In today's world many of us are experiencing the aftermath of a proliferation of choice and
options to choose from in almost all areas of life. Now on the surface this may seem
great right i mean isn't that what freedom is all about? More choice? Well this is what psychologist
and author Barry Schwartz describes as The Official Dogma which is basically the idea that
to increase our welfare and happiness we need more freedom and the way to
create more freedom is to maximize the amount of choices that we have. Well,
Schwartz also argues that this is completely incorrect in his book that is also a topic
that I think could not be more relevant for language learners today: The Paradox of Choice
So the paradox of choice hinges on two primary ideas. First something called Choice Paralysis,
the idea that beyond a certain point the more choices and options that we have
the harder it becomes to choose anything at all. The second is this idea that the more choices we
have to choose from the less likely we are to actually be happy and satisfied with our
eventual decision. It's so easy to second-guess ourselves and imagine, what if we had chosen
one of the other options? Schwartz also points out how this tends to drastically raise our
expectations the idea that if there are so many things to choose from then surely one of them
must be the right choice one of them is gonna perfectly satisfy our needs which tends to lead
to further dissatisfaction and disappointment. And there's one more psychological effect that
I would like to mention here which is that it turns out when we only have a couple of things to
choose from if things don't go well we tend to essentially blame that lack of choice and
we just accept it, right? It's not our fault, we just didn't have a good option. But what's really
interesting is that when we have so many things to choose from we actually tend to put a lot of
pressure on ourselves now to make that perfect decision and when we're not happy with the outcome
we suddenly shift the blame to ourselves we think it's our fault for having not made
the right choice. Now there's no question that some choice is a very good thing and it's just
that Schwartz argues there is a line which after you cross it more choice actually does
more harm than good and that those of us who are fortunate to live in developed societies
are now bombarded with so many choices that have long passed that line in almost all areas of life
I believe the Paradox of Choice is really relevant to language learners in a whole variety of ways.
So first of all we are now in a time where for more and more languages that you might be learning
there are just so many options to choose from. It becomes very difficult even just to make basic
choices about the resources you want to use and once we do make a choice we're constantly seeing
all the different textbooks and apps and all kinds of websites and resources that we
could have chosen and so it's very easy to start doubting our choices and be tempted to constantly
try new things. But something else I'd like to add to the discussion is that I believe the easier it
is to change your decision right to try something else that you could have chosen before, the more
debilitating this paralysis becomes. If you buy a car and then you suddenly start second
guessing yourself, it's not very easy to suddenly change your decision but with language learning
resources and tools and apps and websites it's usually just a download or a click
or a website or even a simple online purchase away and usually for a relatively cheap price and so
we often don't even think twice before suddenly trying something new and this can lead very often
to spinning our wheels for weeks or even months. Now the second way it impacts language learners
is just simply deciding what and how you want to study. On a daily basis you might be confronted
with decisions over you know do you want to study a textbook? do you want to do flash cards? If so
which app would you use? Do you want to study with intensive or extensive reading? Do you want to do
you know dictation? Or shadowing? And even then what materials or content you want to
study do you want to use a tv show? a movie? a podcast? a graded reader?
