many people feel stuck when learning a language they feel overwhelmed and demotivated they can't seem to break free from procrastination they wonder why they feel so lazy when they used to feel passionate about learning so it's no wonder that they feel like they've lost all of their progress and they feel frustrated and burned out it's no wonder that they feel lazy and they're not cut out for this they think that they're not smart enough for this or that other people are just naturally better at learning languages they think I've already messed up this week so
what's the point they lack Clarity on what to do so they repeat the same beginner lessons memorizing vocabulary lists without application and never really progressing but here's the thing laziness is not the problem laziness is actually a good thing imagine this imagine you were being chased by a lion right now would you be lazy would you procrastinate or would you run for your life run the fastest that you ever could I highly doubt you would be lazy in that situation here's the thing laziness is not a flaw in our genes it's actually helpful it helped
us to evolve as a species it helped us to conserve valuable energy when we don't need it for times when we need it this is why it's so common to see us procrastinate before an assignment is due or before a test and make a Mad Dash to cram our studying just before the due date your brain knows when there's no urgency so it's saving up energy until it needs to until there is that urgency when we have to use it laziness is is a signal to conserve energy it's just like a signal like hunger is
a signal to eat laziness is your brain asking you how bad do you really want this being lazy is not a death sentence it's not something that should be taken as a bad thing it's not a negative thing it doesn't mean that you're a bad learner and it doesn't help to beat yourself up over this it only hurts your progress it hurts your mental health and eventually it's just going to make you give up instead you should think about being lazy as a sensitivity if you feel lazy or you think that you're lazy it just
means that you're more sensitive than the average person to not want to have your energy wasted which is a good thing in the long run and when you accept your laziness as a healthy part of yourself then you can actually start to use your laziness to help you learn languages even faster just like I did I'm a lazy learner I'm going to admit it right now but I was able to still use my laziness to learn Mandarin Chinese very fast despite my laziness I hate sitting and classes I hate learning from textbooks I hate learning
from boring material I either find it too fast or too slow or just not my style I get impatient when I don't see results I have a hard time believing in the process which everyone tells you to do when I can't enjoy the process so instead I use this laziness to my advantage there are many things that can trigger you feeling lazy but this is the most common one I see you're lazy because your goals are not compelling enough you don't know what you want your path is not clear you jump between different methods and
resources frequently and you don't see any progress so the moment you meet some kind of challenge or resistance it's easy to give up the solution that most people tell you to do is to build more willpower to be more disciplined but this can actually hurt your progress this can actually make you feel even more miserable why because discipline is only a Band-Aid solution in this situation it doesn't fix the root cause of the problem grinding away without fixing the root cause can actually make you more miserable it's like working a 9 to-5 job that you
hate clocking in and out in a zombie like State dreading each morning looking forward to the weekends but always living in a low state of anxiety and purposelessness the root problem is that you don't have a compelling goal that ties everything together that pushes you forward so when you don't have this long-term compelling goal this Vision this purpose that drives you forward laziness is actually a good thing because it helps you to conserve your energy so that you're saving it you're not wasting it but when you have that compelling goal you start to see things
differently challenges start to look like opportunities and you start to enjoy the process even though things get hard and you start looking at mistakes differently because you're not afraid to make mistakes because you start seeing them as a necessary stepping stone to improving yourself so how do we actually do this practically what can we actually Implement into our study system so that we start seeing changes as a lazy learner so this is what I did number one create a big goal you feel lazy because you don't have a big goal that is compelling ask yourself
why do you want to learn Mandarin Chinese or your target language is that goal compelling enough is it specific enough how badly do you want it a big goal helps us focus on the bigger picture when we're having those bad days when we're feeling demotivated when we when we're having a lot of challenges a big goal helps us work towards something that is bigger than us it helps us realize that even though we're not seeing much progress we're still getting better even though it's 1% every day even though it's so negligible in the grand scheme
of things in the bigger picture over the time Horizon of one year 1% every day can be a big difference a big goal can also help make your learning real a lot of times we can get a bit too logical and do technical like we want to learn about the grammar points specific vocabulary but we forget that we're learning a language that should be applied should be used in real life my goals early on when learning Mandarin Chinese was I wanted to go to Taiwan I wanted to speak with the locals I wanted to order
