73 side quests
Small skills,
big payoff.
Not every skill needs a full course. These are the ones worth picking up in an afternoon — the tricks you'll still be showing off years from now.
Arm knitting — no needles needed
Make a chunky blanket or scarf using your arms as the needles. Done in under an hour.
Bake a birthday cake from scratch
A Victoria sponge done properly: the cake everyone has eaten a bad version of. Learn the method and you have the base for almost every celebration cake.
Crack the F Barre Chord
Master the hardest beginner chord and unlock every major and minor chord on the neck.
Human beatbox basics
Make a kick, snare, and hi-hat with your mouth and loop them into a real beat in minutes.
Bleed a radiator
Stop cold spots and cut heating bills by releasing trapped air from your radiators in under 10 minutes.
The body scan meditation
Learn to sweep attention through your body and release tension you didn't know you were holding.
Tie a Bowline
The king of knots. Strong, reliable, won't jam under load, and releases easily afterwards. Every sailor and climber knows one.
Box breathing — 4-4-4-4 technique
The Navy SEAL breathing method that resets your nervous system in under a minute.
Score bread before baking
Slash a loaf so it rises beautifully and doesn't burst at the seams.
Burnish a leather edge smooth
Finish raw leather edges to a glassy shine using simple tools and technique.
Cable-manage your desk
Tame the tangle behind your monitor: 30 minutes, a cable tray, and velcro ties.
Cat's Cradle String Figures
Learn classic string figures from scratch and impress anyone with just a loop of string.
Read and write chess notation
Learn algebraic notation so you can follow games, study openings, and record your own matches.
Finger Coin Roll
Walk a coin across your knuckles smoothly — a classic sleight of hand that looks effortless once the muscle memory clicks.
Read a Compass and Navigate
Use a baseplate compass to find your bearing and walk a confident line through any terrain.
Blind Contour Drawing
Draw without looking at your paper and train your eye to see like an artist.
Solve your first cryptic crossword clue
Cryptic crosswords look impenetrable until someone shows you the code. There are only eight clue types. Once you know them, you can crack any clue.
Finger Whistle
The piercing two-finger whistle that cuts across a crowd. Takes some dialling in, but once it clicks it never leaves you.
Start a Fire with a Firesteel
Strike sparks and catch a flame with a firesteel — a skill that works wet, cold, and anywhere.
Fold a fitted sheet perfectly
Master the one laundry skill that separates calm adults from chaos: fold a fitted sheet flat in under two minutes.
Fix a dripping tap
Stop that maddening drip yourself. No plumber needed, just a washer and 20 minutes.
Fix a dropped stitch in knitting
Rescue a runaway stitch before it unravels your whole row — no ripping back required.
Fix a bicycle puncture
Patch or replace an inner tube roadside so you're never stranded far from home.
French Drop Coin Vanish
Learn the classic French drop — make a coin disappear from your fingers in seconds.
Draw a human figure in 60 seconds
Gesture drawing is the fastest way to train your eye to see movement, weight, and proportion. One session changes how you draw.
Roll pasta by hand without a machine
Master hand-rolled pasta dough from scratch: no gadgets, just flour, eggs, and technique.
Hand-stitch a torn seam
Fix a split seam by hand in minutes: no machine needed, just a needle, thread, and patience.
Hem a Pair of Jeans by Hand
Learn to shorten jeans with a needle and thread: no machine needed, result lasts for years.
Impasto Oil Painting Technique
Thick, textured brushwork that gives oil paintings their sculptural depth. Once you feel paint pile up under a palette knife, thin painting feels timid.
Manage interview nerves
Nerves aren't the enemy. Unmanaged nerves are. Here's what's happening in your body and what to do about it in the 24 hours before and during an interview.
Match your interview outfit
Colour coordination, the belt-and-shoes rule, and the one principle that makes any outfit look deliberate rather than assembled in a hurry.
Iron a dress shirt
A properly ironed shirt looks completely different to a machine-dried one. Learn the correct order: collar, cuffs, sleeves, body, and the one thing that ruins most shirts.
The island strum pattern on ukulele
Learn the classic island strum that makes ukulele sound like sunshine, in one sitting.
Juggle Three Balls
The classic cascade pattern. Most people get their first three-ball run within an afternoon of focused practice.
Latte Art Heart Pour
Pour a classic heart into your flat white, the first pattern every home barista masters.
Build a memory palace
The oldest and most powerful memory technique in history. Ancient orators used it to memorise hours-long speeches. You can use it to remember anything.
