# About Name: Procrastilearning.com Description: Why do anything when you can just keep reading about it instead? URL: https://procrastilearning.com # Navigation Menu - Home: https://procrastilearning.com/ - Search: https://procrastilearning.com/search - About: https://procrastilearning.com/about - Get the Procrastilearning newsletter: https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe # Blog Posts ## Children's Books Nobody Will Read Author: Unknown Published: 2024-04-04 Tags: pandemic books, children's books, books about war, visit your library, propaganda URL: https://procrastilearning.com/childrens-books-nobody-will-read-clulame1e0005tb6itvvz53x4/ My 2-year-old son is obsessed with dragons. It started with Helen Doron's [It’s a Baby Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTefQIxUhnE) series, quickly evolving to the [How To Train Your Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKiYuIsPxYk) movies. I tried to show him [Raya and the Last Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VIZ89FEjYI) but he found it too scary and we had to switch it off. He's at the age where "mild peril" on screen actually effects him. Long gone are the times when we could easily watch the ultra-violent [Squid Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxAJKy0ii4) series together. But the medium doesn't matter. If it has dragons, he likes it. ![Poor illustration of three dragons around an ambulance](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/defaulttwodiseaseddragonsinanambulancechildrensbookil04d79352c-0d2f-4f9a-a7c1-12352b342b8711-1712306947740-compressed.jpg) Dragons poorly imagined by Leonardo.ai A hoard of books ---------------- We were in Kilburn Library in Queen's Park the other day, where they have a superb children's area. It has a vast array of books and an area to lounge around with your children. We told our son he could borrow four books and immediately he pointed at one and said "Dragon!". We grabbed it, along with one about a counting hippo, one about dinosaurs, and an unignorable book called _Whose Poo?_. It was only later that evening when we tried to read him these books at home that we realised his dragon choice was not what it seemed. Yes, it's beautifully illustrated, and definitely full of dragons. But it was a jarring read. It was about the need to wash your hands, keep your distance from people, and wear a face mask. It was a guidebook for the pandemic: Although it hasn't been very long since we were all hyper disease-focused, reading a book like this already feels odd. I also thought "Is this.... a thing?" And indeed it is a thing. Or rather was. During the pandemic, [many children’s books were published about the coronavirus and how to protect yourself from it](https://www.theschoolrun.com/best-childrens-books-about-coronavirus). Even the illustrator-overlord, Axel Scheffler of _The Gruffalo_ fame, made one - [for the NHS, no less](https://nosycrow.com/blog/released-today-free-information-book-explaining-coronavirus-children-illustrated-gruffalo-illustrator-axel-scheffler/). These books already seem like anachronisms. They were clearly written with good intentions (it can't have been easy for most parents to keep their child protected during the pandemic), and I'm sure everybody involved was grateful to still have work during that period when many had nothing to do. But they must have known that barely a year or two would go by before the long-term sales would drop. Perhaps they’re relying on [_Do Not Bring Your Dragon To The Library_](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1474729045/) to be the real cash cow Evergreen is my favourite colour -------------------------------- To me, the book is a reminder of how important it is to write evergreen content. "Evergreen" means you can read it in 5 years, or 50, that it will still be something somebody might want to casually pick up. This evergreen model is the norm in fiction - eg. new people will still be reading Harry Potter for the foreseeable. But books caught up in current affairs are likely to peak and fall sharply. Of course, they may get a second lease of life at some point. For example, those Trump tell-all books like [_Fire and Fury_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Fury) may have had a bump after pseudo-Alan Sugar has officially announced a new 2024 Presidential run. If we're being cheery, maybe books like the dragon one will see new sales when another pandemic hits the globe (apparently we have a 1 in 4 chance of seeing another [in the next decade](https://fortune.com/well/2023/04/18/disease-forecasters-predict-new-covid-like-pandemic-within-10-years/.)). ![Illustration of a boy asleep in bed holding a sabre, while a dwarf stands over him admiring the weapon](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/hurrascreenshot1-1712307205653-compressed.jpg) A typical image from "Hurray!", Creative Commons But there are definitely some children's books that are either so stuck in a period of time, or so politically-partisan, that they can’t be read without a sense of irony. They almost seem like they are trying to be forgotten. The creepiest examples are the books designed to make children excited about signing up to the army. The bleakly-titled German-language [_Hurray!