so you probably know that if you want to become fluent in English it is essential to
have the habit of practicing your English every day but with all the things we have
to do in life sometimes it can be difficult to remain consistent with studying something like
English while this is something that happens to all of us there is one really simple way to
develop consistency with your practice even if you think that you don't have time to study English
so in today's video I am going to introduce you to this idea of systems and give you some tips
that are going to help you make your English practice so much more consistent so that you
can finally reach all of your goals in English even if your time is really limited so let's go
so before I introduce you to this topic of systems which is going to be immensely helpful it's really
important that first we discuss why it is just so difficult for us as human beings to maintain good
habits if you're anything like me your life is surrounded by all sorts of different distractions
you can easily spend hours watching series on Netflix or watching videos on your favorite social
media platform now between doing something that takes more effort like sitting down and cracking
open your English grammar book or doing something that's fun and easy let's say watching a funny
video on Tick Tock our natural tendency always seems to be to go towards doing the thing that is
easier or that is more comfortable right now not knowing why you started studying your first place
makes it really difficult to practice consistently that's why it's so important to have a clear goal
a clear goal can set you in the right direction without a clear goal it's like you're trying to
throw darts without a dartboard but here's where things get interesting it's not enough just to
set goals you also need systems so goals are a one-time event but systems are how you get there
it's a bit like the difference between a journey and a destination so to give you a couple examples
if you want to lose weight then the amount you want to lose is your goal but your system is
eating healthy and exercising right or maybe something that's more relevant to you if you
wanted to get a band 9 on the IELTS exam then that's your goal but the system is actually
sitting down and studying so when you change your focus to systems it helps you to actually enjoy
the process instead of being too focused in on the result that you're hoping to achieve or the goal
for example if you say I want to be fluent in English that's the end result that you want to
have or the goal but now ask yourself what do I need to do to achieve this goal or in other
words how am I going to practice every day in order to become fluent that's the system
in his best-selling book Atomic habits behavior science expert James Clear explains that we need
to spend less time obsessing over our goals and spend more time at designing the systems that are
going to help us on the way to achieve them in other words he tells us focus more on how we're
going to achieve our goals rather than on what we want to achieve so one quote that I love from
James says we think we need to change our results but the results are not the problem what we really
need to change are the systems that cause those results so this brings us to tip number one
forget about goals focus on systems instead okay so what this means for you as an English learner
is that you need to stop focusing so much on learning English just so you can achieve something
else like getting a better job or passing a test instead shifting your focus to the reality that
you're probably going to be spending your entire life really learning English so you really should
make it a fun valuable and meaningful part of your life it's going to be an endless cycle of
improvement and refinement so you might as well enjoy the journey now this isn't to say that goals
can't be useful Milestones along the way however what systems help us to really do is shift from
just having a short-term focus into having a long-term focus in other words realizing that no
one becomes fluent overnight or in three months or even in a year if you're really wanting to master
language it can take years upon years upon years so what systems help us to do is to put the focus
on the little things that we need to do every day in order to have immense long-term benefits
so just to give you an example say that you make it your Habit to learn three new words every day
that's not really that much and it might just seem like it's too small of an objective to have
however if you were able to do this successfully if you can successfully build this goal of
spending just a few minutes every day practicing and memorizing three new words then over two years
you will have added over 2 000 new words to your vocabulary so you can see it really builds up over
time and just imagine if in two years you know two thousand more words than you know today you're
going to understand almost all the words that you encounter when you're watching a series or
reading a book and you're also going to be able to speak English so much more eloquently than you can
now now I'm sure that you clicked on this video because you probably just don't have a lot of time
to dedicate to learning English and I totally feel you I usually feel like I'm running from
one thing to the next that's why the next tip is just so important for busy people like you and me
but before we move on to that I want to let you know that if you enjoy videos like this
that not only help you to improve your English but also to improve your life well we bring you
a new one every single week so make sure that you don't miss a single one because we're going
to help you go from being a lost and insecure English learner to being a confident successful
English speaker hit that subscribe button and the bell down below so YouTube can let you know every
time we publish the new one and that brings us to tip number two develop micro habits
all right so take a quick listen to this podcast clip where we explain exactly what micro habits
are the micro habits come in this ideal micro habits to solve that because what science says
these days about habit building is that first you must standardize The Habit before you want
to optimize it so people normally go big with habits they think read for an hour or I'm going to
try this diet and it's already a very extreme diet and they don't do they don't practice the actions
that are more related to the starting point of the getting started all right and the reason that this
works is because of something called compounding effects so what this means is that for example if
you were to get one percent better every day at something you would have grown 37 times over the
365 days in the year and if on the other side of things imagine you were to get one percent worse
at something every single day one a year you'll be pretty close to zero in that thing and that's
probably why we have the expression English if you you don't use it you lose it so this is all to say
that the small changes may seem insignificant in the day-to-day but when you start to think long
term they can make a really tremendous impacts on your life this is exactly how investors are able
