I'd trade my car repair skill for house repair, and my musical ability for math ability. Both of those are far more useful in life. Maybe also trade my computer ability for welding or woodworking.

I need better emotional regulation. I wish I could just go "Yeah this is going to completely suck" and then get it done.

I would trade my accumulated engineering training and skills in order to be a great musician. I'm done with office work, staring at a screen all day, and coming home mentally exhausted. I want to be able to go to a jam session and shred with the best.

I'd trade 90's computer skills for 90's social skills. Because 90's social skills are relevant today, while it's been a while since I've had to resolve IRQ conflicts via jumpers. And switches no longer have a Chasey Lain daisy chain port thanks to multiplexing.

Id probably trade my gaming skills for any sort of artistic skill. At least then I could be good at something that you can make an income from.

I'd trade my dick sucking skills for skill at playing guitar.

Id trade the skill of knowing how many carbs are in any dish with the skill to naturally release insulin to process the carbs of any dish. Or am i trading a skill for a perk?

Have you tried taking up the (skin) flute?

I have a tangent related to 90's social skills: I wish I had attended university before the high-speed internet era. We collectively replaced so much face-to-face interaction with stupid Flash games and scrolling ebaumsworld.

Not negating you, but if you are under any notion that art can sustain a living, especially in the current slop world, I have bad news for you 😬

You've had a Lotta dick

Had a Lotta dick

I've had a Lotta time

The fact I played flute in 4th-6th grade makes me wonder if those skills just translated... 🤔

If you have a job like that, you have the money to get basically any gear and lessons you want!

I would trade my very limited woodworking skills for equally limited artistic skills of any type, ideally music related.

I would trade some other skills (really any pick) for extra house improvement skills. It’s not even that I’m bad at it, I’m just too nervous to fuck it up to even start…

I'm at a point in life where money isn't the issue. The bottlenecks are always time and energy. Someday I'll have time to focus on music (and skiing, and backpacking, and drawing, and ...).

That hits the nail on the head.

Not sustain but at least provide something extra. The sort of thing where a couple of commissions might get you a pizza or some other treat that you couldn't justify otherwise.

Feel you bro, feel you

Accurate

I feel like there's got to be people out there that want the opposite trade.

I have the jack-of-all-trades skill.

I can play guitar, piano, cello, oboe, drums and sing, write computer programs, poetry and short stories, read at a fairly fast pace (I've clocked myself at over 1800 pages a day, 4 full novels, without skipping sleep), I have decent eidetic memory, I've read multiple encyclopedia's from A to Z, I am apparently unable to get lost, I can do carpentry and electrical work, home repairs, automobile repairs, fix electronics, toys, gewgaws and gadgets, I know dozens of stupid human tricks like folding joints out of place and flipping eyelids, crossing eyes and flexing tongue.

I have literally never run into anything that I cannot do to some degree other than a pull-up or play the classical flute.

If I had to trade that skill for something else, I do not know how to properly value it. All I know is that everyone around me considers it basically worthless.

"Being good at guitar doesn't help me at all. Everyone hearing me play wants to suck my dick and not the other way around! 😩"

Knowledge of Mandarin-Chinese for Knowledge of Japanese

I like Anime 😁, but haven't really used Mandarin for over a decade so I feel like Japanese would be a better use of brain capacity for me.

I can whistle without moving my lips. I'd trade that for the ability to play football at a world competative level.

So many music answers here, I didn't expect that.

Maybe my ability to "sing" by vibrating just my lips together, in exchange for absolutely anything useful. I don't know if anyone else can do that, so if we're going by a kind of bell curve way of measuring "talent", it could fix a lot for me.

I’d trade my car repair skill for house repair

Interesting, why? You'd think they both are things you either have to do yourself or pay someone for.

Have you considered the possible financial implications of this? Playing music is great, but poverty isn't.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

Like, is it really that great for boosting romantic success? I mostly just hear the roasting.

(If you want to make money at it or get famous, I can assure you skill isn't a big part of the equation. I've been close enough to the industry to definitively say a lot gets fixed in post)

I would happily trade my very good writing abilities for the ability to engage with higher mathematics. The first can be learned, the second requires the right sort of brain (which I don't have).