_](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/hurray) that came out during World War One looks like a barrel of laughs, as does _Lolek Grenadier_ and all the other books covered in [this article](https://culture.pl/en/article/patriotism-for-children-interwar-poland) that came out on the opposing side from Polish publishers. > So what that he’s only five! Everybody says he is big, very big and strong. He can lift a little gun! \[…\] Why can’t he protect Poland? What about Lolek the grenadier? He was not very much older than him! From _Lolek Grenadier by Antoni Gawiński, 1912_ The power of allegory --------------------- But these all do beg the question: if it really is your intention, how do you make a children's book about current affairs not weird? How do you give it a long lease of life? Make it allegorical, of course! So much of the best fiction is just allegory after all - George Orwell's _Animal Farm_ is probably the most famous example. Dr Seuss was a master of allegory when it came to children's books. Most noteworthy is [_The Butter Battle Book_](https://theoutline.com/post/5601/dr-seuss-the-butter-battle-book-history), which he wrote in the early 1980s. It's a clear anti-Cold-War book, depicting the increasing escalation of arms as absurd: But not everybody has the panache to pull allegories off. After Dr Seuss' environmentalist [_The Lorax_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdWesdMfyd4) was a hit, an organisation of hardwood flooring companies bandied together to create their own alternative version. It's a story where loggers are heroes and it's great to cut down trees... 😵 So what would have been a good allegory for the dragon book that my son picked up? I’m not sure there is one that could have fixed it. After all, it’s clear the dragon themselves were already allegories for small children. But enough of this meandering! I’m sure you're actually just wondering what was in the enigmatic [_Whose Poo?_](https://www.andersenpress.co.uk/books/whose-poo/) mentioned earlier. My favourite of the books we borrowed, the highlight of _Whose Poo?_ was the protaganist mice wordlessly sitting at a bus stop imagining what the people there would look like if they were made out of poo: ![An simplified illustration of people sitting at a bus stop in two versions, the second being identical except that everything and everybody is made out of poo](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/originalc5f34e08-52d1-44b2-8820-b3e13232e673img20230518133025-1712307395973-compressed.jpg) My favourite page from "Whose Poo?" Get the Procrastilearning Newsletter See stuff like this in your inbox every two weeks [Yes, please!](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe) --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## The Painter JMW Turner: Prophet of Productivity Habits Author: Unknown Published: 2023-03-28 Tags: productivity habits, JMW Turner URL: https://procrastilearning.com/the-painter-jmw-turner-prophet-of-productivity-habits-clfsdcaxl843981lnpk9ic0697/ **_This is an edited version of The Procrastilearning Newsletter sent out earlier in 2023._** [**_Sign up for future editions here_**](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe)**_._** This week I wanted to talk about [JMW Turner (1775–1851)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner), one of Britain's most important painters. Not because his art was good or anything, but simply because he was a machine when it came to work. Turner: Harbinger of the modern obsession for efficiency -------------------------------------------------------- JMW Turner created an enormous body of work while also breaking the rules of how watercolours and oil painting worked. And I don't use the word "enormous" here lightly. He created more than: * 550 oil paintings * 2,000 watercolours * and 30,000 works on paper That's at least **32,550 artworks**. Turner died a spry 76, which means he only lived around 27,740 days. On average, across his life, he created 1.2 artworks per day 🤯 How did he make so much stuff? ------------------------------ Michael Caine famously described his acting career as: > "If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick." But Turner wasn't just throwing random effluvia. If you've ever looked at his paintings, you can see how powerful his light effects are. A lot of it is to do with how subtle the change in tones is. Just look at this piece [_Sunrise with Sea Monsters_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_with_Sea_Monsters) from 1845: ![An abstract painting depicting various yellows](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/jmwturnersunrisewithseamonsters-1680085126760-compressed.jpg) _Sunrise with Sea Monsters by Turner, via Wikipedia_ You can see hundreds of different shades here, each almost imperceptibly different. What about this one of [Tom Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Tower) in Oxford? It seems every brick is a different colour: ![image](https://sendfoxprod.b-cdn.net/media/TsXt7ffZxIILbuze4KsvDQkcxJ6BItVsAU7WhmxQ52096) _Tom Tower by Turner, via Wikipedia_ For most people, this all would have been a huge pain in the arse. Those 1.2 artworks per day would be impossible. They would look at their palette and weep. But Turner didn't use a regular palette. Instead, he'd mix a large amount of a single tone by itself on a dining plate and then use it on multiple paintings at once. He always had several