Calm those seas - give yourself a flexible learning week. Image from freeimages.com

Flexible Learning Week : Catching Your Breath While the Sea is Calm

Thank goodness for flexible learning week.

University of Edinburgh students’ eyes will light up at the mention of the phrase. Flexible learning week is a mid-second-semester break in lectures for independent study. It’s a chance to catch up, do some further reading, or just catch your breath and recharge. And it’s very welcome.

I’ve used mine to revisit this semester’s lectures, in readiness for a linguistics assignment just around the corner. It’s allowed me to build a bit of confidence in my knowledge of the material without the panic of the next topic coming before I’ve had a chance to digest the last.

It got me thinking: couldn’t we all do with a flexible learning week now and again?

DIY Flexible Learning Week

If you have a language learning plan, chances are it’s an ongoing, cumulative thing. Effective language learning and maintenance is a regular habit, and we build it into our day-to-day. But building in pause for thought is a good mind-health strategy, as flexible learning week shows.

For those worried that it’s just a foot-off-the-pedal break in momentum, don’t see it as a rest. Instead, it’s a chance for consolidation, for reflecting on your progress so far, and maybe revisiting some of the materials you thought could do with a bit more attention. Having a week free of calendar appointments and formal, diarised learning can be completely liberating.

I’ve found that when I do this with my languages – perhaps taking a week of random dabbling – I often get a touch of the ‘returner learner’ effect, too. After all, a change is as good as a rest.

The Right Wavelength

It’s a timely reminder that we are not built like robots; our energy and drives come in waves and cycles, and a bit of punctuation in your routine can be a good pacer.

As for the next step in flexible learning at Edinburgh? Convince the powers that be to build a study week into the first term, too!

How do you build in natural breaks for reflection and consolidation? Share your thoughts in the comments!

 

A bit of self-discipline and soon you'll be celebrating with fireworks. Image from freeimages.com

Automatising Self-Discipline : From Zero to Two Hundred Posts!

This post is a particularly special one for Polyglossic. It marks two hundred weekly posts since the site launch almost four years ago. And the secret to that unbroken run? The old trick of repeating a new habit to the point of completely automatising self-discipline.

It is boggling to look back on the journey. It started as a personal challenge to improve my writing and focus my ideas on language learning. Through sticking with it, it became a habit almost by stealth. And it is a habit I wouldn’t do without now.

Hitting that weekly goal was not always easy, however. Some weeks have involved a long, hard think about fresh and original material. But there is always something to write about, and there is always the joy of writing it. Fortunately, there are the trusty favourite themes to revisit: Anki, Evernote and iTalki tips, amongst others. Exploring them on Polyglossic has been the source of so many valuable discoveries as a language learner.

Automatic self-discipline

But the best part about that weekly writing challenge? The self-discipline to write regularly has now become automatic. Where blog planning was once a deliberate effort, it now happens almost imperceptibly, in the background, without a second thought. Making sure to leave aside a couple of hours on a Sunday for editing and proofing, for example, is so ingrained that it just feels normal.

And that magic can work with any habit we want to adopt, including language learning.

So how do we go from zero to hero with a brand new goal? Here’s how I found the spark to get going – and keep going!

Use All the Available Tools

We’re only human. Sometimes, we forget, especially in the early stages of building new habits. As a helpful initial scaffold, we can enlist the help of all the modern-day tools at our disposal. These include to-do lists (electronic or old-fashioned pen and paper), mobile phone alerts / reminders and planning tools like these nifty time blocking notepads.

Tools like these keep you afloat while your habit is still sinking in, like water wings holding a learner swimmer above water. Eventually, your habit will be firmly established, swimming under its own power, and the supports can drift merrily away.

Likewise, there are ready-made frameworks for planning and organisation that support solid habit-building. The Twelve Week Year is a very straightforward, goal-oriented system, for example, and one I keep returning to. Scour the productivity shelves at the bookshop for gems like this. One bonus: they tend to be pretty short reads, too.

Pre-empt

Forewarned is forearmed. Avoid deadlines creeping up on you by keeping an eye on the calendar. Just because you aim to do Task X on a Sunday, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do some groundwork if you find yourself at a loose end on Saturday.