to get rich or if we think of a more practical example we could go back to weight loss so if
you were to change nothing else other than eating just 100 calories which is a tiny amount less each
day you would be able to lose 4.5 kilos in a year so basically the advice here is to focus more on
what are the small easy incremental changes that you can make in your everyday that will ultimately
lead you to long-term success instead of focusing on trying to make big changes that you'll probably
just give up on after a few weeks now studying or practicing your English really is not that hard
what is really hard is just pushing ourselves to sit down and do it our brains don't mind hard work
what they mind is just the idea of having to do something difficult that's why most people will
not be very successful if they try to sit down and study for one hour every single day instead
of something that's much more effective is called the five minute rule when you think about sitting
down and having to study for an English exam or study in the conjugations it sounds pretty
challenging it doesn't sound very gratifying does it but when you think about having to just sit
down and listen to a podcast in English for five minutes and maybe note down the new vocabulary
here that sounds a lot easier doesn't it the crazy thing is that for most of us if we put on a
podcast with the intention to just listen for five minutes we'll probably listen for more than that
getting started really is the biggest effort for us but once we get started then those five minutes
might turn into 10 minutes 15 minutes maybe even 30 minutes or more now your objective here should
not be tricking your brain into studying for an hour by telling it you're only going to study for
five minutes rather what the objective here is is to build a healthy habit of studying consistently
if those five minutes turn into 15 or 30 minutes that's awesome but if they don't then you should
still feel good if you only do five minutes about checking off your English studying for the day so
I want to propose and challenge you to adding a new micro Habit to your life and that is having
a conversation every single day for just four minutes now that might sound a little bit crazy
who is going to want to speak with me for just four minutes well on the real life English app
you can do exactly that anytime anywhere you can just press a button and have a fun and dynamic
four to eight minute conversation with another English speaker from another part of the world
and remember how earlier I discussed the micro habit of learning just if you want new English
words every single day well a really great and fun way to do this is with the real life English
podcast which you can listen to on the app for free with a full transcript and very soon we are
going to be adding a vocabulary flash cards which are going to help you to practice these words and
never forget them so what are you waiting for download the real life English app for free in
your favorite app store right now or simply click up here or down the description below to find it
and finally tip number three consistency is key so hands down the best way to be consistent when
it comes to learning a language like English is to develop a bilingual lifestyle now what do I
mean by this remember earlier I said that you should not just learn English but actually make
it an important meaningful part of your life now there's so many different fun ways that you can
do this and a lot of them are really low impact so it could be small things like changing your
device's language to English so that can mean your phone your social media accounts your computer
Etc and that way you'll learn little words by actually using these different things I actually
remember still in Portuguese the word which is a chat because when I was learning Portuguese I
changed my Facebook's language to Portuguese and there are lots of other things I've talked about
today developing a habit of listening to podcasts be that podcast for English Learners or native
podcasts that are just about topics that you're interested in and the great thing about this is
it's really a bilingual like lifestyle so it's something that you can do in other parts of your
life so you can listen to it you know while you're in line at the supermarket or while you're driving
to work in the morning or while you're running and of course if you're watching TV series try
to always watch them in English with or without English subtitles listen to your favorite songs
and actually look up the lyrics all of these can be great different ways to just have Micro
exposures with the language and they're probably things that you're doing anyway so it's super
easy change to make and with all these things remember that five minutes a day is much better
than two hours twice a week so with all of these you're really required to have a shift
in your mentality so thinking long term instead of thinking so much about your goals you start to see
that success really comes from doing little things every day rather than doing tremendous big efforts
in a short amount of time we all want to believe that there's some magic pill out there that we're
going to take and suddenly it's going to help us to achieve our goal of being fluent or of being
super in shape but you know whatever our goal is it always requires putting in the daily effort
be that going to the gym him or for us studying vocabulary every day and creating a lifestyle
that really supports that I promise you that if you commit to the process you will see progress
there's another really great quote from this book Atomic habits and from James clear that I
love and it says you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems
so today we've been talking all about building new habits and I want to hear from you after
watching this what new English habit do you want to do for your English practice share
it down below and also be sure to check out what other Learners said it might also just give you
a great idea for something you can add to your own English lifestyle so today we've discussed
why contrary to popular belief focusing too much on goals is counterproductive now this
is not to say that goals are not important goals are the first step in fact with all of my coaching
students I used to have them do on the very first day of class think about why they're learning the
language and I would actually have them even write this down and put it somewhere they would
see every single day because this is an immense motivator however once we've done this then it's
really great to spend some time on designing planning and optimizing our systems that's
how you plan on achieving this goal now if you do this then learning English is just going to
become an effortless habit for you and you will naturally become a confident English speaker as
a result of these good habits and learning so in this episode Casey and Izzy are discussing how
to implement good habits in your life for this first part you will listen to Three extracts
and you need to choose the best option A B or C to answer the questions are you ready after listening
to each section we'll give you the option of playing it again if you feel it's necessary
so this is how most of us live our lives including me and it's really important for us to understand