canvases in his studio at any one time and work on them simultaneously. Moving from one canvas to another, he worked on each for a short period of time before switching to the next, applying layers of a single colour in what looked like loose random ways. Once he had a bit of that one colour on every canvas, he'd mix a slightly different tone and would go back to the front of the line and start the process again. Essentially, Turner was a bit like one of those chess masters who enjoy playing 15 people at once. It was this technique that allowed him to produce so much work while retaining an intricate level of detail. Linking Turner to 3 modern productivity trends ============================================== Being a nerd, when I learned about Turner's production technique, I was immediately reminded of three productivity trends that came much later. ### 1\. The assembly line Obviously, the first similarity that comes to mind is Henry Ford's assembly line from around 100 years later. ![image](https://sendfoxprod.b-cdn.net/media/yvXjGPS6VIVvuhvPifzLNDvzw5fjXKexjiW8z1oM52096) _The Ford assembly line in 1913, via Wikimedia Commons_ Ford pretty much invented our modern concept of the factory. Each worker on his assembly lines making the first mass-produced cars did a different single job multiple times. [They hated it, apparently](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-hundred-and-three-years-ago-today-henry-ford-introduced-assembly-line-his-workers-hated-it-180961267/). But Ford's production methods were designed to create identical cars every time. What Turner doing was creating many completely original pieces of work at once, and by himself, so it made me think of a more recent parallel. ### 2\. Slow burns Popularised by Tiago Forte, 'slow burns' involve working on multiple projects at once but only a little bit at a time and without any haste. [Here's a link to him explaining it](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3FJuITNz2pwFq9SnA6ikpu). It's based loosely on physicist Richard Feynman's so-called "12 Favourite Problems": > “You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!'” Slow burns make sense in the context of, for example, article writing. A writer might have 30 different ideas for articles, but the details for the contents often come in drips and drabs as they work on other things. This is something I've often done in editorial teams. We come up with an article concept and then just let it sit in our management system where people can add relevant ideas to its card whenever they might come to mind. Slowly, the skeleton for an article gets built until finally a writer can put a bit of flesh on it and ready it for publication. But again, this isn't quite the same as Turner's chessmaster studio either. What his work really reminds me of is simply batching tasks. ### 3\. Batching tasks Batching is when you take multiple instances of a repetitive task and do it all at once. I think Turner may well have been the first person to have applied it to art. The classic modern example is email. Email comes in intermittently during the day and can really derail what you're doing. If you don't want to lose your mind, it's highly recommended that instead of opening your email app every 10 minutes like you do now (just admit it), you set a couple times a day where you login and batch together all your emails at once and blitz through them, say midday till 1pm and then 4:30pm until 5pm. That way you can concentrate on less infuriating tasks. Another modern example is meal prep. This involves cooking large amounts of food one day a week and then storing it in the fridge and freezer so that you can eat it all week. Again, keeping the same task to one concentrated time theoretically helps you stay focused and more productive the rest of the time since you've eliminated that chore from your daily schedule. And it's great if you like the monotony of eating the same thing every day ![image](https://sendfoxprod.b-cdn.net/media/wYdLy87FJxfPyIIe0LeMUXvCwwhZq2N59CZ4MYML52096) Skirt steak meal prep, via Flavcity.com But to sum up, I guess my real point here is that Turner was cool. Outside of art, he often walked 20 miles a day, and once hid on a boat so that he couldn't be counted in a national census. Grumpy loners are the best. Get the Procrastilearning Newsletter See stuff like this in your inbox every two weeks [Yes, please!](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe) --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## The day I realised our dog has a scarcity mindset Author: Unknown Published: 2022-09-14 Meta Description: This is her third portion of food in less than 2 hours. She weighs 4 kilos. She doesn't need to eat 10% of her weight everyday. Nobody does. But she's scared she'll never eat again, every single time. I can hear fear in those whines, not just selfish demands. Slurping down her cold gruel, you can hear her relief. Tags: growth mindset, scarcity mindset, Yorkshire terrier story, Carol Dweck URL: https://procrastilearning.com/the-day-i-realised-our-dog-has-a-scarcity-mindset-cl5892rdw275411jm85h6im4cx/ ![Computer-generated close-up of a Yorkshire Terrier's sad face](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/azulanangryyorkshireterrierbeggingforfoodrealistic48f9542e-7ffa-452d-9b53-84a003eb456a-1663154393312-compressed.jpg) "An angry