Doo-doo-doo-doo. Wonder if there's anything to smoke? Hi. James from
engVid. Welcome to Canada's flora. "Flora" is a fancy word for flower;
"fauna" being animals, "fauna" being flower. So, some vocabulary to start the
lesson. But what lesson am I going to teach you today? I want to do a learning
process video, which means I'm going to give you some hints on how to learn
better, more effectively, and efficiently; and, also, hopefully make
it more fun for you. One of the key things students have... that they have
difficulty with is that they say: "Doing English is hard. I have to think about
doing it." So, I had the idea: Why don't we think about how to form habits and
English work? That way... well, a habit like brushing your teeth — you wake up
in the morning, you brush your teeth; you don't think about it. You get up, go
to the bathroom, brush your teeth, eat your breakfast. It's done before you
think about it. If we can make learning English like that, you're gonna soon
find that English becomes fun because it's going to be automatic; something
that's not work — it's just a habit. Cool? Now, in order to do this lesson, I
read up on B. J. Fogg, who's a professor out at Stanford, and James Clear. James
Clear has a book called: "Atomic Habits"; and B. J. Fogg is, I think:
"Tiny Habits". I can't recall exactly. But these two guys are, like, the gods
of habits. So, let's delve into it. And that means: Let's go into it. Okay? So,
I'm gonna give you three parts. And when we do these three things together, we
should be able to form habits that will make English learning fun, effective,
and efficient.
Number one: Stacking. In North America, especially in the winter, we like to
have pancakes. Pancakes, mm. Homer style, you know? We put pancakes on top
of each other — this is called: "stacking". And you're going, right now:
"Habits. Pancakes. I think that guy gone crazy. I wouldn't... too much oxygen's
going through his head." Bear with me; just stay with me for a second or two.
When we stack our pancakes and we put beautiful maple syrup, it's delicious.
But the key is: We put one on top of the other, and sometimes we put butter and
it sticks together. The butter and the maple syrup gets sticky, and they stick
the pancakes together. Okay, I'll explain. What I want to do is I want to
take one habit you already do. Do you remember I talked about brushing your
teeth? Okay. You do that automatically or going to the washroom, and I want to
stack it with another habit that you want to learn. So, in turn, what happens
is it becomes something you just do. Okay? So, one habit could be: We go to
bed at night. Right? Well, if you want to do more reading, why don't you put a
book on your pillow? Stack the habit of going to sleep with that step... the
habit of reading. You go and you see the book, you're like: "Oh yeah. I'm gonna
go sleep. I'll read a page before I go to bed." Okay? You can stack habits in
other ways. When you have the television, instead of having the
television turn on, you could have it turned on to a... an English channel.
So, the habit of watching TV at night to relax — boom — you are studying. So,
"stacking" is taking one habit that you do already, and getting the new habit —
which is going to be our English study — and putting them close together, so one
leads right to the other. You can stack before; you can stack after — your
choice. Okay? So, that's "stacking". That's the first part of our habit form.
Okay? So, try and stack your habits. Find habits that go together somewhat.
So, you don't want to do reading and running. Okay? You... but you could do
audiobooks and running. You like to jog? Good. Stack it with a habit of listening
to English audiobooks. Okay. That's number one.
What's the second part of our habit-forming principle? Well, it's
easy-peasy. A lot of you know I was born in England. Funny thing. A fun fact:
There's a website out there that seems to be tracking me, and says I was born
in England but I live in Canada. I'm getting scared. I'm getting really
scared. Stay away from me. Anyway. What we want to do is make it easy-peasy.
That's an English saying for: Make it very easy. How do we make it easy? Well,
one of the ways to make something easy is to make it very small. A lot of
students have really big goals, and I... I think that's amazing. That's great.
But the problem with big goals — it's like trying to reach for the moon.
Difficult to do. But a smaller goal, we can do. So, parts we're going to do to
make things easy is number one: Make your goals small. Instead of saying:
"I'm going to study for an hour on English tonight", tell yourself you're
going to study for one minute. Chill. All you guys are like: "He's crazy; he's
lost it." No, no, no. Just wait. If you tell yourself you're going to study for
one minute every day, you're probably going to do it. If you tell yourself
you're going to study for an hour every day, you probably aren't going to do it.
