Something you’re just good at with minimal effort and/or you learned much more quickly than average.
For me, it’s paper snowflakes. My brain just seems to effortlessly figure out what cuts to make to the paper wedge to make it turn out exactly how I want it. Largely useless, but good fun and was a much-needed ego boost when I was a kid :]
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I can cook minute rice is 56 seconds.
God damn it!
I have an excellent sense of time and space, i can accurately tell how much time and distance I’ve gone without tools. Im great to bring along for a hike.
Out of interest, do you have a vague ability to tell orientation (magnetic north) with your eyes closed? Research is showing some people have magnetoreception and that it may have been more common in our human ancestors but lost to many over time.
It could explain why you’re so good at telling distance and time.
Maybe, but i live in the mountains so its always easy to tell directions.
If you’re ever bored one night, close your eyes and get a friend to rotate you around (gently and slowly) then get you to turn yourself to point where you feel north is. Do this 10 times, logging how far of you were from north and see how accurate you are from random.
You might have a hidden sense that’s incredibly rare in humans!
Hahaha no, I can assure you, people like me can get lost inside an elevator. It’s easy for you to tell directions, but not everyone. I wish I could!
Close your eyes and spin around a few times?
Probably get dizzy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12460-6
Here’s a pretty recent paper on this. I only skimmed it but boy does this seem wacky. It is in Nature, though, so I guess it’s at least somewhat serious…?
I have the same thing. I’m pretty sure there’s a word for this sense, but it eludes me at the moment.
Sure you think paper snowflakes are useless but wait for an elementary school play to need set design and they will crawl in their hands and knees to rescue them 😉
I just got a new job at a place where my coworkers are really into seasonal decorations, so I’m low key excited for winter
Have fun schooling those plebs with the decor
I’m fantastic at volumetric estimation, like when choosing the smallest Tupperware that will fit all the leftovers.
I’m good at puzzles, particularly like jigsaw puzzles, but also games like flow where you match the pipes. I can sometimes do it so quickly I don’t understand how I know what I’m doing, it’s more like instinct.
I have the same superpower and I love all the Flow Free games. And you’re right, I can’t even explain to myself how I know what to do. 🤷🏽♀️
I’m the same way with word puzzles/games, but I can’t even split a check without a calculator lol.
I’m really good at getting cats to vocally respond to me. I don’t know if I’m just on their wavelength or what, but almost every time I start a convo with a kitty I get a response. Oddly specific, but also pretty fun. Kids love it lol.
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Very fast reflexes and I can see in the dark far better than most people.
I had never realized that my eyes were different until my compulsory miltary service. I could reasily read maps when others couldn’t see shit and I never stumbled during night training in the forest.
Fast reflexes are generally pretty cool to havel, but it’s not fun when a knife falls off the kitchen table and it is impossible to stop your own hand trying to catch it.
My “learned talent” is fixing mechanical devices. When I was 6 or 7 I took apart and fixed the family VCR so I could finish watching the Smurfs. My mom found me studying the jammed mechanism, with all the parts lying on the living room carpet. She had a fit and wanted to collect the parts away, I started crying and told her that I’ll never get it back together if she messes up their places. She watched as I released the stuck tape wheel and reassembled the device. And it worked.
I’ve fixed countless devices with just visual analysis and pure intuition after that.
I am literally unable to remember people’s faces. If you talk to me, go for a walk, and come back ten minutes later, I won’t recognize you.
Once, the guy who sat next to me at university for two years, and with whom I spent countless time together, took the same bus as me. I hopped on the bus, saw him, and my brain told me “Uh, that’s kind of a familiar face, I guess”. I smiled to him (because he looked familiar), then I passed him and and went to sit some rows behind.
He’s made fun of me ever since.
The worst thing is, I work at the front desk of a hotel. I always struggle to remember who’s who. Sometimes I recognize their shirt, their hair, their voice, or I see a family with two kids and remember “oh yeah, they’re from room 210”. But most of the time, I must ask them to remind me which room they are, even if they checked-in just ten minutes before.
I’ve got a competent and authoritative voice. People frequently assume I’m the most qualified in a group when I’m really objectively not as soon as i start speaking. Whatever I say or decide rarely gets questioned and people just keep letting me do stuff. When something is my word against another’s, people believe me.When I say something is needed, it’s done. When I make a proposal, that’s usually what’s agreed on and done without me really trying to push it.
This is familiar.