Yorkshire terrier begging for food" according to [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/home/)​ I walk into the living room. The dog raises its head from the sofa and stares at me move across the room towards the kitchen. I'm getting some tea. It's already on the carpet. It moves towards me, staring. She, not it, I should say. Kika. Kika stays a half metre away from me at all times, tip-tapping her little paws as I move around the kitchen. I pull a mug from the cupboard next to the fridge. She starts to get excited. I notice and look down at her. She looks at me. She looks at the fridge. "I just fed you. Like 20 minutes ago." A low growl comes out of her tiny Yorkshire Terrier frame. The growl is also somehow high-pitched. I take the mug to the kettle. She barks again. I put a teabag in the mug and fill it with hot water. More growling. I take the mug to the table and sit down. Now she's whining. "Literally," I say as I look at the clock on the oven, "20 minutes ago." It doesn't matter what I've said. I've engaged with her. She knows I'm listening, and she has a lot to tell me. Her growls and yapping begs keep going. I roll my eyes. "Fine..." ![Photo of a small recently-groomed Yorkshire Terrier staring into the camera](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/kika-staring-at-me1-1663155335122-compressed.jpg) Kika staring and growling at me, waiting for me to put the stupid phone down and get her some food I walk to the fridge, her bouncing in delight as she follows me. I open the door and take out the tin of processed nipples and ears. Moving to her little plate, she is giddy. I paste the vile sludge into the grooves of the plate with the spoon, while she keeps trying to push her head in to take a quick bite. I keep pasting, making sure the stuff is deep in the grooves and guaranteed to take a while to devour. I move away and she gets to work, violently swallowing and licking, grunting deeply as she ploughs ahead. This is her third portion of food in less than 2 hours. She weighs 4 kilos. She doesn't need to eat 10% of her weight everyday. Nobody does. But she's scared she'll never eat again, every single time. I can hear fear in those whines, not just selfish demands. Slurping down her cold gruel, you can hear her relief. This was the moment I realised my dog had a scarcity mindset --------------------------------------------------------------- The scarcity mindset was something I had heard about many times on podcasts talking about Stanford professor Carol Dweck's theories. She has a popular book called [Mindset](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset) which lays it all out properly. Dweck states that people either have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. The former means you have a sense that there's always opportunity to get more or improve at some activity, no matter what other people are doing. Meanwhile the latter fixed mindset, sometimes more dramatically called the scarcity mindset, meant that you think all resources are fixed or limited, including your own intelligence and skills. I could see how this definitely applied to people. But did it apply to dogs? I had lived with other dogs. One dog, Edek, who belonged to an old flatmate, would be presented with a whole day's food first thing in the morning. He would just pick at the bowl every so often throughout the day, unemotionally rationing out his food without any seeming forethought, just naturally listening to when his body felt hunger. But the thought of leaving a huge bowl of food out for Kika was laughable. She would certainly eat everything in 15 minutes, and then ask for more soon after. It was almost as if she had no memory of eating, but she must have felt full. ### We inherited Kika from my wife's late parents When we became her guardians, Kika was around 50% over a healthy weight. She had broken her own leg going down some stairs because she was so fat. The vet told us they wouldn't operate on her unless she lost weight because there was no point, it would just happen again. Imagine if overweight people broke their legs like Yorkshire Terriers do. You'd think that'd be incentive to change their ways. But dogs aren't time-binders like humans. They can't imagine a future where they've worked towards some personal health goal. This dog was obese because she ate everything she saw. She had lived in a house with frequent guests, which meant frequent cakes and biscuits. This tiny thing had eaten enough cheesecake to feed an orphanage. The ease of access to food meant Kika thought that was simply how things are. But when she moved in with us, there was no cake on the coffee table. She would sneak onto the table when she thought we weren't looking and be disappointed to find salad. She'd try eating it anyway, but she wasn't happy. I am certain she became convinced that all the food was running out. It didn't help that her guardians who had raised her since a pup had disappeared. They used to be around all the time with cake and sausage, but now some other people with salad and measly lentils were clearly an omen - the world was coming to an end and hoarding was necessary. Being a small dog, she felt the best place to hoard food was in her belly. ### Her scarcity mindset didn't just apply to food though ![Photo of a Yorkshire terrier sitting on a bed, licking its