bubble tea using Mandarin Chinese and I wanted to surprise my friends and speak Mandarin Chinese with them and see their reactions each one of these goals made my learning real and tangible and it gave me something to look forward to every day a big goal like this is not set in stone you can always change it you can always modify it and edit as you go throughout your learning process the important thing is that we need a big goal to keep us on track so that we're going in the right direction and most importantly it
keeps us going the worst thing that we can do as language Learners is to give up and just stop completely because if we can just stick with it long enough along a long enough time Horizon success and improvements is bound to happen number two create small goals or daily wins a big goal helps us to focus on the big picture but small goals help us to enjoy the process great daily goals to give yourself daily motivation to help yourself focus on the process so that you're not always delaying gratification which can be hard keep your
goals simple and small so that you can see yourself realistically doing these things every day I see time and time again Learners burning themsel out because they set these big Grand goals learning 50 words a day studying for hours a day and they just burn themselves out they start strong but it's almost like at the beginning of the year all these people set out they want to go to the gym they want to lose all this weight they want to work out hours a day every day but then they burns out it's not sustainable staying
consistent is way more important than doing things perfectly my learning goals every day are very simple I just want to number one listen passively to Mandarin Chinese I want to immerse myself in audio I can do this when I'm walking I can do this on commutes I can do this while working out so it doesn't take a lot of time during my day number two I just want to learn one word deeply and number three I want to practice speaking for one minute and try to apply the word that I'm learning so that I'm actually
using it and not just learning it superficially and passively tip number three is to make it personal you feel lazy because you're only studying Chinese and it's too impersonal and logical I used to lock myself in a room and study my textbooks Trace out characters memorize vocabulary memorize flashcards and it was so impersonal there was no social interaction I was not speaking to langu which exchanges and my learning felt empty humans are social creatures we need social interaction even me as an introvert as a heavy heavy introvert I crave social interaction even a little bit
so the fix is to try to make your learning personal use the language to connect with native speakers connect with a teacher where you can interact with them and speak or even listen to them find language exchanges where you can get to know someone get to know the culture and make learning a language about the connections and the relationships that you build when we make learning more social we also get more excited and motivated to learn the language because we want to get to know the other person there's a human being on the other side
and so we want to get to know their upbringing we want to get to know their culture this happened to me firsthand when I traveled to Taiwan for the first time in 2019 and I forced myself to talk to the locals get to know the culture meet language exchanges and apply the language that I was learning so that I wasn't just focused on grammar rules and Technical vocabulary I was actually using and applying what I had learned think of the last time that you traveled to a foreign country and you heard the language their mother
tongue and how curious and excited you were maybe to learn that language but you might be asking what if you can't travel no problem the internet has made it so much easier easier than ever to learn online and to connect with other language Learners online you can find online teachers on I talkie you can find language exchanges online in Facebook groups you can find communities on Discord it's never been easier than ever number four make it fun you feel lazy when learning is not fun when you're using material that you don't enjoy or when you
find the material dry and boring use your laziness to your advantage by noticing when this comes up notice when you get bored notice when your attention span is waning if you're lazy this is a good thing because it means that you're more sensitive to when you feel bored which means that you can figure out more quickly what you need to do to get past this for me I get bored really easily so quickly I found that textbooks and flashcards were not a thing for me so I quick moved away from this and found something else
that worked for me personally better that fit my learning style better instead I love listening to podcasts Mandarin Chinese podcasts I love watching videos of native speakers cuz it feels like I'm eavesdropping into the culture and to me that's super exciting to someone else they may love textbooks they may love flashcards everyone is different we each have our own unique learning style and the important thing is finding the style that suits you finding the method and the materials that suits you I like to try to think to myself even if I don't get that final
result that final outcome that goal of being fluent of speaking flawlessly even if that doesn't turn out in my favor how can I still make learning this a win how can I still enjoy the process so much how can I make it so fun that it's still a win that I would still choose to do this and the only way to do that is not to force yourself to study material that you don't enjoy you have to find material that excites you and the only way to do this is to try a lot of different
material see what works for you and drop everything that doesn't it doesn't help you to listen and stick to material just because other people online told you that you should learn this way you'll only procrastinate more and burn yourself out and get more miserable and then give up which is the worst thing like we said that you can do because that that way you stop learning forever and then you give yourself a bad taste in your mouth about learning this language a healthy language learning approach must work with your emotions so it must give you
