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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

The skills you really need to thrive in the world aren't listed:

emotional control and social navigation

I've seen plenty of people be successful without being able to do algebra, while barely ever reading a book. I've never seen anyone reach great heights without being in control of their own feelings and understanding the feelings of others.

Of course it's hard to measure such nebulous skills, but we've all come across it in our day-to-day. We've all met that guy who seems to know exactly what to say in every situation.

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Emotional control really is the *the* skill. When I was diagnosed with ADHD I learned that emotional disregulation was a part of it.

I had spent years trying to work out why everyone was so especially unkind to me. I thought maybe I was autistic (I'm not), or that I was giving off weird social cues. Turns out that I just have trouble regulating the regular ups and downs of normal emotional life.

Often people talk about task-completion and procrastination when ADHD comes up. That's emotional disregulation too. You sit at a desk, open your algebra book and start working on problem one. As soon as it is slightly difficult the uncontrollable emotions run wild. It feels awful. Now scrolling a couple of youtube videos takes your mind of it. You get a little break from (what feels like) world ending emotional pain.

I still struggle with this years after my diagnosis but the first step to improvement is to label the emotions you are having, when you have them.

> Emotional control really is the the skill. When I was diagnosed with ADHD I learned that emotional disregulation was a part of it.

I agree. I think emotional control and social navigation are sort of, but not entirely related. My ADHD inspired emotional disregulation meant people often found me difficult to be around, the emotional swings made them uncomfortable.

I became happier and more successful when I started learning to be less toxic, to control my emotions, or at least not make it other peoples problem.

Reading your post made me realize I may have ADHD

> I had spent years trying to work out why everyone was so especially unkind to me.

It is also possible that you met your fair share of assholes.

Thank you for sharing. I can assure you that there are many people with exactly the same difficulties including me :)

Being able to master new skills is also a display of emotional control.

I think pretty much anybody can master the knowledge within a chemistry textbook, but few people have the skill to self study a chemistry textbook, part of which required emotional control.

Of course it's hard to measure such nebulous skills, but we've all come across it in our day-to-day. We've all met that guy who seems to know exactly what to say in every situation.

I do improvisational comedy. It involved some levels of emotional understanding and storytelling, but I am unsure how to translate it to real life. When you're doing improv, your scene partner is very interested in keeping a conversation going.

> Being able to master new skills is also a display of emotional control.

Absolutely, I found this a lot at university. For a lot of kids, especially ones at top unis, this is the first time they've ever done anything actually hard.

I mentioned this the other day. Before uni, I knew all the math and physics I'd ever come across. Like, everything. I twiddled my thumbs at the end of the IB exams. When I got to uni, there were entire question sheets that I didn't understand. As in "what does that lecture I went to have to do with these questions?"

It takes some emotional growth to deal with that situation, and the answer isn't external, in the sense of "hey you gotta ask the prof the right questions" or "the answer is in a particular book". The answer is that you have to really really concentrate hard and stick to it, even when it feels like you're not getting anywhere. (Examiners hate this one trick!)

You speak a great deal of truth - I found myself learning these skills at the pointy end of a cane at British boarding school, and they have served me exceptionally well, in everything from my career to chatting up a policeman I can barely speak the language of to not pay a hefty fine.

These skills will continue to be valuable regardless of what the future holds.

I would add one related, arguably harder skill to master - pattern recognition. Being able to see patterns where others do not yet is an enormously valuable skill in life, and a key part of my arsenal for a changing world - I am, after all, an elder millennial, and I have watched the world go from smoking on the tube, bowler hats, typewriters and briefcases to… this - and I have anticipated and adapted.

I have found myself thinking a lot about this topic of late - I have a daughter, soon to be two, and I want to ensure that she is well equipped for whatever the world throws at her.

> pointy end of a cane

> I am, after all, an elder millennial

These things do not add up at all.

I think they still had corporal punishment into the early 90s in the UK?

I thought it was made illegal in the 1980's, and indeed it was in state schools, but I stand corrected here, because it was still legal in private schools until 1998.