With a blog, be alert to post ideas during the week, and note down useful phrases or a skeleton paragraph structure as they come to you. With language learning sessions, glance over the material you plan to work through before the time. Search for extra resources and handy links on your phone whenever you have a spare moment. Embed good habits in your life – those that stick are not just isolated islands or quick bursts of activity here and there.

Developing a pre-emptive self-discipline extends to your work or study environment, too. Choose your time and place carefully to avoid interruptions. I find coffee shop working effective – it removes me from home distractions and the bustle helps me focus.

Have Contingencies in Place

We can pre-empt on a longer-term scale than just the week-to-week, too. Since life is often less than plain sailing, have some contingencies in place for disruption.

For blog writing, that might mean having a couple of draft posts almost ready for publishing just in case it looks like you will miss a deadline. More than once I’ve been saved from missing a week by a handy backup post!

For language learning – especially time-oriented goals like X hours a week – calendar slack is your contingency. In practice, this might mean setting aside a catch all hour or two in your week, when you can make up for any slippage. Or it might involve smart planning, where your scheduled ‘hour’ is actually 45 minutes, with some wiggle room either side.

Also think about building in margin to bulletproof your schedule against upsets. By not filling every waking minute, you have some space to hit your targets even when things go awry.

Share, share, share

Taking pride in the fruits of your good habits is important. And interacting with peers over them is an especially warm and sociable way to do that. For some projects, like blog-writing, sharing is a natural part of the process. But telling others about your progress works with all kinds of other projects.

Take the polyglot community, for instance. Like-minded souls use social media platforms to share their hopes, wishes and progress updates. It needn’t even be anything lofty. Revelling in a shared love of dabbling, for example, is a fun way to get others on board with your regular language goals. In return, the likes and comments can be a valuable source of encouragement.

Feeling recognition for our efforts can keep us coming back for more, reinforcing new habits and further automatising self-discipline. Better still, it sparks an exchange of expertise and advice that helps make everyone better.

Want It!

Lastly, make sure that your habits are building towards something you really want, some overarching goal or life plan. Doing it because you want it takes some beating as a motivator.

Polyglossic was born of that initial spark and desire to create, and through those cycles of organisation, repetition and encouragement, the self-discipline to keep the wheels turning has become automatic. That’s proper everyday magic, there. But any of us are capable of it!

Happy birthday, Polyglossic – here’s to the next two hundred!

Mountainous landscape - build some margin into your life and breathe in the fresh air. Image from freeimages.com

Building in Margin as Language Learners : Restful Gains for Real-World Brains

Do you have enough margin in your life?

Margin is that bit of extra time you choose not to fill. It is the calendar slack, the breathing space, the room to manoeuvre – the opposite of ‘too busy’. It became a popular topic in the self-help and pop psychology world around half a decade ago. And it is as important as ever.

In fact, for the polyglot community, this band of extreme language learners, it pays to be aware of its importance. For all students, margin can make the difference between resilience and burnout. However, it can feel against the grain. If you love your subject, spending every spare hour of the day on it might not seem excessive.

But brains tire, too.

Funnily enough, that is something my very wise grandmother warned me about many times as a book-obsessed kid. Don’t study too hard! It seemed so counter-intuitive back then. For one thing, the rest of the world was screaming work your socks off, smash those grades! You snooze, you lose! Great, if you have the passion and the energy to keep that pace up.

As kids, though, we lack that regulator switch to tell us when to step back and recharge. We need it less frequently at that age, to be honest; youngsters have seemingly boundless energy and live lives constantly switched on. Nowadays, with a bit more wisdom (and a slightly older corporeal vehicle), I know exactly what Nan meant.

A finite resource

The hard lesson to learn is that brainpower is a finite resource, the brain an engine. And no engine is capable of perpetual motion. Like the body, the brain burns energy to do its work. And like the body, it needs rest and recovery. We can rest when we sleep! I hear you say. True, but building in some idle waking time gives you chance to enjoy it while you are conscious, too.

And so we have the gift of margin.

Sometimes, building it in simply requires a little mindful calendar management. When I first started using tutorial platforms like iTalki, for example, I gorged on lessons out of the sheer excitement of having easy access to native tutors. I would regularly book two – or even three – lessons on one day. They would often be in completely different languages, too. At just 30-60 minutes, I guessed they were pretty small chunks of the day, in any case. There was plenty of time between them.