chops](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/kika-scheming-on-the-bed1-1663156711797-compressed.jpg) Kika on a bed, scheming Kika had lost her owners, her parents. After they had both died, she was looked after by my wife. Having lost two people already, there was no way she was going to lose a third. She protected my wife to the nth degree. If she happened to be lying down, Kika would lie next to her and snap at anybody who came near, myself included. We once took her to a dog trainer who quickly observed that Kika thought my wife was a resource. I thought that was quite a vague word, but she definitely did seem to hoard her as if she were a precious treasure. And whenever my wife left the house, Kika would whine and look sad, clearly feeling like she had been abandoned again. She'd whine even though I was right there feeding her, so this was obviously pretty insulting. ### This scarcity mindset also meant that she treated every interaction as transactional Often Kika would ignore me for a good hour or so, and I'd hear the tip tap of her little feet approaching. She'd come over to my feet and lie on her back exposing her belly, clearly asking for a belly rub. How nice it is to rub her belly, she would let me know, I should totally do it. After 30 seconds, she would abruptly snap back up and start walking towards the kitchen her tail wagging and looking at me. Oh. So you didn't want affection from me. You didn't want to share an intimate oxytocin-releasing interaction. It was just a you-rub-my-belly-and-I'll-let-you-give-me-food type situation. It felt both dirty and embarrassing, like when a stag party ends up at a strip club. Inevitably a stripper comes up to each person and starts to feign chit chat. What's your name? You having a good night? But you know they're not interested in small talk. A few minutes go by and they suddenly tell you they like you and want to give you a lap dance. For a fee, of course. The entire interaction is so gratingly transactional that it's almost laughable. That's what Kika was. Our dog was an obvious and cynical stripper. Maybe she did once have people just pet her out of love, but now petting had a fee. ### But can you teach an old dog new tricks? ![A Yorkshire terrier being held up to look at the sea](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/kika-sees-the-sea-for-the-first-time-1663154854606-compressed.jpg) This was the day we showed Kika the sea for the first time in her life. She did not seem impressed. Understanding that Kika had a scarcity mindset, I wondered if it were possible to train her to have a growth mindset instead. But then it's hard enough for us humans to do that. We could be in therapy for years and never switch. An 11-year-old Yorkshire Terrier was a slightly taller order. She didn't even obey the command 'Sit!'. To be honest, she barely even reacted to 'Kika!', her own name. She was actually capable of learning new skills though. When my wife went out, Kika soon figured out how to sneak under the gate to try find her. That was a very annoying period. She ran away three times. Each time, she ended up in the neighbour's yard where they threw out leftover meat and bones. I ended up blocking the hole running under the gate with the high-tech solution of two old spades. She then figured out she could push the faux wind breaker I later also installed and jump through the bars. That was also a very annoying period. Eventually she stopped running away because I wouldn't let her out when my wife was leaving anymore. I guess she realised she didn't know where to follow her, so that put a stop to it. I think that's also when she started leaving turds on the driveway rather than in the grass. She wanted to publicly record her displeasure. I'm not sure poo protests really count as veering towards a growth mindset. Eventually... it was her scarcity mindset that led to Kika's death ------------------------------------------------------------------ One night, although we had fed her properly throughout the day, Kika dragged a dried rabbit ear snack into our baby son's bed. He was having difficulty falling sleep already. The sound of the ear cracking in her teeth just irritated his crying further, so we knew we had to hurry Kika out. But my wife was lying in the bed too, there trying to soothe our son. So two of her favourite resources were in the bed: my wife, and smelly food. As I tried to get Kika out, she soon showed us that she was furious at the very suggestion. She snapped at me, fearing losing her rabbit ear. On my third attempt to grab the ear, she dug her little teeth deep into my hand, making me pull it up and away in pain. She was pulled up with it, hanging on and growling with rage. A few seconds later, she fell to the floor in an awkward position. We don't know if it was the shock of the short fall, or maybe she still had rabbit ear in her throat, but she started to convulse and had a heart attack. She died in my hands soon after. If she had just gotten out of the bed away from my wife when I asked her to. If she hadn't thought that rabbit ear was the last one on Earth. Maybe she'd still be alive. If she had been a human, I think I'd have been charged with manslaughter, but mostly I regret not seeing all the signs over the years: the way she had always angrily protected my wife, the way she always thought she'd never eat again. It seems