Hi,

This week, we’re continuing with the new format:

• 3 links worth investigating when you want to procrastinate

• 2 quotes to get you thinking

• 1 tip to keep you on track

Thank you to all of you who’ve left your feedback about the format so far. If you’d like to throw your two cents in the ring, please leave your feedback here, or just reply to this email and let me know what you think.

3 ideas worth procrastilearning over

1. People don’t do much with their retirement

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article called Here’s What Retirement Looks Like in America in Six Charts. It’s behind a paywall, so you need a subscription to see it, but one of the charts was reprinted in Sahil Bloom’s highly popular newsletter.

It shows how US retirees actually spend their time:

Sleeping for 9 hours sounds absolutely amazing. I think that’s the only part of the findings that I feel envious about.

But I have no idea what “Relaxing & Leisure” means since, as you can see from the other circles, it doesn’t seem to include reading, socialising, TV, arts or sports.

That might mean a few hours staring at a wall. Or maybe 6 hours of Sudoku?

Either way, the chart doesn’t leave you feeling that retirement is going to be particularly amazing. Or even worth the wait.

Bloom argues you should use this as inspiration to think about how, instead of putting off a lot of things until you retire, you should instead try to design a life that you don’t need to retire from. That link again is here.

2. The legal realities of using AI in your work

ChatGPT has been out for over a year now, and it’s become one of the fastest-growing sites ever. Its rise has led to thousands of other AI sites being launched, all promising to help you do pretty much anything on your computer.

Lots of people love all this and are making use of AI to do a lot of their work for them. The cheekiest users are even getting AI to wholesale write their reports, homework, books, you name it, and then presenting it as their own work.

This is not a great idea for all sorts of reasons, but the most important ones that everybody really needs to be aware of are the legal ones.

Below you’ll find an excellent breakdown of all the legal aspects of using AI - you have been warned!

3. How to raise a bilingual child

I’ve always found it interesting how my bilingualism is often different to other people’s. For example, I only ever think in English, but I don’t really know why, since others regularly mix two, even three languages in their head.

After reading this fascinating little article from Duolingo, I think it may have something to do with how I was raised.

Most importantly, it turns out there is no right way or wrong way to grow up bilingual - this was a relief to me, since my wife and I are raising two small children in a bilingual household ourselves.

If you find Duolingo a bit basic, you can read a proper scientific deep dive here, in which two research scientists answer common questions with tonnes of references:

2 quotes to keep in mind

1 tip for when you’re overwhelmed by all the things you need to do

Do you have a lot on your plate?

If you’re a sentient human being, you probably have a lot more to do than your brain can handle.

If that volume is leaving you feeling anxious or overwhelmed, or if you find yourself procrastinating over a lot of it, you need to get your head around it all.

Make a to-do list. A proper one.

1. Find a quiet spot where you can sit and write undisturbed for a while.

2. Write down every little task, project, goal, check-in, event, everything. Just sit there as long as possible until you’ve exhausted all the thoughts.

3. Go through your list and rewrite every item that looks vague and make sure it has an action verb attached to it. E.g. “Mum” becomes “Call Mum about the party next month”, “Taxes” becomes “File taxes by 14th March”, or “Report” becomes “Submit the end-of-quarter report”

4. Once you have your revised list, look for anything that has multiple steps and add the very next action you can take towards completing it. E.g. “File taxes by 14th March” might have the action “Download RS15 form from gov website”, or “Submit the end-of-quarter report” might have “Collect the monthly sales data into one spreadsheet”.

5. Once you have a rich-looking list like this, you should find you have two new things: a sense of clarity, and a sense of control. Enjoy! You can now get on with your life.

The technique outlined here is called a “mind sweep”. It was created by David Allen, the famed author of Getting Things Done.

If you want some real guidance, there’s an old recording of Allen taking listeners through the technique step-by-step. I highly recommend using it next time you want to make a to-do list:

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading.

Again, if you’d like to send me feedback about the new 3-2-1 format, click here.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

Sent this by somebody else?