It’s not necessarily about how hard it is, but what’s the ROI on learning a skill. If soldering was something I did at work or if I often repaired my own electronics, then it could even be worth learning it if it took a month of evenings. But as I’d not have many of the tools and schematics to do component level repair on today’s electronics and I almost never need to solder anything at my software engineering job, so this skill would be used maybe once or twice in a decade on a hobby project, it is mostly not worth investing even one weekend.

We can learn a lot of skills that are useless. Coming from a conservative family, I learned to play the violin and piano at a very young age instead of spending time with friends. These are skills I never have any use for and I’d rather just have some better memories from my childhood. Even if learning to play piano was relatively easy — with one weekly lesson over about 6 months it is extremely doable.

Those are sort of the real costs and benefits of learning skills. Easy or hard doesn’t mean necessarily that it’s worth or not worth learning.