The issue was that a lesson is never simply 30-60 minutes. There is the build-up, where you are mentally preparing yourself for the face-to-face challenge of speaking in the target language. Sometimes this is barely noticeable. But your brain is working on it, silently, in the background.

Then there is the post-lesson cool down. Aside from the obvious admin, like noting down new words and structures, a lot of processing is going on. Some of this will be purely about content – what you said, what the teacher said. But some of the involuntary replay is more about judging your performance in a social context. Did it go well? Is the teacher pleased with me? Am I even any good? Squashing impostor syndrome gremlins is a universal human task, and it takes a lot of mental energy.

Factor all that in, and two or three lessons are enough to occupy the brain all day long.

Rules for Margin

Now, realism is not a fun-toting party guest at the best of times. Any community of super-learners likes to think in Übermensch terms of anything is possible. And it is, within the limits of our own humanity. Our own amazing, unique humanity, but a humanity nonetheless limited by the regulation physical hardware.

To work with that, I find it helpful to set a few rules.

The first, you can guess: just one language lesson a day. It is easy to stick to that, and quite honestly, makes more sense if you plan your week by blocking your learning time. By extension, I also try to avoid three or more consecutive days with one-to-one lessons.

Similarly, it is helpful to respect the concept of a weekend, even if you follow a different weekly rhythm. Build in a couple of free, study-free days every week, whether they are Saturday and Sunday, or some other combination. Now, where I used to see an empty days as a chance to squeeze in another lesson, I try to savour them as commitment-free breathers. This takes away the feeling of relentlessness that can build up without thinking gaps.

Magical Realism

But here is the magic about margin: leaving time free is not the same as doing nothing with it. Not being committed is not the same as not using the time at all. And what you do in your breathing space might well be language learning itself! The only stipulation about margin is that it is free for whatever you might need it for – contingency time, in other words. If you get to it and have no other plans, maybe you will even feel like a bit of extra language learning. Or a walk in the park. Or a coffee with friends. It’s up to you.

Doing something because you feel like it can be a lot more replenishing and recreational than doing it because it is in your study calendar. In this way, margin becomes a great way to rediscover the joy of random study. Leaf through a book, watch a TV programme in your target language, read a novel. Just enjoy it as a recreational activity, rather than an obligation.

I have a ready list of time-fillers when I feel like a bit of easy language. Of late, I love watching random episodes of the BBC Gaelic programme Speaking Our Language. I’m learning bits and pieces as I watch, of course – but I also simply enjoy seeing different parts of Scotland I’ve not visited yet (as well as reliving early 90’s fashions). In the same vein, I often listen to the odd episode of Greek by Radio (hosted by Kypros.org) in my downtime. The Greek lessons are useful, of course, but those vintage productions have me revelling in those more innocent days of broadcasting. And, of course, there is Eurovision.

Whatever you find yourself pottering about with, make sure that it feels less like work, and more like fun. The most important thing is to exercise that self-care, and make some space for it in your routine.

Margin is a gift to your future self. Build it into your schedule to keep your brain in prime, language-learning condition!

It’s a date! Planning for language success with extreme calendarising

As a naturally busy (read: untidy) mind, the discovery of proper planning in recent years has been a godsend for my language learning. From happy-go-lucky, read-a-few-pages-here-and-there amorphous rambler (goodness knows how I managed to amble my way through university), an organised me rose from the ashes of chaos. The past decade or so has seen me become a much better learner for it. That bright but scatterbrained schoolkid who had to attend interventional self-organisation training at school finally realised the error of his ways.

The secret isn’t particularly well-kept, mind. Just the discipline to set weekly targets, combined with a bit of creative to-do listing using software like Evernote and Wunderlist, are enough to clear the path to a wholly more efficient kind of learning.

There’s always room for improvement, though. To-do lists are great. They’re just not particularly precise.

You probably know the issue well, too. You have a list of things you want to do by the end of the day. But come the evening, you realise that you’ve left them all rather late. That is the best way to turn tasks you might otherwise find fun or engaging into chores.

