Nama saya... Paul ["My name is Paul" in Indonesian]
[bad indonesian]
Man, I've been studying Indonesian for six months and 17 days.
And I still can't introduce myself. What's going on here?
Hi guys, this is Paul.
Today I want to talk to you about one of the most important...
elements of learning a language, of studying a language.
And that is consistency.
This is one of my moto: consistency is king
If you've read my blog or something you've heard, talked to me about languages,
you probably heard me say that slogan, that motto: consistency is king.
The people who really get good at languages are the people who study consistently.
They study everyday, come hell or high water.
They don't find excuse to skip their studying
The people who don't really learn as much, the people who don't get that good, the people who learned just a bit,
Those are the people who just study whenever they feel like it.
The people who don't study consistently, they just study based on a whim.
So I like to think about consistency in a couple of ways.
The first way is like this:
Your language ability is like a bucket with a small hole in the bottom.
Right? So the water, the liquid inside is your language ability.
And if you stop studying, then there's a slow leak and...
your ability will slowly diminish if you don't top up the bucket.
But, if you top up the bucket, everyday by studying, then you can maintain the level consistently.
you can maintain a certain level or even raise the level of the liquid inside the bucket.
But it's when you stop studying, when you're not consistent, then gradually, day by day,
each day a little bit of the liquid leaks out the bottom and the level diminishes
So that's like your language ability going down.
So if you've ever studied the language for a couple of months and then you took a few weeks off,
like maybe you lost motivation or whatever, then you came back to it you probably noticed
if you probably felt that you had lost the majority of what you have learned. Right?
So that's because you had that little bit of liquid in the bucket and then it gradually mostly leaked out
There is probably some residue in there, a few drops but...
you probably lost a lot of the meat of what you had learned. So that's 1 example.
If you've ever been a couple years into studying a language, like a year or two,
And then, you took a few weeks off, you probably noticed that your level had diminished a bit. Probably it had gone down but...
You probably didn't feel like you've lost most of what you learned
because it's that gradual diminishment. It's that gradual lowering of the level. It's a slow leak.
So the more of a beginner you are, the more of your ability you will lose, if you're not consistent.
But the way to always maintain your level and to keep increasing it is to be consistent and top up the bucket everyday.
So that's one way I like to think about it, your consistency in studying.
The other way I like to think about it is in terms of investing. When you invest money over time,
when you do it consistently, you can gain compound interest. Right?
That means that you make interest on the money that you invest but then you make interest on the interest as well.
This is similar to a phenomena that I've noticed when studying consistently.
When you study every day consistently, you don't take days off,
your learning kind of takes on a life of its own and you end up learning more than you would expect from the amount you're studying. Right?
That's partly because, if your brain is learning in the off time, when you're not studying, it's kind of processing things in the background all day.
But basically, if you are consistent, then you can get your...
you are learning to a sort of critical mass where it starts to take on a life of its own.
You learn more than you would have if you'd studied that same number of days but with breaks in between.
So it's really important to... to always keep investing on a daily basis,
investing regularly so that you can get that compounding effect in your learning.
Okay so, that's another way I like to think about it. So there's the the bucket with the hole in the bottom
but then there's compounding interest. So those are the two ways.
So the most important point is study everyday, be consistent.
Also put in a certain amount of time everyday, try to commit as much time to it as you can but...
more important than that is to do it consistently everyday.
How do you be consistent? That's the question that remains.
A lot of people intend to be consistent but they end up taking a lot of time off and being inconsistent.
So those people usually are taking action based on how they feel at the moment.
Right? They wake up in the morning and they think "oh I'm tired today, screw it, i just won't study today"
They're basing their action on the feeling of that moment,
which is something you can't really control. The way you feel depends on...
all sorts of different factors out of your control, depends on maybe what you ate yesterday.
It depends on the weather. It depends on how well you slept.
It depends on stress at work, all these things. So you can't really control it that easily.
Unless you're always monitoring all those things really closely.
So the way to the way to take action should be based on...
your vision for your outcome, what you want to get out of learning that language.
And also based on just the commitment.
Commitment to achieving that outcome, achieving that vision.
So let's say you want to be a French-English translator, that's your dream.
So you have to have that vision in mind for the future, that goal, what will that look like.
And then a commitment to work hard everyday to achieve that. Right?
So that, in that case, if you have that vision and commitment,
when you wake up in the morning and you're tired or hungover or whatever,
then you will just tell yourself: "Okay, I don't feel like it today but...
I have that vision and the commitment. So I'm going to do it anyway because it's not based on the feeling.
So that's how you... that's how you can be consistent is by doing that.
Alright, don't let it be based on a feeling. A feeling is... changing by the moment, it's out of your control.
Base it on your vision and commitment. Alright, I hope that's helpful.
Thank you very much for listening and 'talk to you again...