still managed to graduate a year ahead of my class.
With all of the extra free time for my mind to ramble, I read and consumed information and I was like, I’m going to do something great and I need to know everything I possibly can know in order to accomplish this greatness.
Unfortunately…
Being horrendously abused by the people that are supposed to be nurturing and caring for you makes it incredibly difficult to reach out and achieve greatness when the opportunity is in front of you.
I’d trade my writing skills for coding skills. I feel like I’d be happier programming than teaching kids how to write.
You had me at “teaching kids”.
I’d lose my mind. Happier coding and vibin to music. You know, the OG vibe coding.
Don’t want, both jobs are being decimated by AI, so you should have plenty of time to learn whatever you want real soon.
I would trade my video game ability for basically anything else in the world. Im no longer a world-champion contender level of skill, and without charisma its worthless.
I’d like to trade it in for carpentry or any handymannery.
Im a carpenter and a gamer
My skill at driving a car would be transformed into helicopter pilot. I hear they make good money and I can always get a motorcycle or take Uber.
Knowledge of Mandarin-Chinese for Knowledge of Japanese
I like Anime 😁, but haven’t really used Mandarin for over a decade so I feel like Japanese would be a better use of brain capacity for me.
Useful doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it. I have the math skills but no musical skills. I wish I could sit on my patio and strum a guitar.
I can whistle without moving my lips. I’d trade that for the ability to play football at a world competative level.
I played saxophone through college. It was fun, but I haven’t played in years. I’d rather know French at this point and try to move to the alps
I would happily trade my very good writing abilities for the ability to engage with higher mathematics. The first can be learned, the second requires the right sort of brain (which I don’t have).
So many folks here just mentioning things that with time and effort they could just straight-up learn.
Music isn’t magic, Art isn’t something you’re born with
Respectfully disagree with you.
I’ve been taking music lessons for years, to find that I don’t have the ear nor the rhythm for it.
Ten years of dance classes, I love the feeling of floating over the floor with an English Waltz. But ask me to stop counting in my head, or improvise rather than trained patterns, and I fall apart, just rocking in place.
Painting too. Aquarels, not acrylic. I don’t have the imagination nor, again, the fine motor skills.
The Arts are not for me.
I am a man of electronics, mechanics, computing, soldering, Lego, woodworking, sailing, geometry, 3d modeling. And I can teach and plan and organise.
It’s all practical, tangible stuff. That is who I am.
Try taking some theory lessons, it helps with things immensely by giving a stronger foundation
Sounds like you’ve just not found the right way to learn that works for you, tbh
Eh you can’t ignore the effect talent has on skill development. Their brain can literally be wired in a way that something like rhythm can be difficult to master whereas someone else can pick it up easily. Some of these things you’re just born with and can never change.
The same applies to high level math and art
It’s at most a headstart
It’s more of a multiplier. Regardless of practice someone without talent will never catch a talented and dedicated person.
Huh, I guess that explains all those bands of musicians where none of them had any talent and then went on to have zero success, such as AC/DC, Slayer and Metallica
Mainstream musical success is not a metric of musical skill. However if you look at any violin soloist, they have to be talented.
Also I’d also argue many of those band members do have talent.
I’m in the same boat as him. I have zero talent or understanding if music and art
Math comes very easily and naturally to me. Even advanced calculus felt east to learn
I couldn’t sing a single song from memory. Not in a, “I’m bad at singing” way. Literally I don’t remember a single song. I have memorized songs before, but it’s quick to forget them, because it’s just that to me - memorization
With practice and effort I can memorize songs and generally replicate patterns to make music, but that’s it. It isn’t really learning music
It literally is.
That’s all learning music is, remembering more and more patterns, and then fucking around to see if you can combine them in interesting ways.
You all sound like you’ve just started, hit a chest-high wall and then went “this must be all there is! Woe is me!” instead of just climbing over the wall