It’s a date

Recently, I came across an article about a woman who halted that drift into nebulous indolence by calendarising everything. Now, her example might come across as, well… a little extreme, as far as productivity drives go. Rising at 4:30am, scheduling time with family and friends to the minute – well, my life isn’t that busy. But there’s definitely something in this approach worth trying.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending some moments each evening to schedule explicitly each to-do on the next day’s calendar entry. It’s a flexible schedule, of course, with plenty of slack built in (I’m neither monster nor machine!). But giving my daily plan some solid structure has made a big difference.

Planning a day of leisure and learning through explicit calendarising

Planning a day of leisure and learning through explicit calendarising

Following a plan you made the night before is a little like playing the role of both instructor and learner. In pre-planning, you determine the course of action for your future self. Following that route, there is a sense that this past self is instructing your present course of action.  And for me, that purposeful split personality, separating planner-self and learner-self, both busts drift and yields a solid boost for discipline.

Seize the day

As your own day-to-day educational planner, you are designing your own curriculum as you go along. The upshot of this is that the day view of Google Calendars suddenly becomes extremely useful. And that goes for that wealth of other free tools, which suddenly become invaluable planning buddies.

The idea of creating your own ‘personal college’ with a disciplined daily approach has relevance well beyond languages. It has gained some traction particularly in the US, where university costs have become prohibitive for some.

Super-learner Scott Young, for example, took advantage of free online materials to work through the entire MIT computer science curriculum in his own time. With a raft of free platforms and resources available to linguists, we are perfectly placed to do the same. Playing the role of your very own course architect and calendarising curriculum scheduler, you can reap similar rewards.

So am I cured of my chaotic tendencies? Well, I never want to lose that bit of slack I still build into my routines. I think a little bit of chaos is good, especially for creative souls. But a little extreme calendarising gives me just enough structure to balance things on the right side of discipline.

Variety is the cheese of life. Image from freeimages.com

Variety is the cheese of life : Acknowledge and bust your rut!

Variety of approach has always been a hot topic for me in language learning. Changing up your sources and materials is one of the best ways to maintain high interest and motivation in a study regime.

But I discovered something more to that trick in recent weeks: the same guiding principle is an excellent strategy for keeping the rest of your life bubbling effervescently, rather than fizzling out into stagnation.

Someone moved my cheese!

In the classic productivity title Who Moved My Cheese, Dr Spencer Johnson details the very human tendency to fall into patterns of sameness. These patterns make us inflexible and impervious to change. In other words, they get us stuck in a rut.

Ruts are funny things. You can be stuck in one, yet not realise it. And it can take a big disruption to shed light on it.

For me, life was seemingly in perpetual motion. Working between several UK cities, the commuting rhythm gave the impression of a geographically open, free life. And don’t get me wrong; there is a great freedom in working both remotely and on the move, with a couple of weekly office days providing an anchor point between travels.

But what we do not see is how rigidly arranged everything is behind the scenes. Movement was ongoing, but within very narrow confines. It was motion, for sure, but it was always the same motion. I played the role of master of my own destinies, but in reality, it wasn’t me doing the managing. It was the train and plane schedules. Travel plans come with unique, prohibitive restrictions thanks to peak pricing, busy services to avoid (especially for someone who hates big crowds) and fitting work around family and friend commitments.

The result? I’d become a creature of habit without realising it. I knew exactly where my cheese was, and I always expected it to be there. The same trains, the same planes, the same routes.

Until they messed my train schedules up!

Desperately seeking cheeses

Yes: London Northwestern and Virgin Trains, in their wisdom, took a bulldozer to my well-trodden paths up and down the country. Obviously, there was some greater logic behind this. Some improvement or efficiency saving for the greater good. But my safety blanket, my familiar routine, was simply no longer there.

First, I felt panic. Then, realisation: I had been in an unknowing rut, always returning to the same spot for my little nub of cheese. In a life characterised by change, I had become inflexible to it, spoilt by the continuity I enjoyed up to that point.

It was time to relearn cheese-hunting.

Experiment and enjoy the variety

With nothing to lose – my original services were no longer an option, in any case – I started to change my calendar up a little. I experimented with a number of alternative routes, not settling on one, but going out of my way to try out the possibilities.

Crucially, I resolved to be brave, and particularly, to try routes I might not have ordinarily considered. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is a healthy habit in learning. And, I found, it can be just as helpful in day-to-day life too.