Yep, and I started boarding in ‘89, aged six. It was mostly extinct by the time I reached secondary school, but at my prep school, it was rife. The place was run by a group of retired Cold War submariners, and while the place had much to be commended, their approach to discipline was not. One learned to avoid consequences for one’s actions, rather than to endure them. That meant learning to lie like your and your co-suspects’ ability to sit or sleep that week depended on it - because it did.

> I've never seen anyone reach great heights without being in control of their own feelings

Steve Jobs wasn't exactly known for being in control of his emotions. Musk, Gates, Ellison and Kalanick also have a reputation for exploding in rage from time to time.

When you look at history's greatest scientists or mathematicians you see a pretty similar picture. Newton? Erdos? Grothendieck? Diogenes? They weren't emotionally stable 9 to 5 guys. Quite the opposite.

People who reach great heights are rarely balanced people. "Everything in moderation" doesn't produce greatness. If history tells us anything it's that we are incredibly forgiving of the flaws of highly accomplished people.

I think Steve Jobs et al were in control of their emotions. I’m quite certain those explosions were controlled to achieve some certain effects.

He didn't recognize his daughter for the first 2 years of her life and angrily insisted the child wasn't his because he didn't want the distraction of parenthood. Emotionally developed people don't behave like this.

Both the richest man of the world and the US president-elect exhibit notably low levels of emotional control. How is that not "great heights"?

> I've never seen anyone reach great heights without being in control of their own feelings and understanding the feelings of others.

I think there are enough historical and present-day counterexamples to this, unfortunately.

In essence, the foundations of social skills generally take precedence.

In my experience these are people who make others do the work and never experience the heat of it themselves. It doesn’t scale, at the very least. Confident babbling was always despised by the skilled workers I knew.

I think that the only emotion you have to regulate in this mode is self-cringe, which ignorance helps to mask very naturally.

It is probably tempting to associate social skills w/ the vacuous talking heads of the world, but that's not what GP is saying, I don't think.

I think the text was meant to be read "If nothing else, and before anything else, be a good person to be around". Because that will open so many doors for you.

You're thinking of a certain type of bullshitter that everyone likes to hate. I will circle back to that.

The basics of emotional control are things like not immediately interjecting when you disagree with someone in a conversation. But also, having some limits to procrastination, eg when you are studying. Or a bit of resilience when life treats you harshly.

Social navigation is understanding other people. Why is this person who arrived at the party alone looking down at the floor? What is a compliment that this person will appreciate? What do people here think, and where does it differ from what I think?

A friend of mine is insanely good at the social part, it's almost like magic. He saw a guy looking at him in a bar, goes over, says "hey man, you're a secret service agent, right?". He wasn't wrong, and he's friends with the guy now.

Now, back to persuasion. People who are actually good socially don't get caught bullshitting. The best people will acknowledge their faults. "I was thinking we could all do {this project}, but I'm not the techie here and you guys might have some input". People appreciate that over "trust me, we can totally do this guys, one team one dream".

It's actually the people who aren't good socially who seem to make progress initially, because at least they aren't anonymous, but they can't actually build the support they need and people start resenting their style.

Thanks for explanation, I understand your idea better now, but still disagree. I don’t think that the described is actually commonly lacking and, back to the original point, that it is first and foremost related to some form of success. There are lots of social people, at least they are the majority at meetings. And barely a quarter of them are that high on that beaten success/thrive ladder. (And it may be just post-factum confidence in disguise). While social is important, as in “don’t be socially disabled”, I find this importance barely meaningful for what was an initial point of subj, cause it’s in no common lack-of category.

I guess that’s where we see it differently.

I dont think the poster was suggesting social skill/emotional control are an exclusive requirement, more that these are a prerequisite for any other skills even being fairly useful. at the very least, emotional control gives one the ability to improve other skills that may be lacking as they move through life.

I thought about possible interpretations, but aren’t they pretty clear in the first sentences.

If no, I don’t understand this position then. Having social skills doesn’t magically create learning skills (unless we postulate that learning is social) or real world skills, I mean real world that doesn’t hear you out when you command.

At the very least it should be put together with reality changing skills, not first. Because in the first place it creates talking heads which only change perception temporarily (aka lying).

Learning how to learn is probably a more root/core skill.

There’s a free and popular course by that name too.

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