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How to Talk to Dead People
Plus, your best alternative to sleep...
Adam Zulawski
August 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Our lovely misspelt logo by Dall-E
Hi,
Welcome to the Procrastilearning Newsletter, where your time is well spent even though you should probably be doing something else.
3 things worth procrastilearning over
via Leonardo.ai
1. Exercise might make up for your lack of sleep
When you regularly get less than 6 hours of sleep, you can offset the increased risks in your cardiovascular health with exercise, according to a study of 90,000 people.
That’s good news for those of us who don't sleep enough. But at the same - so I don't sleep enough and now you're saying I have to exercise all the time too?! Ugh, God damn it...
P.s. I found out about this study, randomly, via Arnold Schwarzenegger's newsletter, which is geared towards people who want to improve their health as they get older. I guess that is most people, since the newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I'm not convinced he writes much of it himself, but he may have had more hand in his new short ebook 77 Lessons at 77 which you get for free if you sign up to his newsletter.
2. Just 10 minutes of TikTok will make you think you're ugly
This was from a study testing how content specifically about bodies and diet affected a viewer's own body image. But the control group that watched plain old nature and comedy videos even started feeling bad about themselves!
I don't think it's a stretch to infer this means that looking at short-form video content on other platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter/X and everywhere else you find it, will also make you think negatively about your body.
3. AI now lets you chat to dead people
Or at least dead people who wrote lots of books. But also living people who have written a lot on the Internet. The addictive Delphi.ai uses all the material various people have written so that you can "talk" to them. It has a large section of philosophers, for example, so you can chat with Socrates or Nietzsche about your thoughts or your life questions and they can tell you directly, as it were, what they think.
2 quotes to keep in mind
Don’t optimize. Just start. Stop your research. It’s how you procrastinate. Most of the time, we all know what we need to do. This is where our brains become our enemies. Instead of just starting, our brains tell us we need to research and find the perfect plan, so instead of doing some squats and pushups and drinking a protein shake, we can sit in front of a screen reading about the perfect diet while eating a donut.
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
1 tip to help you stop thinking about work at home
Have a shutdown ritual.
This makes clear sense if you work in a different location from your home, but it's worth applying wherever you are.
At the end of your work day, go through a few steps that let your mind know that your work day is over, to reinforce the belief you don't need to think about work until tomorrow. For example, this might include making a to-do list for the morning from the unanswered emails you have left in your inbox, making a note of calls you need to make, that sort of thing.
Productivity daddy Cal Newport even says you should say something out loud when it’s over to make it official, like "Shutdown complete!"
That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a photo of two ants arguing over some food.
Adam
Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff
Currently reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
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