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.
Don't feel bad. Everyone gets distracted with a gun pointed at them.
Robber: "Why does it take so long to stuff money in the bag?" Bank employee: "Oh, that's what I was supposed to do."
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.
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.
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:
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 wish I could speak a lot of languages fluently.
This is my answer also. I wish I was multi-lingual.
I'm regularly on calls with people for whom English is not their primary language. Almost without fail they apologize for their poor English. I regularly tell those people, "please don't apologize, you do me that courtesy of communicating with me in my native tongue. I am completely unable to reciprocate that courtesy."
I'd love to be fluent in Spanish, French, German.
Look into Comprehensible Input. Dreaming Spanish is a great channel/site.
It's really not difficult to do per se, it just takes a LOT of time. 1500+ hours. But if you can replace the time you spend watching YouTube videos and doomscrolling, you'll get there eventually. Especially once you reach the point of understanding media in the language you're learning. You can then go mindlessly watch YouTube again... but in that language lmao.
Check out this playlist for an explanation of the method (turn on subtitles) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf , TL;DW don't study the language. Don't do grammar/vocab by rote. Literally just listen to a crap ton of the language. You will learn grammar/vocab naturally with repetition in context. But you must listen/watch at a level you can understand. That starts with content with a lot of hand gestures and simple stories, where maybe you don't understand the words but you understand the meaning by the rest of the context. After a hundred hours or so you can move on to content with less context clues, and after maybe 400-600 hours start with media meant for native speakers.
That's the problem with native lingua franca speakers. They don't have a foreign language that they really have to learn.
If you don't speak English people are mostly limited to their own country. German is worthless in France. So we all need to learn English, while you don't have a lot of benefit of actually learning other languages.
To show my point: My team at work is spread over most of Europe. We don't have an English native speaker in the team and there are maybe a small handful of them in the whole company. Still, we all speak English at work, because it's the only language everyone knows.
See a lot of comments here about creative skills like drawing or singing, and I feel a little bit privileged having skill in both and more besides, on the creative side.
But I can’t really feel good about it, because I have serious problems with math and strict, rule-based stuff.
I really wish I was more logical and structured. I also lack a lot in the department of executive function, being so chaotic and creative. I am really bad at most everything that would actually get me a decent wage. The creative skills are worth nothing (in the sense of getting paid) if you can’t manage to stick to deadlines or sell yourself as an employee or a freelancer, and I keep getting into deep trouble due to miscalculating and misestimating my budgets, timespans, conceptualizing bigger picture when I am thrown into doing small picture stuff, or seeing the small pictures when I’m working with the big picture.
But it’s pretty interesting and fun seeing these different kind of responses. I guess there’s a little bit of a zero sum game here; if one’s good at something, almost always they’re bad on something else. Seems obvious, but somehow I’ve never thought about that.
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.
I wish I was better at debate. My wife always comes out ahead in arguments. Maybe it's because she had a debate class in high school and I never did. I always stumble over my arguments and they are easy to pick apart. Not that I would use that skill against her. I'd still probably let her win, haha. But it would just be a nice skill to have in life.
Music. Probably singing and acoustic guitar. I really like singing, even if I'm really bad at it, and I like getting lost in music. Yes I can listen to some music, but I feel like doing it yourself gives it something more. Someday I'll get classes haha, I need more hours in my day
I have been blessed with zero rhythm or musical ability. I’ve never been able to clap on beat for example.
We watch family feud and I can be clapping along (to make my wife laugh primarily) all on my own not even beat with the audience, and I don’t even notice I’m off!
The great irony is I have much better hearing than the average person.
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.
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
this is exactly how I started. I looked at my job to see what I can do to solve an issue we were having using python and, even though my final script was a complete mess, it worked. learned SO much along the way
I am a programmer. It's like riding a bike, the training wheels are follow along projects on Udemy and YouTube. Don't try to start with massive projects for dream ambitions, make a button fetch some data when clicked then move on from there.
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.
Musical talent. I'd love to be able to sing and play guitar but I have no aptitude for it at all.
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.
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.
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.
Turn off my ADHD for a moment / focus on something cognitively induced and not "I NEED DOPAMIIINE"
I wish I could just decide to sleep. I wish I could go "I have to be awake in 10 hours, I will sleep now." Nope. I can go forward but not backward. I've lost count of the number of times I've wrapped around the clock, staying up for 20 hours and sleeping for 10. The abiltiy to go "man I don't need to be up at 1AM, I have shit to do in the morning" and go to bed at 11 and actually sleep. That would be useful.
would be nice if I had more graphical imagination, but I just can't create detailed images in my head. I can either "see" the big picture but with no details, or can focus on some detail, but then loose the big picture.
this way I really can't draw stuff purely from my brain, I need references. and again, I can't really vary from those references.
there's room for practicing, obviously, but I have less and less time (and need, tbh) to develop my drawing skills, so I kinda gave up on it.
Sounds like you have aphantasia. I've got it too, it was wild when I first found out.
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.
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.
aquarium plant growing
every time i buy them they die
Tuning a musical instrument by ear. I have tried to "train" my ear and all that but no dice. I can play well enough but if stuff goes out of tune I have no idea until I check it or someone tells me
Ok. Mini-rant because I can't contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I've been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.
Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I'm quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they're the type that only hates what they make because they're the one who made it.
Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you're Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don't even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn't what you saw in your head (it never is).
Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what's in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand -- this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.
When you've got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you're able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.
Barring that, my second choice is singing.
Focus on reading a book.
I can do it but I have to be in the mood. I wish it were all the time but it's more like once a month. I'm trying to wean myself away from screens and be more mindful about spending more than a few minutes on a task. It's a lifestyle change and a struggle.
Also; spelling, typing, and writing in print and cursive. I always type and write letters out of order.
I have the opposite problem as you, I wish I was more able to verbally express myself without becoming lost in the options during an open conversation, an issue I've always had to deal with.
Ooh I actually had the same thing with drawing!
I spent an hour a day for a month trying to draw just the same character following a tutorial.
I wasn't a master, but the difference between "I look like a child scribbling" and "person who looks like they need more practice" really was just a month it felt like.
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
oh man yeah the quick sketch is amazing. I would love that talent.
I used to work with a guy who could draw. He would absentmindedly create masterpieces with a sharpie and a dirty sheet of cardboard while waiting on a machine to finish. He said the only reason he can do it is because he practiced.
Every cool thing you see someone do, they're only capable of it because they kept trying every day.
I wish I could speak Spanish fluently. Formal, immersion, and independent study got me nowhere. I REALLY want to go to Mexico City to see ruins and it would be helpful if I could carry a conversation.
Card throwing simply because it's always looked like the coolest fucking thing ever.
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