it had all been leading up to this inevitable sad end. She was nearly 13. She'd had a good life. But she could have lived longer. The moral of this story is: scarcity mindsets kill dogs. Please watch out for the signs better than I did. Get the Procrastilearning Newsletter See stuff like this in your inbox every two weeks [Yes, please!](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe) --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## The Procrastilearning guide to meditation: 5 easy steps to enlightened enlightenment Author: Unknown Published: 2022-07-19 Meta Description: Everybody successful does meditation, so you have to do it as well. If you don't, you're a loser. Don't worry. You'll find all the pro tips on getting it out the way on your to-do list right here. Tags: meditation apps, procrastilearning, meditation guide, meditation, guide to meditation URL: https://procrastilearning.com/the-procrastilearning-guide-to-meditation-5-easy-steps-to-enlightened-enlightenment-cl5s6129d344031mqupgnejkqy/ ![A computer-generated figure meditating with fire instead of a head](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/mindjourneymeditationgonewrongheadonfirefull-hd7d6fdc9a-ab21-4378-893e-19c068b93def-1200px-1662116021532-compressed.jpg) "Meditation gone wrong, head on fire" according to [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/home/)​ Everybody successful does meditation, so you have to do it as well. If you don't, you're a loser. Don't worry. You'll find all the pro tips on getting it out the way on your to-do list right here. Before we start: Thinking is actually okay --------------------------------------------- First, it's important to remember that you are not actively trying to stop thinking. You are just paying attention to your body or stuff around you. If you notice yourself thinking, don't scream internally that you need to stop thinking. Instead you should say to yourself something like: > "Okay, I guess that was a thought. I will just get on with the paying attention thing again instead." The above paragraph is pretty much all the advice you will ever need, but here, since you are procrastilearning, is some more information about how to make meditation something you can tell strangers you do when you are mingling at parties. ### 1\. Install a meditation app ![A fancy mediation app open on some phone](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/daniel-korpai-aumq85-2v7i-unsplash-1658236240846-compressed.jpg) Photo by [Daniel Korpai](https://unsplash.com/@danielkorpai?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/meditation-phone?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText). I guess he likes meditation apps too. Yes, you could just sit on a cushion with a basic clock or stopwatch, but that wouldn't involve your phone, and you do love your phone. There are so many meditation apps out there to choose from. You should probably just go with [Medito](https://meditofoundation.org/medito-app) as it's fully-featured, free and funded by donations. But you will probably install [Calm](https://www.calm.com/) or [Headspace](https://www.headspace.com/) because they spend a tonne on advertising and those were the first apps that came up when you googled meditation apps. Either way, just get one with a mini how-to course in it. Do that course and irritably find you still don't feel like you know anything about meditation and go quickly to step 2. ### 2\. Install another meditation app This time you have to install something that has more features, because that's totally what will help you become a better meditator (that's probably a word). Get something with talks in it, so that you can just listen to [podcasts about meditation](https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/waking-up-conversations) instead of meditating. That's much more pleasant and doesn't make you feel frustrated. Also maybe get an app that for some reason has a social media aspect to it, with little community groups inside it where you can chat to other people who want to meditate but are actually just using their phone more. You'll have a lot in common and feel like you've found your people. ### 3\. Install yet another meditation app Ok, those first two apps just weren't a good fit. You finally realise what you needed to get was [Insight Timer](https://insighttimer.com/en-gb) because it actually has thousands of free meditations in it, and you can happily spend a lot of time just scrolling through them all deciding what to put on. It's a bit like how you actually enjoy [the Netflix feed](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/netflix-browsing-how-much-time-odeon-fact-cinemas-study-a9682011.html) more than the shows and films - there are so many things you could watch, but let's see what else there is and keep scrolling. ### 4\. Actually use one of the apps for several days in a row It's got a little streak counter. They all do. That's very handy. After a while, you can see you've done over 200 minutes. That sounds like a lot, you're almost ready to brag about it. But you don't seem to have achieved enlightenment, because that's what you're expecting. Now you should get a little anxious about how maybe that 200 minutes didn't do anything, and quickly switch to another app, one more you. The anxiety seems to pass once you've done that. ### 5\. Get