I've learned to use the early phase of a new interest, when I'm highly motivated, to build some systems and routines that will convert that motivation into momentum. It's worked really well applied to my language learning - with a study system in place, it's easy to get into that groove everyday no matter how motivated I'm feeling.
I like reading books because they take a while so I already know what I’m going to do for the day… Anki and read. I don’t track. I think it’s a personality thing. I don’t make schedules or itineraries for my hobbies or vacations either. I think I tried it for about a day before quitting forever.
Something I just found is a random selector. I put in a list of shows I like and I bookmark it and click it and it gives me a random show and I’ll just watch whatever it gives me. Weirdly taking away that small decision totally takes away some of that fatigue. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to watch but it’s really useful.
Pretty relatable that we came to the same conclusions. I am learning German. I have to leave for work at 0600 every morning so I wake up at 0500. I've made my daily bathroom routine involve knocking out my Anke which can be pretty tedious. Then I fit in about 40 minutes total of listening during my commute back and forth (Usually Ebook, podcast, etc). Then I get home around 1800 and I read for about 1 hour until 1900. Then I watch Netflix for about an hour stopping periodically when I hear an interesting word. I have been doing this routine for about 5 months. I have not logged my hours but I wish I did. I went from a really basic level to now on the third Harry Potter book and understanding the gist to full sentences of Netflix series. If I had to guess I am probably at around 300 hours of immersion based off of my schedule and things are starting to come online. There is still a lot I don't know and need to learn, but the other day I heard my wife (German citizen) speaking to her Mom in German on the Phone and I butted in and she furled her eyebrows in annoyances she no longer had this "secret" language to talk to her mom in.
Great video. Another point about “activation energy” is the actual physical effort to start a task. If you plan to read but the book you want is up in your room on your bookshelf that is more activation energy than if you keep it where you will study it. At the planning phase you can set up links to the videos you want to watch etc so no need to go searching or set up your playlist of podcast episodes etc.
Hi! That's a great question... I actually have a script written for a video about just that! But, to sum it up: books, notebooks, and audio resources. And if you can/want to, in person "things" (classes, meetups, etc). TV shows are amazingly useful, but not for everyone. Same goes for all the tools online. If I imagine myself learning with as few screens as possible, I think I'd use a notebook for remembering words, audiobooks (and books when I can) and getting to know native speakers in my area. I hope this helps, - Ben
Did you mean 'willpower'? I can't help but think that if we need to create a daily schedule, listing what to do and when to do it, then 'motivation' _is_ at play. Without motivation, we could so easily ignore that schedule and not do the things we wrote down. I've done that myself, even after months of sticking to it. Unfortunately, with language learning, if a strong motivation isn't there then it's gonna be a _huge_ uphill battle (if genuine fluency is the goal). You simply _have_ to have motivation (and lots of it). 'Willpower' would be the myth, not 'motivation.'
@@maxnits9556 Hey there, thanks for the peptalk and advice! :D To be honest with you, I used to do that and I always ended up in a similar scenario to what Ben says at 0:42 Fortunately I have a system in place even for the worst days thanks to the ultimate immersion course that Refold does. I promise I don't push super hard on my worst days. 😅💜 Today is a better day so I'm back on it!
Routines definitely get me through periods of time where I don't feel excited about my target languages. I loved the tip about watching a few minutes of a video with small goal in mind (like figuring out what it's about) rather than the goal itself being to watch the entire thing. My immersion activities are primarily free-flow with incomprehensible content, so this will be a huge help in combatting the pressure I put on myself to consume entire videos for the exposure. Thank you for another wonderful presentation!!!!!
I don't like progress tracking because when I underperform I find looking at lower than needed hours spent makes me feel depressed. Then I try to do more to compensate and fail miserably because I didn't have it in me in the first place to do those hours for a reason! Now I'm stuck in an endless loop of depression where I know and can vividly see that I underperform and nothing can change that. This happened to me a lot in the past so I hate tracking time or progress or whatever. I'm much more productive when I know that on average I've managed to do some progress and that's fine.
Have you tried setting a daily minimum? It has to be a very small tiny goal that you can hit even on your worst days. You don't have to track your time if it's detrimental to your mental health and you can always do more than your daily minimum if you feel upto it. Tracking woes are difficult though so I can empathise with that, I hope things turn out better for you in time.
@@TheWishDragon Oh, I set my goals in the morning, usually aim at 3-4 hours but sometimes aim at 2. And I almost always fulfill my daily immersion goals, I just don't write it down ) Because once you catch yourself in underperformance by the numbers you're in a bad mental loop and it's very difficult to break it.
"Slow and steady wins the race" is also a huge scam. Because there is a pace that is so slow that you will never get to fluency no matter how consistent you are. There is a point where you will lose more than you gain. Your retention isn't 100% and it will deteriorate over time. One example is japanese, it takes 4000+ hours to reach N1. If you study for an hour every day it will take 11 years in theory, but much longer than that since during that time you will forget a few things that you learned, so I doubt that you'd ever reach it. You can however reach N5 and N4 with this method, since it doesnt require as much time and the amount of deterioration over time isn't as bad. This is why alot of people say that they reach a "plataeu" or the like, it's at that point when the time commitment (when method isn't terrible) is the problem. It's a huge elephant in the room that nobody talks about, they just ramble on about how consistency is key and get super defensive about their lack of progress. If you can't spend four hours a day on japanese/chinese, you are naive and lack time/will.
I don’t disagree with you, however, I think its worth noting that studying or practice can change as you advance. I still suck at Japanese, but I can speak to playing guitar. An hour of me playing 10 years ago is less valuable than an hour of me playing now because I understand the instrument on a deeper level and can be more effective with my time. I’m curious to see if language learning is similar in that way. What I can say is that if you played guitar for an hour a day a number of years, you’d certainly be a good player. You wouldn’t be a “pro” but you’d be a good player by a lot of people’s measure.