Somewhere in the mix, you hit upon some nice surprises.

Same place, fresh eyes

The treasure in the ruins, for me, was the discovery of some very cheap and empty early hours services to London. Instead of arriving at 9:30am, I would get to the capital at 7am. Ouch.

But wait. There’s a gift in there. It’s the gift of time.

Instead of racing to the office to get a good two hours of desk time before lunch, I could take my time. And it dawned on me that I could take my time in a pretty exciting place. London was mine for a full two hours.

It’s a wonderful experience rediscovering a place that you began to associate only with work. I planned walks, coffee stops, sightseeing detours. I got to know the city as a pleasure again, rather than a chore. The Thames. Westminster Abbey. And St Paul’s Cathedral, just a stone’s throw from the office! I’d been missing out on so much.

St Paul's Cathedral, London - my bit of variety this week!

St Paul’s Cathedral, London –
a bit of variety for me this week!

Coming full circle

Linguists, bear with me: these circumlocutions do come full circle, right back to language learning. On my London walking adventures, I stumbled back into the territory of Foyles, the magical book Mecca on Charing Cross Road. Foyles has, by a long stretch, the best language learning department of any UK bookshop. What a rediscovery!

And just think: if it hadn’t been for those pesky schedule changes, I’d never have stumbled across that Aladdin’s cave of volumes again – at least for a long while.

Foyles - the place to find variety in language learning books!

Foyles, London

So in life, as in languages, a change – forced or not – can respark the joy. Someone moved my cheese, but it reminded me that life is full of different cheeses for the hunting (and not just the corny song kind).

Keep movement in your life. Learn the lesson of variety. And stay on the lookout for fresh cheese!

Few things give more motivation than the prospect of having an audience for your efforts. (Image from freeimages.com)

Motivation lacking? Do it for an audience!

Motivation can sometimes seem like a scarce resource. Simply wanting to achieve, for achievement’s sake, might not suffice to push you over the finish line. You need a bit extra.

I found myself in this situation recently, working on a goal that straddled both language learning and software development. For some time, I’d wanted to create something completely different from my usual fare and out of my comfort zone: an app for learning and practising verb meanings in Mandarin Chinese. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go for it.

Learning through making

Now for me, Mandarin Chinese is a totally new and exciting departure. I haven’t studied many non-Indo-European languages (some Modern Hebrew and a tiny bit of Japanese barely count). Putting together apps in new languages is one route I use as an introduction to them for my own learning. Therefore, the idea of working on a brand new one filled me with positive anticipation!

That was, at first. Getting started was easy. With reliable sources for the learning content, and a solid framework app to build it into, I got off to a good start.

However, I soon slowed down to a halt.

What was wrong? Was the language content no longer captivating me? No, not that – I still revelled in the new words and concepts I was learning along the way. Was the technical side losing its fascination? Not at all, as I was still spending quality time on similar technical projects without any signs of boredom. So what had happened to my motivation?

The problem, I realised, was this: it is hard to work in a bubble.

Lone ranger

Humans are social creatures. We are built to be involved with other people in all of our exploits. Working with others, either through study buddying or teaching, can be a real shot in the arm for language learning, for example. We simply work better when we are not isolated.

The truth is, my Chinese app endeavours had become divorced from this fact. I was a lone ranger, operating in a bubble. The issue was not simply that I was developing alone. There are plenty of very successful, lone app developers! Rather, I was creating it with nobody in mind (beyond myself).

This resulted in fuzzy goal definition. No deadlines, no direction, no sense of wider purpose. Instead, just a vague ambling towards an ill-defined end point, where I would have eventually created something I deemed useful and learnt a bit along the road.

So what to do?

The obvious answer was actually right under my nose the whole time. A good friend of mine is currently learning Chinese at level A1-2 and is an iPhone user. Via Apple’s TestFlight platform, I could easily roll out test versions of the app online for my fellow linguist buddy to test out. What better audience could I wish for?

Performance anxiety

At this point, you might wonder how on Earth it took so look for that solution to occur to me. Moving in language learning circles, I have countless friends studying any number of languages at a given point. You’d think I would be badgering them constantly with new app ideas.

