Skills Every Man Should Know to Know Every Skill a Man Should Need

Popular Mechanics has an okay list of “25 Skills Every Man Should Know” on the site. (Disclosure: I am a contributing editor at the magazine. Don’t fire me because I’m about to slag your list a little!)

I’ve put the top five from Pop Mech below, which I don’t think they were ranking in order of importance. Some of that stuff makes sense, like being able to patch a radiator hose. That’s the difference between getting stuck in your car in the middle of nowhere and being able to drive it into a shop. Frame a wall, sure. I’ve had to do that before. I could have hired someone to do it, just like most of the “must know skills” that comprise lists like these, but at the time I couldn’t afford a contractor but I could afford some lumber and drywall.

Here, let me skip past this list to keep yapping. I didn’t want to put it at the top of the post but now it’s distracting me.

1. Patch a radiator hose.
2. Protect your computer.
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized.
4. Frame a wall.
5. Retouch digital photos.

Okay, much better.

Anyway, my point is this: Wait, let me tell you about something I was talking about with my pops. We were talking about DIY stuff, specifically how useful it was to know how to do the sort of stuff I write about for a living. His argument was that he could pay somebody to do just about everything he needed done in his life and that they’d probably do a better job than he could do at it. And he’s right. The whole “my time is worth more doing my job well than doing someone else’s poorly” thing.

But my point was that these DIY type of projects and the knowledge gleaned from doing them helps you know where the line between expert and amateur actually is. It helps you not get fleeced by people you have to bring in, or realize what may seem like a big problem is something moderately easy to overcome. Plus it helps you feel a little more competent at modern life; confident that the world has few problems it can throw at you that you can’t figure out.

And I mean, my dad tore out all the electrical wiring in his boat and rewired it to relax, so obviously there are some DIY projects he’s happy to mess with.

Back to that point: These sort of lists are fun and useful, but it seems to imply some more basic set of skills that might be more useful for men. I mean, the core assumption of a list like this is that you can actually do things, but sometimes I wonder how much people who read Popular Mechanics and MAKE and this whole genre are reading it as aspirational pornography. I know I do! I probably have done like two or three of the projects I’ve read about in the last year that I wasn’t specifically doing so I could write an article about them.

Wait, I’m off track again.

Meta-skills! That’s it. Skills that every man should know that will help to learn other skills.

Here’s my stab at it. Feel free to shoot these down:

1. Understanding how to follow directions.
2. Understanding when to ignore directions.
3. Understanding when to ask for help from friends or experts.
4. Understanding when to stop planning or fretting and when to start working.
5. Understanding that the worst that’s going to happen is that you’ll totally fuck it up. And so what?

Seriously, though, Pop Mech: You put capsized boat rescues next to retouching photos? What’s worse, I bet you have a guy on staff who is the “capsized boat rescue guy,” which would make me the “photo retouch guy.” Clearly I need to start Photoshopping more pictures of boats into my staff portraits.

25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide [PopularMechanics.com]