In particular, my accent gives me a distinct advantage, as I speak with what some might describe as a “BBC” English accent. I work using English outside of the UK in a multinational company, and it’s served me very well.
In international contexts people just seem to trust that I know what I’m talking about, because they think that I sound like I should be narrating a nature documentary.
I’m not super sure what it is for me. I’m able to code switch pretty easily, and I don’t speak obvious dialect unless I explicitly mean to (I’m not a native english speaker, but it applies to english as well). It’s generally a great thing to have. I know a few people who struggle with being listened to, and honestly, it looks like it sucks.
The only downside I’ve ever seen is that you have to be super honest to yourself about what you can and can not handle, or it can spin out of control quickly. Sometimes others assume you’re capable of anything they ask you to, and you don’t correct them because you think you might get away with it. But when you can’t pull it off, they will be disappointed and not very understanding. So it kinda becomes your job to point out your shortcomings to others early and frequently, which takes some mental energy, and I struggled with it when i was younger. I was very insecure on the inside, while seeming very confident to others. But I learned that if you do it in a competent voice, it just makes you more trustworthy because being honest about your mistakes and shortcomings when other people already think you’re capable is seen as a mature and responsible thing. So it works out in the end.
Completely agree with your suggestion for handling this issue. This is something I’ve experienced most of my life as well and have only started realizing it at work the past few years. As I started working on more complicated subjects with a lot of room for ambiguity and error, I really have to make sure and qualify what I know for certain and what is more speculation in my work conversations.
Imo it’s really the only way to handle it and not go either full psycho narcissist or insane pressure burnout. But learning that humility took me a few tries, ngl. Also, it’s not a really googleable problem and even genuinely complaining about it sounds like humblebragging to many people. Because in the end, it is a very good thing and a privilege, but boy I’ve had some stressful times with it.
(Well, I must say, you mentioned you’re not a native English speaker, but you could fool anyone because your English is crazy good - what is your native language?)
I agree, it’s a real strength and something you can learn to control and use when you need it. It has definitely led to burnout situations for me in the past. For me, I think that comes from wanting to meet the expectations I feel I’ve set, but I’ve struggled to differentiate between expectations that I’m setting for myself vs. what others actually expect. My entire life I’ve worked harder than needed, most likely. Does this sound familiar to you? It’s definitely led to some success for me that I don’t feel is really deserved, but I’m learning to be a little more grateful for it these days :)
Thank you. That’s what years of reddit and hating dubbed media will do for you :) my native language is German, and we do start learning English here pretty early in life. When I was young, we started at 8, but today it’s sometimes even earlier. But sadly since I’m out of school my speaking skills are a little rusty, since I don’t practice them enough.
Yes, I definitely felt that because of the expectations they had, i had to go the extra mile every time or I’d be worse than someone fulfilling already low expectations. But inevitably, you cannot go the extra mile all the time, so you ket some things slide, and they snowball and then you need to work extra extra hard to keep things from spinning out.
But then, many people’s success is earned through way shadier means than “working harder than needed”.
I can look at a small open space (trunk, corner of a room, shelves, etc) a and then look at the item I need to fit in that space and say with a decent amount of confidence “yeah that’ll fit perfectly” or “that’s gonna be slightly too big”
Yea this is me. I’m really good at packing spaces. I’ve had to repack people’s cars to get everything to fit for long trips or moves. It’s like I can see how to make the pieces fit together to maximize space.
Im really good at throwing balled up napkins into the trashcan.
KOBEEEEEE
I’m told I’m a talented public speaker and that I look calm on stage. Honestly I think I’m just better at hiding how nervous I am
Drawing, painting and sculpture in general. I guess with AI advancing as it is, these skills are becoming more and more useless every minute but that’s what I got.
I’ve sat on a potter’s wheel twice in my life and both times the instructors seemed impressed at the results. “It’s said people like you were potters in a past life”. But I didn’t become a potter or ceramist in this life, so…
Oh, no! Your skills are not useless. You can imagine and create, AI just copies and manipulates.
I’m pretty good at sensing the emotions of people around me. It’s not magic like some people think, but an obsessive awareness of small facial and body movements.
Oh, and writing dialogue is super easy for me, not sure why some people have a hard time with it.
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I’m a perfect failure. If you hand me anything, no matter how complex or simple, I will fuck it up beyond all chance of repair and you will never figure out how it happened because even I don’t know.
Citation: my life, job, friends, ex-gf, family, hobbies, etc…
You wrote this comment really well.
Which, in a way, means they failed at failing!
