Hi,

Welcome to the Procrastilearning Newsletter, a guilt-free meaningful break before getting back to work.

• 💡 3 ideas worth procrastilearning over

• 🗣️ 2 quotes to help you refocus

• 🪄 1 tip to keep you on track

3 things worth procrastilearning over

1. Gen Z are moving towards trades as a reliable career

The Wall Street Journal recently published How Gen Z is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation. Great title - and the poster child is the son of two tech workers:

If you can’t access the site, the basic premise is that young people in the US are starting to choose apprenticeships over degrees due to several factors:

• Better pay for early-career tradespeople

• Increasingly mad cost of US college tuition

• Fears of a widespread inability to build wealth due to student debt

• AI making a lot of desk jobs feel like they’re going to get automated

Some of the stats are taken from this Jobber report, which surveyed 1000 young people aged 18 to 20. It includes this chart showing how confidence in “white-collar” jobs could be waning:

Since so many teenagers are using AI to do their homework, you can see how some might start thinking working at a computer all day might become a bit of a mug’s game. So will vocational career paths become as prevalent as traditional college paths? Let’s give it 10 to 20 years, and we’ll see.

2. Pink Floyd likes AI

Yes, Pink Floyd are alive. Or at least their agents are. And they recently invited fans to create all new music videos for all the songs from their album Dark Side Of The Moon on its 50th anniversary. They picked an entry made using AI for one song, outraging everybody on the Internet, all of whom now insist Dark Side Of The Moon is rubbish anyway.

I like the video - it fits the music surprisingly well. The way the frames melt into each other is appropriately psychedelic (although admittedly, this hand-drawn entry that wasn’t selected is equally psychedelic and has more charm). The story is reminiscent of how a recent Marvel TV show also caused controversy by having an AI-generated intro sequence - here again the use of AI works perfectly, especially since the show is all about shapeshifting aliens.

I guess we just have to get used to AI being in everything. I’m even starting to look at any new artwork I see with the thought “Did you just squeeze this out of Dall-E?” 🤷‍♂️

3. You probably don’t think properly

Last week, I was listening to the audiobook of How To Teach Your Child To Think by Edward de Bono. I had picked it up assuming I'd learn some interesting new ways to interact with my kids.

I wasn't far in when it made me realise I have no idea how to think, and may even be brain-dead. Plus I’m not sure I’ve met anybody else able to regularly think in the ways he describes.

The term "mental models" is in vogue these days, but De Bono was trying to popularise them back in the 1970s. He was also the inventor of the term “lateral thinking”.

His most famous model for thinking is the Six Hats, in which you or a group of people systematically “wear” proverbial hats when trying to find a solution to a problem. Here are the hats in case you're unfamiliar:

• ⚪ White hat - What are the facts?

• 🔴 Red hat - What feelings or hunches are there?

• 🟡 Yellow hat - What are the good things?

• ⚫ Black hat - What are the bad things?

• 🟢 Green hat - What new ideas could open up?

• 🔵 Blue hat - How is the thinking going so far?

The book mentions other thinking tools, all with abbreviations like AGO, FIP and CAF which he encourages you to try applying to problems like “Your aunt dies and leaves you a house that is supposedly haunted. What are you going to do?”.

Honestly, most of the problems De Bono mentions make my brain freeze. You can see how your brain reacts over on his website.

He recommends his techniques for children and adults ages 9 or above, so I have about 6 years to improve my thinking so that my children don't ridicule me.

p.s. De Bono also thought Marmite could solve all the Middle East's problems. If only they'd tried that one out...

2 quotes to keep in mind

1 tip to stop you from getting sucked into digital distractions

Save articles you come across to a read-it-later app instead of reading them.

When you see an attractively titled article or video while browsing, there’s usually an emotional urge to click and immediately start watching or reading. Ten minutes later, you don’t remember what you were doing before the article. Was it important?

Instead of submitting to that urge to consume, quickly set the link aside using Pocket, Instapaper or Reader. Similarly, use the Watch Later function on YouTube.

Or be like productivity daddy Cal Newport and just paste the link into a blank text file like a freakish modern-day Spartan.

Saving these things for later satisfies that urgent feeling of "OMG I have to read this right now" and allows you to quickly get back to what you were doing.

By the time you get around to checking the list of what you’ve saved, that emotional need has passed - you often don’t feel any need to read them anymore. Using that distance to prune your read-later list will leave you with one that’s focused and worth reaching for when you do have time to dedicate to reading or watching.

So, if you’re looking for your first thing to add to a read-it-later app, here is Tiago Forte on read-it-later apps. See what I did there? 🤪

That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a picture of a Bengal slow loris.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff
Currently reading: The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd

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