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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

Things in which people consistently overrate their skills: Super Smash Brothers, Scalable Backend Systems, Microsoft Excel.

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Add Predicting Completion of Tasks and Driving.

80% of drivers think they're better than average.

Are there things where people consistently underrate their skills?

To give a serious answer I read somewhere: unicycling. Very few people can actually ride one, so if you can ride a regular bicycle you are probably above average at unicycling.

> Very few people can actually ride one, so if you can ride a regular bicycle you are probably above average at unicycling.

I don't understand, are you saying that the average person can't ride a bicycle?

Unicycling is seriously difficult! I failed at learning to ride one.

Courage.

/straight face

Procrastination.

Math.

Rating things

Empathy

silly replies

I'm a 23rd level VBA ninja-rockstar and epically hate myself.

Memory management in C.

SSB? No.

I've bought it because of everyone posting about how awesome it is and how their six year old sister is good at it and so on.

I've read all kinds of tips and tricks guides.

I still haven't found out how coming back from a fall off the platform works. I can hammer the key that the Nintendo leaflet and all the online guides say and nothing happens. Probably there is some other prerequisite to it. Or whatever.

I would add Photoshop to this list.

Microsoft Word

Humor is possibly the most egregiously self over-estimated skill.

Personally I don't want to get good at Excel. Its a horrible piece of software for the majority of the tasks it is used for. It would probably make a decent spreadsheet but I hardly ever see it used as that.

Sex

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