And maybe you'll do one hour or five hours — which is really good — on a
Sunday, and nothing all week. When we know... and the science says it's the
consistency that gets you better. "Consistent" means you keep doing it.
That's the second part of easy-peasy. Make the goal so small, but do it daily;
every single day do this thing. Make it so small. Maybe not even a... you read
for 20 seconds. Maybe you're going to read five words of a book. We both know
you're not going to read only five words. Right? And that's the whole
point. You make it so easy that you go: "Even a baby could do it." You're not a
baby, so do it. And then, you do it every day. Right? Okay.
Other thing. Here's what we do: We want to pick a time and a place. Why? Have
you ever noticed when you walk in your house where the television is sitting or
where your couch is? Most houses in North America, if you see a couch, you
see a TV. Hockey Night in Canada is right in front of them all the time.
Right? So we know: "couch means TV". Oven and fridge, where are they? In the
kitchen. What do you do in there? No, you don't have a shower; you go and
cook. Time and place are important. If you pick a particular time of the day...
sometimes I think the best time to do something, like English studying, and it
depends on the person, is either in the day... at the beginning of the day or in
the evening because you have less things on your mind; especially in the
beginning of the morning. You've just woken up, so there's not a lot of
concerns in your head, so that's a great time because you can absorb more
information. Or in the evening when you've chilled from work and you're
relaxed a bit — a good thing to do then is to study at that time. But pick a
time and a place. And what you want to do is keep it consistent. Remember we
talked about daily? So, find a time and a place that you won't be disturbed.
Like, someone's disturbing me. Yeah. Tourists. What can I say? But they're so
cute. Gotta love them. Anyway. So, you want to find a time and a place that
you're going to be consistent. Do you remember we talked about daily? So,
we're going to be doing it in the same place daily. That way... don't pick a
place where you have to change every four or five days — that will start
breaking your habit. But you'll start finding after a while when you enter at
the same time and place, you're going to be drawn or you're going to want to
start to study because that's your habit. You make it small. Remember we
talked about making the habit small enough, right? Consistency — daily. And
now a time and place we've got down. That's the second part of our triad.
"Triad" means three. Okay? Just learned some vocabulary. Because I know it's the
learning process, but it doesn't mean you can't pick up some other things.
Right?
So, what's the third part? "Celebrate good times. Come on." Yeah. Go on
YouTube. You're on YouTube. Check that song out after; I think it's: "There's a
party going on right here." Yeah. "Celebrate". Okay, I'm done. That's it.
No Elvis here. So, celebrate. What do we mean by "celebrate"? We got two things;
two ways that we want to celebrate. Okay, stay with me. We're gonna start
talking about dopamine. "Dopamine" is a drug that your body naturally produces —
that you are given when you do something really well. Your body goes: "That's
just like me. I like that. That's good." It makes you feel good, and it makes you
want to do it again. So, for a habit to be successful... if you think about when
used to play football, for you Europeans; soccer for you Americans.
Okay? When you first got that kick and it went in... the goal went in, what did
you do? Boom — you got it in there. You're like: "Yeah! That's like me.
That's good!" and you felt really good, and you wanted to do that again. We
always do that. When we do something, we score, if you're playing basketball —
boom, you sink it. You're like: "Yeah!" Golf — it's not a sport. Sorry, it's not
a sport. But golf. Whenever we do something like that, we get that touch
of success, we go: "Yeah!" You want to do that. I know it sounds silly. But how
stupid did you look, going: "Yeah!" Yeah, exactly. You didn't care. You felt
good; you wanted to do that again. So, we want to celebrate when we're doing
these things. So, what do I mean? Once you find that place — remember the
easy-peasy — you've got a simple goal, you're doing it consistently in a place,
every time you go to that place and sit down, go: "Yeah! I'm doing it!" You can
say that just before you start; you can be in the middle of it and go: "Yeah!
I'm in the middle of doing it!" Or at the end, like: "Yeah! I kicked its butt.
I did it." Celebrate. Tell yourself you're doing a good job. Feel good about
it. That dopamine we talked about, that's given to you, will be given to
you and you'll feel good. And the next time you walk by that place, some magic
will happen: You'll start feeling good just walking by. And you'll even feel
better because dopamine is released in anticipation of doing something; not the
actual doing. So, it's going to get you sort of kind of motivated to studying. I
know, complicated stuff. Don't worry. You got it. Just watch the video again;
you'll get what I'm saying. So, "dopamine" is a feel-good drug your body
gives you when you've done something good that it thinks is helping you.