The Moonwalk
Learn Michael Jackson's signature glide step — the illusion of walking forward while sliding back.
Nasal Breathing While Running
Train yourself to breathe through your nose on runs — and unlock calmer, more efficient endurance.
Lay a no-dig bed
Suppress weeds and build living soil in one afternoon. No rotavating, no backache, no digging.
Clean and oil a bicycle chain
Learn to degrease and lubricate your chain in under 20 minutes. Your ride will thank you.
One-Arm Push-Up Progression
Build the strength and technique to nail a clean one-arm push-up from scratch.
One-Point Perspective Drawing
Learn to draw 3D spaces from a single vanishing point — the backbone of architectural sketching.
Fold an origami crane
Learn to fold the classic paper crane — a foundation of origami practice and the gateway to a thousand more.
Paint a simple landscape in one session
Sky, land, one focal point. That's the structure of almost every landscape ever painted. Learn to see it and you can paint it.
Perfect paper aeroplane dart
Fold a tight, fast dart that flies straight every time — and actually understand why it works.
Pen spinning basics
Learn your first pen spin trick and build the coordination that makes it feel effortless.
The Minor Pentatonic Scale on Guitar
Learn the one scale that unlocks blues, rock, and improvisation, in under 10 minutes.
Polish leather shoes
Clean, polished leather shoes are noticed. Unpolished ones are too, for the wrong reason. A proper shine takes 10 minutes and lasts a week.
Brew a pour-over coffee
Master the pour-over method and taste why slow coffee is worth the extra five minutes.
Side-shoot a tomato plant
Remove side shoots from cordon tomatoes to channel the plant's energy into fruit rather than leaf.
Read a tape measure
Decode the imperial markings that trip up most beginners, and never cut a piece too short again.
Read a resistor colour code
Decode the coloured bands on any resistor and never guess a value again.
Riffle Card Shuffle
Master the classic riffle shuffle: the satisfying technique that makes you look like a card pro.
Solve a Rubik's Cube
The beginner's layer-by-layer method. Six algorithms and you can solve any scramble.
Saddle stitch in leather
Master the strongest hand-stitching technique in leatherwork and finish your first seam in under an hour.
Scholar's Mate: Win in Four Moves
Learn the fastest checkmate in chess and never be caught off guard by it again.
Sew a button back on properly
Reattach a button so it actually holds. No sewing machine needed.
Sew a sleep eye mask in an afternoon
A sleep mask is the ideal first sewing project — small, quick, immediately useful, and it covers everything: cutting, pinning, sewing, and turning.
Sew a yoga bolster
A yoga bolster costs £40–80 in a shop. You can make a better one in an afternoon from fabric you choose, filled exactly how firm you like it.
Shape a Bread Boule
Learn to fold and tension a round loaf so it holds its shape and opens beautifully in the oven.
Sharpen a bench chisel
A sharp chisel cuts; a dull one crushes. Flatten the back and hone the bevel on a whetstone in 20 minutes.
Solder a Clean Joint
Master the fundamental soldering technique that makes electronics reliable, and understand why cold joints fail.
Sow seeds in modules
Fill a tray of modular cells and sow your first seeds — the foundation of a productive growing year.
Speed Reading: Scan Faster, Retain More
Double your reading speed without losing comprehension — a few simple habits are all it takes.
Skip Stones on Water
The right stone, the right angle, and a flick of the wrist — that's all there is to it.
The perfect shave
Razor burn is a preparation problem, not a products problem. Learn the routine that leaves skin calm before a big day.
Travis Picking: The Thumb-Fingers Guitar Pattern
Learn the alternating-bass fingerpicking style that powers folk, country, and blues. Sounds impressive fast.
12-Bar Blues Pattern on Guitar
Learn the foundational chord progression behind nearly every blues song and jam with confidence.
Draw a building in two-point perspective
Two-point perspective unlocks architectural drawing. Understand it once and you can draw any building convincingly from imagination.
Wall Handstand Progression
Build a solid wall handstand from zero — developing the strength, balance, and body awareness to hold it confidently.
Wet-on-wet watercolour wash
Paint onto wet paper and get soft, dreamy edges that are impossible to fake any other way.
How to Tie a Windsor Knot
The full Windsor — the widest, most symmetrical knot you can tie. Here's how to get it right.
Yo-yo sleeper and basic tricks
Land a clean sleeper and nail your first tricks — the foundation every yo-yo player needs.