Top 5 Self Sufficiency

Number one thing to do here is figure out what your five favourite things to eat are and learn to make them. Maybe they won't be your favourite instantiation of your favourite five foods, but at least you'll have a handle on them. Maybe you'll learn what you don't like. Then maybe you can even raise the bar on places that serve mediocre versions of the things you love.

Like me, I love corned beef hash. I'm not quite sure how to make it yet. But I can promise you that even on a first try I would make it better than 90% of all places that make it. Sure this is mainly owing to the fact that making corned beef hash in most places entails opening and can and frying its contents. But still. Point being, I should not eat the stuff at places that make it worse than I could. Totally not worth it.

I feel like that could apply more broadly. Not that if you think of your top five movies or paintings that you should be able to make them or anything. But like...think about something you could be doing at home and then compare it to the paltry version of it that exist in the commerce market.

The issue isn't necessarily that you should make things yourself, but that you should use that sort of as a bar against which to set the thing you're willing to buy out there. Don't get suckered in to bad products. Or something.