Hi there, this is Cedric here. I hope you’re good!
This time, I’d like to talk about a topic that you’re going to absolutely love:
studying!
OK, I might have tricked you a bit here, but stay with me.
I’ll show you how to become a top student in no time.
Learning a language will become a walk in the park!
It’s not the first time that we give advice about studying techniques.
I already spoke about memorization on this channel before.
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First of all, I’d like to make a confession: during my time at school, I was a slacker.
For real!
However, I changed my ways when I started to dive into languages later in life.
And I still can’t believe that you can change your studying so easily!
You see, it’s all about habit-building.
There is nothing enjoyable about brushing your teeth, and yet you do it every day
(I hope?)
So the idea is to get to the same point with language learning.
When I was a student, procrastination,
or the art to postpone what you’re supposed to do,
was the story of my life.
What happens in your mind at this moment?
Basically, you visualize the task at hand
and it seems too long, too hard, and too boring for you.
This triggers fear in your mind, and your coping reaction is to postpone its completion.
Result, the fear goes away, you feel better…
and you’re nowhere near making progress.
So the problem is the fear you feel when telling yourself you’ve got to study,
and you need to tackle it.
If you think about it, wouldn’t it be great if instead of fear,
the emotion you felt before studying was... excitement?
There has to be something positive in there for you,
something you’re looking forward to.
This will replace the fear that paralyzes you when it’s time to learn a language.
You do that, you’ll beat procrastination hands down.
So where do you get this excitement?
Well, you might be the laziest person in the world,
but you will definitely have a sense of achievement
whenever you complete any task
such as finishing some paperwork, writing an email, etc.
When you send this email, you have a small sense of satisfaction, right?
You’re enjoying a rush of dopamine (which is the hormone of satisfaction)
and that’s something we can work on.
So a good strategy is to change your perception
and focus on the fact that you are learning a language, and celebrate it.
Instead of desperately waiting for the moment when you’ll proudly announce
that you had your first conversation with a native,
just appreciate that you’re out there, doing it:
you are studying a language and sticking to it.
It’s an achievement by itself, especially if you doubted you could do it.
Still, you are sitting in front of your computer and you cannot get yourself started.
Instead, you’re giving yourself another 5 minutes slacking on Facegram or Instabook.
Clearly, the procrastination is strong with you…
And this is normal!
There is still a long way to go until you get the sweet taste of achievement…
The solution?
Well, you need to take a shortcut!
Unlike the essays we had to write when we were at school,
you don’t have a deadline to learn a language.
It’s life-long learning.
You don’t have either to bury yourself under a lot of work.
Instead, you’ll want to have clearly short sessions of work
with a clearly defined end.
For example, learning 10 new words,
reading only a paragraph of an online article,
watching a 2-minute video, etc.
Once you’re done, you need to tell yourself “job done” and enjoy that satisfaction.
The most important part is that you do that on a daily basis,
because you’ll be building a strong studying habit doing so,
and your brain will look forward to getting this fresh intake of dopamine.
In other word, you’ll get addicted to… work!
One last thing, it’s also important to keep track of the work done over time
to strengthen the feeling of satisfaction.
To sum up this strategy, here is what you're supposed to do:
Focus less on the long-term goal to learn a language
Break down your learning into small manageable work sessions
Complete them on a daily basis and enjoy the satisfaction of the job done
Keep track of your streak to see how you’ve built your habit
After a few weeks, you will see with amazement that you’ll be studying every day
without breaking a sweat, and that you’ll be already progressing fast in your language!
That’s it for this video.
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I promise this won’t count as procrastination!
See you very soon!
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