The issue is that sometimes, the idea of an audience for your work / efforts / brainchild / ambitions is downright scary. We all crave approval from our peers. Self-doubt gets in the way. It requires no small degree of bravery to put yourself out there, open to criticism (constructive or otherwise) from people you think a lot of.

Will they like what I produce? Can they be honest with me about it if they don’t? Would they think less of me if my initial attempts miss the mark?

It is utterly normal and completely human to be put off by this kind of performance anxiety.

Perhaps the best advice I’ve come across is simple optimism: think the best of your audience. If you enlist the help of friends, then already, the most supportive people have your back. Most people, in my experience, truly do want to help, rather than knock you down.

Needless to say, initial reports from my tester friend are warm, well-meaning and positive: new words learnt, fun had learning them, and genuinely useful feedback given.

And that feeling of being helpful provides a ton of motivation.

Language learning for an audience

The example I’ve given might seem like a very specific case of language learning tech. But you can apply the same principle to language learning, pure and simple.

First, ask: who could my audience be? As a linguist, there are myriad scenarios you can imagine as end goals for the task of communicating.

Do you have workplace colleagues you can make smile with a few words in their native language? Are you planning a trip to the target language country and want to attend an event where you have to speak that language exclusively?

It needn’t even be a speaking task. Perhaps there is a social media group you’d like to join in with. I recently joined a Norwegian music discussion forum on Facebook, for example. The desire to chat with fellow fans is a great audience-based motivation to brush up my norsk.

Once your audience is defined, let go of your performance anxiety. Have faith in the kindness of others to help you reach your goals. Use humour, as it can really break down barriers. And above all, enjoy the interaction!

Whatever your chosen audience, incorporate it into your goal planning and let it become your motivation. That single social aspect will so much more sharply define your language learning objectives!

Incidentally, if any iOS users are interested in being a tester for my nascent app, please let me know!

A place for everything! Decluttering into boxes. (Image from freeimages.com)

Digital Decluttering : the Delete an App a Day Challenge!

A place for everything, and everything in its place: the mantra of decluttering.

There has never been a better time to tackle clutter, it seems. Japanese tidying whizz Marie Kondo is enjoying great success with her Netflix series Tidying Up, in which she helps us mere mortals order our chaotic lives. Friends and family are talking about it. She has inspired some of the messiest amongst us to clean up their act.

She has achieved the seemingly impossible: she has made tidying trendy!

Now, as someone constantly seeking a system – both in my learning and my wider life – it is an exciting thing to see neatness and order back in vogue via a little Marie Kondo magic. Creating order, and finding a more productive path through that order, has been a passion of mine as long as I can remember. I am forever playing with planning tools like Evernote and Wunderlist to fulfil my own version of everything in its place, and improving my learning goals in the process.

After all, tidy place – tidy mind, true? And that can only be a good thing for living your best language learning life.

Digital decluttering : the case

The thing with clutter is that it often gathers imperceptibly, cheekily, brazenly, under your nose. Junk piles up, dust gathers, and you didn’t even notice it! And nowhere is that more apparent today than with digital junk.

And the worst culprit? Unused mobile apps.

My phone was steadily getting clogged. It’s a slow but sure process, for sure. The ease of finding and installing apps these days means you, too, have probably ended up with pages of icons you barely click on. And ever-increasing phone storage mitigates the natural ‘memory warning’ limit that might have once alerted us to our app gluttony.

The glut encompasses seemingly harmless educational apps, too. There has been an explosion in language learning platforms over the past couple of years. And, excitable linguists that we are, it is hard to resist the instant tap-install impulsion when a new language app suggestion pops up.

But we have to ask the question: how many of those scores of language apps do we really use?

Certainly, some of them are my most used apps. On iOS, you can even check that with the new Screen Time feature. True enough, Anki and Duolingo are up there in my most frequented apps.

Others, though, I haven’t opened in months. Years, almost. They’re just sitting there, gathering electronic dust on my phone.

What’s the harm, you might ask? Well, a bloated phone can cloud clarity of purpose when it comes to using it. A mass of too many apps is amorphous, disorganised. We look at the phone and are lost in a chaos of possibilities. Too much choice can be paralysing, and even interfere with good habit-building.

We can’t see the wood for the trees.

So how to tackle it?

