I’ve had a rare decompression week – seven days when I cleared my calendar, took my foot off the pedal and simply chilled. Work, language lessons, everything. It’s a good habit to build in every once in a while, and for sure, many of us don’t do it enough.

But if you’re like me, doing nothing is never really an option.

For a start, languages are a form of recreation for polyglot hopefuls; we study because we enjoy them. Although there’s no denying that they take some energy, it’s a very positive kind of effort. That said, it’s vital to build in some downtime now and again. So, in order to strike a happy medium, I like to have a skeleton routine ready. Quite simply, that is just a set of daily tactics that keeps the engine ticking over while the rest of life is idling down.

Language Essentials

For me, the skeleton language plan consists mainly of those digital habits bound up in streaks. Duolingo, Anki, Glossika – that’s my core trio. They all work well as basic background tasks because, first and foremost, they aren’t particularly time-hungry. They can fit around walks, shopping trips and family visits. They’re especially easy to tick off if you are an eat-the-frog type of person!

But apps like this are also handy skeleton pals in other ways. In particular, you can adjust your use of them to switch into maintenance mode, rather than active learning. With Duo, that takes the shape of revising old topics for a week rather than tackling new ones. With Anki, I dial down the new-words-per-day setting. And with Glossika, I focus on existing repetitions, rather than new phrases.

All in all it’s a nice recipe for catching my breath while not slipping backwards.

How do you power down but keep going? What are your language learning ‘must-do’ tick-boxes? Or do you find it better to completely switch off when taking a break?