positive emotions it must make you feel good if you're getting negative emotions sure sometimes we're going to run into challenges we're going to get Negative emotions but if you're getting that consistently if you're dreading studying every time then you're only going to burn yourself out you're only going to give up tip number five is to integrate learning into your life you feel lazy because you associate studying with studying alone in your room instead change this up by integrating learning into your life so that you immerse yourself into the learning experience I do this by a
number of different ways number one I passively listen to Mandarin audio throughout my day while I'm doing other things so I integrate it into my life for example when I'm walking when I'm commuting to work maybe when I'm working out exercising or when I'm doing chores around the house this way this way I'm naturally integrating it into my life and it doesn't feel like extra work I'm still doing my other stuff but at the same time I'm still learning and gaining and progressing number two I try to talk to myself in Mandarin Chinese throughout the
day it's really hard to always have a friend a Chinese friend that you can talk to or someone to talk to in your target language this is something that you can do anytime you want we we're constantly thinking to ourselves in our head we're constantly chattering to ourselves so if you can switch that dialogue up and use your target language to describe the world around you to describe your day in your target language that's a great way without using much extra effort where you can practice speaking and applying the language number three I highly recommend
taking classes in your target language in Chinese this is a great way to integrate it into your life to build relationships like we mentioned before this can be Chinese classes or it can be other interest classes in Chinese that is taught in the Chinese language and you can find these online number four an easy thing that you can do is just to change the default language from English or your mother tongue into your target language and this is just a quick and easy way to expose yourself to the language to see the language on a
daily basis because we all know how many times we check our phones and this is just a great way to reinforce that language into our life number five I try to make friends in my target language and this goes back to making the language personal making studying and learning person personal this also helps you to integrate it into your life because like like I said we are social creatures all of these strategies make it easier for yourself to be exposed to the language throughout your daily life throughout your day you're immersing yourself in the language
without actually traveling to the country of your target language this reduces the friction that we often have that is associated with learning a language because it's often seen as dry or boring and so we can make it easier to do because we're going to do these things anyways we're going to commute anyways we're going to work out we're going to walk we're going to chat with our friends we're going to check our phones anyways so these are things that we're already going to do anyways so why not integrate it with learning Chinese and or our
target language over time when we do this enough this becomes a routine it becomes a habit and so it becomes second nature and it becomes even easier to do tip number six is to limit your studying you feel lazy because you don't have clear boundaries around your studying you study for hours but you feel distracted most of the time this used to be me until I learned about Parkinson's law work expands to fill the time available if you give yourself 8 hours to study it will take you 8 hours to complete it inefficiently if you
give yourself 1 hour to study you will figure out a way to finish it in 1 hour efficiently 1 hour of focused studying is better than 8 hours of distracted studying when I started making this change and I started limiting my studying hours I noticed a significant Improvement in my productivity in my studying I realized I was not wasting time distracting acted in a half focused state but also I was saving time because I was limiting my time studying but I would get more done in those study hours but I would also be able to
do more stuff after and enjoy my life and also the other benefit is that the next day I come back way more refreshed because the last day I wasn't burning myself out and I wasn't feeling guilty that I didn't get much done the last day remove distractions from your phone and computer so social media apps and other distracting websites that take you away from your goal but then also give yourself for per to stop if you're feeling like you're burnt out you're feeling like you're not making any more progress today you're feeling a bit sluggish
give yourself permission to stop for today and come back more refresh the next day so try not to beat yourself up your laziness is not a curse try to look at laziness as a good thing as a signal that you need to Pivot or change the way that you're studying so that you can actually leverage your laziness and use it to your advantage to actually learn languages faster to give you a quicker feedback loop because when you're lazy that means you're more sensitive that you can make changes more quickly that you can change the way
that you study that something's not working out and that you can improve the way that you're studying by using a better method by using better Resources by improving the system that you're studying with hope that helps you guys if you're learning Mandarin Chinese you can get my free speaking template in the description below if you want to learn the system that I use to learn to speak fluent men in Chinese like native speakers you can check out the copy paste speak system in the description below see you guys next time