An app a day (keeps the clutter away)

You could spend a good chunk of time going through everything, bit by bit, getting rid of the clutter in one go. But there is a much gentler way – and one that gives you time to evaluate and reassess in your own time what you really use and value in your handheld learning space. This gentle antidote involves the gradual and regular application of a little Marie Kondo Zen.

Marie famously invites followers to interrogate the connection they have to their clutter. Touch it – and see if it sparks joy. Although you can’t touch an app like a piece of clothing, you can still probe your connection to it. Open it, play with it, see if you still feel its worth to your aims and objectives in life. Each of those myriad apps – what would your life be like without it? If there’s no joy, then there’s no need to hang on to it.

Since you probably have lots and lots of apps to interrogate in this way, this could be a big task. And it’s always best to approach a big task with a method.

To that end: say hello to the Delete-An-App-A-Day challenge!

Each day, for as long as it takes for you to feel on top of your phone again, commit to deleting one app. No more, no less. If you have a cluttered tablet, do the same on that. Keep going until you get to the gold – those apps that do spark joy.

Enlightenment through decluttering

The upshot of all this is that you don’t just end up with a lighter phone. You also learn a lot about yourself and your learning preferences.

I set myself this challenge a couple of weeks ago now. My phone screens are already less busy. But there are extra bonuses along the way: rediscovering apps I’d forgotten about, rearranging the apps I want to keep so that they are harder to overlook, realising how much I can recall from language app lessons I thought were difficult the first time round. By cutting out the dead wood, I can squeeze more out of the items I decide to keep.

So what have I uninstalled? Well, I won’t name and shame here. All apps have value to someone, after all. What we connect with is deeply personal, and the apps I shun will be another language learner’s indispensable go-to.

will say, however, that I miss none of the apps I’ve deleted so far. A sure sign that digital decluttering is the way to go!

Be honest, be ruthless, dare to delete!

Going forward

Ultimately, you will come to a point where you are left with just those apps that really work for you. There is no need to keep going. But some general house rules will help avoid future clutter.

One strategy I find helpful is a one-in-one-out code for app installations. Incidentally, this is great for applying to your clothes, too, if you want to avoid wardrobe sprawl. If you want something new, then it must take the place of something old that you want to get rid of. Of course, deleting an app needn’t be as permanent as donating clothes to a charity shop: you can always reinstall later if you made a terrible mistake.

Mobile device operating systems can lend a hand, if you are in two minds about a certain app. As mentioned above, Screen Time on iOS 12 will show you the apps you spend most time looking at. Google’s Digital Wellbeing offers similar functionality for Android. Ultimately, though, how you feel about an app should determine your final decision: chop or not?

You may also find further helpful features by digging in your phone settings, too. iOS, for example, can be set to automatically offload unused apps so that they no longer take up valuable space. The app icon remains, though, which you could argue is continued clutter. That said, offloaded apps do appear with a download arrow on your screen, so the feature is handy for flagging up apps to delete manually.

Once you have a handle on digital decluttering on your phone, you can apply it to other areas of your online world, too. Twitter is one platform that certainly benefits from a little pruning now and again. When you start, it can become a healthy addiction. After all, what area of life won’t benefit from a little Zen?

Streamline your digital life. Make your daily productivity path a little bit clearer. Take the Delete-An-App-A-Day challenge and spark your own joy!

A new calendar means new language learning resolutions. But how to stick to them? (Image from freeimages.com)

Five Ways to Stick to Language Learning Resolutions

We are well into the New Year now, and – if you are like me – you probably have a list of language learning resolutions as long as your arm. But doesn’t cold, damp January feel like the longest and hardest month for keeping to them? It can seem far too easy to get discouraged.

Never fear: here are some sure-fire tips for staying on track (or getting back onto it). 2019, we are coming for you!

Set reminders

Set your watch for timely language learning

If it’s a case of simply not remembering to stick to your routines, you can employ a little digital help. Setting training reminders on your devices is one of the easiest ways to enforce a new routine and begin habit-building.

My to-do and reminder app of choice is Wunderlist, which is both free, and goes far beyond a simple reminders app. For instance, you can subdivide your lists of tasks into separate sections, like simply ‘Languages’, or even one for each of your languages. It also allows for repeated tasks, which are perfect for daily and weekly learning tactics. Ticking these off regularly creates a real sense of ongoing achievement.