a novel? An abridged text? A bilingual text? Do you want to
use a particular website? Do you want to focus on your listening, your reading, your speaking,
your writing? And it's important to consider that even if you are somebody who typically does
well at not always trying something new you may still be investing a significant amount of time
in those decisions to not do something as well. And finally I would like to mention that language
learning has an interesting thing which I like to call Choice Disparity where for some languages
like french for example you may have an absolutely huge abundance of choice from different content
and resources and tools and apps but if you're learning Icelandic or Cantonese for example,
then you may have significantly less choice and this can also lead to further dissatisfaction and
it can make videos like this just infuriating to watch... I'm sorry
Okay so now we've talked about the different ways that this can impact language learners let's talk about some of my own action
items that I think can help us to embrace the good things about all this choice that a lot of us have
while hopefully mitigating those negative impacts of this paradox so this first one may seem obvious
but it definitely bears reminding which is that whenever you start to feel dissatisfied with your
language learning resources whatever you're doing right now in studying a language
it's really helpful to take a step back and think critically about why you're feeling that. Is it
that this particular resource is just not working for you? It's just not compatible with the way that
you like to learn? Or is it possible that you're simply experiencing the paradox of choice? You're
simply doubting whether a different decision or a different app or textbook might be even better
than the one you're currently using. I would say that if it is the first option and it genuinely
is just not working for you then you might definitely want to look into trying something new
But very often it's the second one. We're just simply doubting is there something even better
out there? And in that case i would suggest really sticking to your guns and just pushing through
because the fact is that if it's working for you you will get there and although there might be
a better option out there you might be better off saving the immense amount of time we often sink
into trying other things when we already have a perfectly good resource in our hands not to
mention all the money you could save by not buying all kinds of different subscriptions and textbooks
and everything else now another thing you could try is simply time boxing your decisions and
I think this works really well for those day-to-day choices in terms of what do i want to study today
now I do think it's great honestly just to have a broader plan so that you don't
even have to decide that on a daily basis but there's no question that sometimes you sit down
and you're like what do i want to focus on today I would say set yourself a five minute timer
and whatever feels right at the end of that five minutes do that and the key here is don't allow
yourself to change your decision afterwards just pick something because the reality is
it probably doesn't really matter if you're taking steps forward with your language then that's
already amazing so time box your decision and just go with whatever feels right and never look back
and finally this is one that has impacted me very recently which is trust your past good decisions a
great example in language learning is if you find something that's working really well for you right
it could be an app that you just really like their methodology their design right it works for you it
could be a textbook i would say trust that good decision once you've found something that works
don't risk it right trust that and if you start to learn a new language
and if that language happens to be available right with that thing you've already found
just pick that and just don't look back I recently got back to Italian and even though i have an app
that i've been using for years and years and years for a number of languages it works great for me
I was still tempted to try something new that everybody was talking about and that has
quite a lot of hype in the community and in the end i spent like two or three weeks
testing out this new thing that ultimately I just didn't really like anywhere near as much as my
tried and true app that i've always used and so i ultimately went back to that and
so I could have saved myself several weeks if i'd just gone with my previous good decision
Now right before we get to the conclusion of this video I'd like to tell you quickly that
I just launched a brand new secret Language Podcast over on my Patreon page where I also
create a weekly language learning diary i give advanced access to my videos and so much more hey
everybody I'm Robin MacPherson and you're listening to my Secret Podcast exclusively available
here on Patreon I have to say episode one of the podcast was so much fun to film and create and
it was a really big hit with the group so I can't wait to release Episode 2 in the next week and I
just started collecting questions for October so if you want to be a part of the podcast and ask
your own questions if you want tons more content or just to support my work then it would mean the
world to me if you go to patreon.com/robinmacpherson obviously only if you can only
if you want to but it really helps me a ton so I just want to say thank you to all of my supporters
So in conclusion I want to be really clear that I'm not saying it's a bad thing that we have all
this choice right I think it's a wonderful thing that there are now so many ways to learn languages
whether it's the apps and tools that we have or whether it's this sort of huge amount of sharing
that's going on of different methods and ways to study i think it's great but I do think that I'm
seeing so many people fall into this trap where they just constantly are doubting themselves not
sure they should try something new and I think this spinning our wheels for weeks and months it
can really really make a difference in how quickly you learn a language and ultimately how fulfilled
you feel along the way because really we should be enjoying the process and not constantly wondering
whether or not there's something better out there so I hope this video was helpful and just simply
making us more aware of this paradox and just helping us to have the tools and the knowledge
to like i said before embrace all the good things about this abundance of choice that's
increasing all the time and I do hope that more and more languages will experience this
wealth of choice but also while mitigating the downsides and like I said before
ultimately i just want us to all be happier and more fulfilled language learners thank you all
so much for watching thank you for your support and if you enjoyed this video I really suggest
checking out my short documentary on the language learner's guide to minimalism which I loved
creating it was so much fun I think it's a great companion to this particular video bye everybody!