I'd save some money and do that now. You never know when you're going to get a disease or cancer , or just get old.

At least thats how I look at it. Cancer is a 50% chance, so may as well plan on that taming me out!

Eh, car repair is worthless. I can swap engines, build engines, replace head gaskets and alternator's and clutches, but no one cares. That work maybe gets you 50 bucks here and there. House repairs are astronomically more expensive (especially things like dirtwork or drainage or concrete. A medium sized deck is $30,000 today to build. Plus cars now are mostly throwaway and not repairable without an ee degree and a dealership computer. Everything that ever breaks is just a little sensor made in China thats impossible to replicate.

I wonder how one gets your skills of all skills! Did you grow up without fear of failure and ADHD perhaps? Did you have good parents? Curious.

Grab gimp and start just editing pictures. I've made some cool stuff By combining photos tastefully or making album covers etc.

I am extremely focused on industrial electrical work as a career and have done it for about 12 years. To be quite honest, I can't picture myself ever doing anything else.

As a hobby though, I love working with wood. I've been slowly building my new kitchen and enjoying it quite a bit. Woodworking may be in my future. A good friend of mine has a membership to a shop that's close by

Massive fear of failure and incredibly abusive parents.

Also, practically no support from them beyond food and shelter. Even clothing was a once a year if they remember kind of thing.

I'm also vigilantly self-reliant, to the point that when I ask other people for help, they are often shocked.

That's great you're able to do all those things!

Funny, while i would never give up my ability to do math for writing, i feel the other way around in regards to which one can be learned and which one can only be "gifted".

I always was utterly unable to get decent grades in linguistics. No matter how much i tried ;)

Smurf some accounts on fps, i heard it pays (even though it's somewhat shady)

I would trade my video game ability for basically anything else in the world. Im no longer a world-champion contender level of skill, and without charisma its worthless.

I'd like to trade it in for carpentry or any handymannery.

Is doom scrolling a tradeable skill?

Based on what I know about flute embouchure, probably only if the receiving dick is quite small.

Now I'm gonna try to blow across someone's meatus to see if I can make it whistle next time I go down.

I'd trade my writing skills for coding skills. I feel like I'd be happier programming than teaching kids how to write.

Ironically enough, sounding would probably help

slide whistle sounds

I played saxophone through college. It was fun, but I haven't played in years. I'd rather know French at this point and try to move to the alps

Also, as far as how to get those skills, part of it is just being born with it. Both me and my dad are hyperlexic.

We taught ourselves to read.

My first words were "M-I-L-K, that spells milk", which shocked the hell out of my mom because apparently we were driving around in a car and I saw the billboard and it clicked in my head.

I was like nine months to a year old.

The rest of it is just boredom. I was offered to skip grades multiple times, but my mom didn't want to embarrass my older half-brother by having me be in the same grade or ahead of his grade, so I got held in place, and I still managed to graduate a year ahead of my class.

With all of the extra free time for my mind to ramble, I read and consumed information and I was like, I'm going to do something great and I need to know everything I possibly can know in order to accomplish this greatness.

Unfortunately...

Being horrendously abused by the people that are supposed to be nurturing and caring for you makes it incredibly difficult to reach out and achieve greatness when the opportunity is in front of you.

I'm with you.

I'll trade my skill with DOS6.2 for the ability to fix my own car brakes. That'd be enough.

Im a carpenter and a gamer

I did something similar with Inkscape a few years ago. I needed a quick logo for something, but wanted to be able to resize it easily. I knocked up something basic, then played with it when I had some free time. I'm still not particularly good, but I can do the basics :)

Hilariously I'm a linguist. I actually have several degrees in the humanities and social sciences plus a masters in IT management but made the potentially questionable decision to jump into an engineering doctorate with no engineering experience. It's been as fun as you might imagine, but I am learning lots and advancing through the program.

I wish that my undergrad advisor had let me take calculus like I wanted to, but he wouldn't since it wasn't required for the program. My doctoral advisor didn't say anything so I figured that I was in the clear. What do you know? It's all calculus based and I'm learning to do derivatives and integrals in realtime.

What I've learned here is that if we squished our brains together, we'd form a single, complete person.