If you are a fan of Evernote (a fantastic, yet unsung hero of language learning!), you can use its reminder feature to similar effect. I use Evernote for longer-term planning, and setting reminders for regular reviews of planning documents is a resolution-saver.

Also worth checking out are Coach.me, Streaks and, of course, your plain old smartphone to-do / calendar apps. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best.

Tie your language learning to other habits

Our lives are already complex webs of routine and habit. Leverage that by linking your new, desired behaviours into what you already do.

Jogging is a routine you can easily tie new language learning habits to. (Image from freeimages.com)

Regular walk? Use that to listen to target language material like podcasts. Regular commute? Make sure you have plenty of foreign language Netflix downloaded for offline viewing. Spare minutes after getting ready for work? Do your 5-10 minutes of Anki or Duolingo.

You can find multiple points where your existing habits can anchor your new ones, too. With apps, taking advantage of a variety of platforms gives you multiple entry points in your daily routine. I use the Anki app on my bus and train journeys, but open up the desktop app for a quick revise before I start work at my desk.

If apps feature heavily in your language learning life, try chaining them. Piggy-back your new platforms on the back of an already well-established one. Already doing 5-10 minutes of Duolingo every day? Try coupling your Verb Blitz or Memrise right onto the tail end of that.

Enlist help

Strength in numbers - enlist the help of others in your language learning resolutions. (Image from freeimages.com)

Strength in numbers!

Personal goals shouldn’t be a lonely business. Do you have friends or relatives who can lend a hand? A supportive partner to remind you to do your daily Anki every day could work wonders! Tell them how much it means to you to succeed in your language learning goals. Getting them on board will be an invaluable source of encouragement.

A popular concept in peer coaching is the accountability partner. This is a friend or colleague you regularly meet up with to compare progress on goals. Each participant’s goals can be quite disparate, as the function of the accountability partner is to act as a sounding board and motivator. All you need is someone else who is also working on self-improvement goals for 2019.

You can also help others to learn while helping your own goals along, too. We learn, and consolidate previous learning, through teaching. Even sharing an overview of recent progress with others can help you to reflect critically on your own learning. With that in mind, why not commit to sharing progress in your resolutions with your nearest and dearest?

It’s also worth mentioning the immense value a professional coach can offer, if you really want to bring in the cavalry. I circumnavigated some sticky learning impasses in 2018 thanks to working on my goals with a coach.

Get right back on that horse!

Controversial fact: the “New Year” in “New Year’s Resolutions” is the least important part of all!

The truth is that New Year’s Resolutions are lent a bit of artificial magic by dint of that special date of 1st January.

If you have slipped up, there is no need to write off your goals until the next year. The best time to start again is always now. As with a diet, saying “I’ll be good from tomorrow” is a delay tactic that you should never fall for.

It might help to regauge how you divide up your blocks of time. Let’s face it: an entire year is a very long stretch for goal planning. Instead, productivity writer Brian Moran suggests a 12-week cycle, which has worked a treat for me.

Don’t burn out too soon

Finally, make sure to keep yourself mentally and physically in kilter. Pushing yourself too hard means burning out, or worse, coming to resent your own resolutions.

Learning to build pace and pause into your routine is as important a skill as fully-fledged language learning work. Too much rigidity can stifle the most enthusiastic learner – aim for self-kindness by allowing for fluidity in your plan.

Regular audits of your progress help, too. It may be that you set the bar too high for January 1st. Be honest with yourself. Can you scale back slightly before stepping up again later? Better to do that, than give up completely.

A recent example from my own 2019 challenges illustrates the need to be flexible, and revisit / reformulate resolutions on a regular basis. One ambitious target I set myself was to make at least one overseas trip a month to practise my languages. Now, that might sound difficult, but it is quite possible on a budget; there are a number of tools to source cheap flight and hotel dates. But, alas, at the mercy of dynamic travel pricing, it looked like I might miss that target in the very first month.

Not to worry: I’ve reformulated that goal as: make trips to at least 12 different overseas destinations in 2019. Resolution rescued!

Whatever your goals for 2019, let these guiding principles keep you on track for language learning success. Here’s to a fruitful twelve months… and beyond!