So, now that you've got that, I said there were two ways to celebrate. Right?
Celebrate while you're doing the activity. Tell yourself: "I've did a
good job. Yeah! That's it. Great. Studied. I did my 20 minutes. Yeah!"
Then give yourself a longer-term reward. You finish a book, you wanted to read an
English book. You said you want to read it in a month, you did — buy yourself a
chocolate bar. Okay, that's not quite a reward, but you catch what I'm saying.
Give yourself something good. So, you've done all this work, you keep celebrating
that you've done it, and then you finish the goal you wanted to do. Maybe you
wanted to learn 100 words in 100 days; maybe you want to be able to read a page
of English in under two minutes. I don't know what your goal is. But give
yourself your reward when you've done that because your brain is always
keeping tabs. It means it's always aware of what you're doing. And if you're
moving towards your goals, it's actually motivating you to keep moving towards
your goals. And your goal, in this case, is to learn English. Right? If you put
the three things I've given you before... what's the first thing?
Stacking. Try and find habits that can be put close together. Going to bed —
put a book on the bed at night. You get up — put the book down to help remind
you. Okay? Stacking those habits together. You're brushing your teeth —
think of... when you're thinking it, ten English words when you're standing on
one leg. Leg, hand, cheese, bread... just force yourself to do something
weird, so you're stacking. You have to do this one; put them together. When
you're stacking, if you can do it, make that... stack it, but make it
easy-peasy. Pick a small goal. Take a goal and break it down. Right? When
you've done that, make it daily. Do it every single day. You brush your teeth
every day. Right? Do it every single day. And then what'd we talk about?
Celebrate. When you've done that, and you've done this silly thing, and people
are going: "What...? What are you doing in there?" You go: "Yeah! I did it! I
did it. I brushed my teeth standing on one leg, saying English." Yeah. Okay,
don't do that. But you understand. That's the idea — this is what I want
you to do. And then give yourself a reward. You're working hard. Life is a
journey, my friend. I know it's gonna sound really, really bad. But life is a
journey. And we want to remember: You got to live it now. And that's part of
the celebration part. If you're not actually happy with what you're doing,
you're not going to keep doing it for long.
I do have a cup... one... a couple of things I wanted to say to you right now.
Because those are the three things I wanted to give you to put together, but
I want to go back to that test retest. Do you remember we started the
beginning; I said: "What are five things you do every day?" Now your eyes are
going: "That's why you said this stuff?" I'm like: "That's why I said it." What
are five things you love to do? What are five English goals that you have?
Remember I said all of that? And I said how it goes together? I'm gonna give you
that ten seconds again. Okay? Take a look at the scenery around me. I'll be
back, and you try and put together all the information I've given you, and how
that would work. You got it yet? Okay. Before I go and give you your homework,
I want to give you a quote by Aristotle. He said: "Quality is not an act; it's a
habit." So, if you want to get good at English, and you want to be efficient
and effective at it — think like Aristotle. "Quality is not an act; not a
one-time thing — it's a habit", something you have to continually do.
Cool? And as you know, you're gonna get homework because it wouldn't be engVid
if I didn't do that to you. So, here's what I want you to do: Take three goals
that you have in mind that you want to do in English, or even one. Here's the
hard part: Break it into 100 steps. Remember the easy-peasy thing we're
talking about? Break it into 100 steps. Find how you can stack each step along
the way. And then remember the reward? Once you've hit that 100th step, what's
the reward you're gonna give yourself? If you do this particular homework I
give you, you will find that you are 80% done learning English. You're like:
"What?" I'm like: You've already done the hardest part: Thinking. That's one
of the hardest things a human can do. And you've just done it. If you do that,
you're going to find that you're already motivated to do all the other things we
talked about when you put those other habits/steps in. And you're going to
master the habit of learning and learning English. Anyway, hope you had a
great time. Before I go, don't forget to go to www.eng as in English, vid as in
video.com. No quiz, but go check out the other lessons we have there. There'll be
other learning process videos; there'll be other language applications you can
do, where we do grammar, conversation, listening. Looking forward to seeing
you. Have a good one. Nice day out.