What skill did you learn that was not worth the effort? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 21 hours ago by Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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?

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[-] hawgietonight@lemmy.world 61 points 16 hours ago

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.

[-] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 15 points 11 hours ago

I had to learn himem.sys and loadhigh when I was about 10 years old and the family PC HDD crashed. I had a copy of DOS and a manual the size of a phone book. The only way out was to write my own boot disk.

But yes, these days it's a bit of a useless skill.

[-] hawgietonight@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago

Yeah and to think we had to learn and find out stuff reading a book. A book!!

[-] SorryImLate@piefed.social 1 points 8 hours ago

Wait, how do you thread a needle without looking?

[-] hawgietonight@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It's pretty cool to see once mastered because it takes less than a second and not many catch what happened.

You take the thread and wrap it around the needle and pull tight. Grab the thread with two fingers and pinch it. Slide the needle out and shove the needle's eye into the pinched thread. When the thread goes through, grab it and pull it all the way.

The skill comes into play aiming the eye correctly and doing it fast.

It's probably easier to understand watching a tutorial video.

[-] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

I was intrigued and found a video. I think this is what you're describing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XINziQscpOY&t=729s

[-] hawgietonight@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes that is exactly it! I've just learnt it's called the fold method. You can feel the thread and the eye in the fingers it's impressive to see it done fast in one shot, my mom worked knitting and sewing and probably didn't even need to think about it.

[-] SorryImLate@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago

Thanks. I know this method but I've never tried doing it without looking. Sounds like I'm doing it too slowly, something for me to practice.

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026

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