Recently, I've been thinking about the idea of "mini-skills," which are skills that you can learn very quickly (in a matter of minutes or a few hours) and can be utilized right away. These aren't like skills you would put on your resume necessarily, but just small things that improve or enrich your life in some way.
Mini-skills could just be a concept that changes how you think, or a simple technique that changes the way you do something.
Here are a few examples of mini-skills that I've been thinking about:
- Using the U.S. Highway System numbering to navigate unfamiliar areas: In the U.S., the national highway system uses a numbering system that indicates the direction a road is going. Odd numbers generally indicate a north-south road, while even numbers indicate an east-west road.
- Using the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell out words over the phone.
- Learning how to fold a T-shirt in two seconds.
- Learning how to tie your shoes in a few seconds using the Ian Knot.
- Knowing how to find the North Star in the night sky.
- Knowing how to convert hourly wage into an annual salary: Multiply your hourly wage by 2,000 to get a rough estimate of your annual salary (assuming ~40 hours a week for ~50 weeks a year). For example, $15/hour × 2,000 = $30,000/year.
- Estimating miles to kilometers: pick the next largest Fibonacci number. For example, 5 miles is roughly 8 kilometers (actual value is 8.04km). To convert kilometers to miles, do the opposite and pick the next smallest Fibonacci number.