frustrated that your mind wanders whichever app you use You've repeated stage 4 a few times by now. You've used a gaggle of apps and done streaks in all of them, but for some reason you feel the same as before. You're following along with the guided sessions, but you still end up thinking about some embarrassing thing you said to a client two years ago or how you haven't been to the dentist since... bloody hell, you can't even remember. Sometimes that ending bell comes in and you realise you didn't spend a single second paying attention to your breath or to the sounds in the room and that you're just a goddamn failure. Jesus. No wonder your teen sweetheart left you. Remember them? ![A depressed man with his head in his hands (he probably wishes he could meditate better)](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/depresseddude-1658235719871-compressed.jpg) Photo by [whoismargot](https://pixabay.com/users/whoismargot-840119/) on [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/photos/depression-sadness-man-attachment-2912424/). I hope she cheered this guy up after snapping it. Final thoughts: Keep meditating anyway ----------------------------------------- Ok, so this is really the make or break moment. Yes, you feel like you've wasted a lot of time and aren't doing it properly. You should just keep going anyway. It's not even a so-called [sunk cost fallacy](https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy). You're supposed to find it hard and you will get annoyed at yourself. But the best thing to do is keep trying. _Eventually_, you'll notice things get better. Then maybe they'll get worse again. But with persistence, you will start noticing random small things in your everyday life that seem a bit different. Like you catch yourself having an emotional reaction to something and you suddenly step out of it and calm yourself with ease. Or you don't get so easily caught up in other people's emotions like you used to. It's a bit like jogging. Don't expect to enjoy it, and you might sprain your ankle at some point. But you will see benefits even if you suck at it. Plus, that small amount of self-respect you give yourself for sticking with meditation instead of giving up on yet another thing, that's something that you get at the very least. But maybe you should read about meditation some more too. This article wasn't enough, was it? Procrastilearning is so fun... Get the Procrastilearning Newsletter See stuff like this in your inbox every two weeks [Yes, please!](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe) --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## About Procrastilearning, the site where good ideas are unnecessarily mulled over Author: Unknown Published: 2022-07-05 Tags: adam zulawski, procrastilearning URL: https://procrastilearning.com/about/ What is the definition of 'procrastilearning'? ------------------------------------------------- > Procrastilearning (or procrasti-learning) > > \= the art of putting off actions you want to do by learning more about them instead. Example: A: "I'd really like to walk up this hill someday." B: "You should just go then. It's, like, right there." A: "No, I have to find the perfect route up first. Also, these boots are not good enough. I should get some new ones." B: "Would you like to borrow mine?" A: "No, I have already gotten my phone out and am reading about hiking boots." B: "I think you're just procrastilearning." A: "NO U" And who are you? ------------------- ![](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/zakopane-aug-1st-2020-1659280411091-compressed.jpg) Me thinking about going up a hill My name's Adam. I love learning about activities that can massively improve my life. It's so much easier reading about them than actually executing them. That would take, you know, self-discipline. So I started the Procrastilearning.com website to document all these things, both for my own amusement and to perhaps help anybody who accidentally comes across it. That way I actually make something useful instead of just passively consuming, thus justifying my tendency to procrastilearn. Yes, I have overthought this, as is the procrastilearning tradition. ### ### Do you do anything else? I do freelance writing, editing and translating for a living. ![The book "Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Words"](https://assets.superblog.ai/site_cuid_cl5892r91275331jm8he4whu1v/images/qep-book-cover1-1659280129883-compressed.jpg) A book I co-wrote Among the interesting things I've done, I co-founded the podcast [Stories From The Eastern West](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/stories-from-the-eastern-west/id1276110446) and co-wrote [an award-winning book about Poland](https://culture.pl/en/where-to-buy-the-book-quarks-elephants-pierogi-poland-in-100-words). If you want to see some of my translation work, I have [an older blog about it here](https://translatingmarek.com/). I'm also a husband and father, and have usually underslept. You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AdamZulawski). I'm also on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-zulawski-48482aa3/) if you use that. But you should just [sign up to the Procrastilearning newsletter](https://procrastilearning.beehiiv.com/subscribe), you'll enjoy it. --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. ---