Hi everyone 👋,

Last month I had a fantastic trip to China, and one thing that was really nice about it was my ability to communicate in Chinese, since most people I met there actually don’t speak English.

I do really spend a lot of time studying Chinese. On some days it can be 12 hours, and even on days with a lot of work I still end up finding an hour or to study it.

I love writing dialogues, watching and engaging in Chinese conversations, and reviewing flashcards every day. I really like looking at the statistics, for example how I now managed to learn 1611 Chinese Characters with 273 more in the queue. I can even forecast when I would reach the final goal of 3000.

As amazing as this sounds, the sad truth is that this is actually my procrastination. (Thanks also to Xi for keeping reminding me of this important realization)

But how can that possibly be true? How can an effortful activity like studying be procrastination?

Well…

I guess it all comes down to the relative pleasantness of the activities we engage in.

While I love the entrepreneurial career as a whole, the daily activities that make up the job are actually often very unpleasant. That’s because there are so many challenges and finding out where to start is already a struggle.

Some examples: Should I spend more time looking for customers? Try different channels? paid or organic promotions? Is the product right? What problems are there currently with the fulfillment?

Studying a language isn’t that easy either, but compared to building a business it is really pleasant and straight forward.

So what am I going to do about it?

Last year when I talked about the ‘100h work week’ (not my best idea ever) I also categorized studying language inside of the productive time.

This categorization is no longer feasible.

At this point in my life where I am right now, there is only one thing to do: categorize studying Chinese as a leisure activity.

Yes, that means it falls in the same bucket as playing Politopia, another game that occasionally wasted my time in the past.

That doesn’t mean there is no more time for Chinese. After all there must be time for leisure activities in my life.

But it does mean that I push it back in my queue of daily activities and will only do it after I fully completed all the work that’s due at a certain day.

As Alex Hormozi says: Prioritization is the most important skill of an entrepreneur to have. So engaging in too much language studies is something I really have to stop.

Alright and that’s one of my struggles right now.

How are you all doing with prioritization? I think getting better at this is a never ending challenge.

But confronting the challenge and growing can also be very rewarding.

Wish you all a great week!

Gregor