How To Fight Procrastination When Learning A Language

The battle between procrastination and motivation can be played out in all areas of life, but it can be especially strong in language learning.

It takes a lot of time and effort to learn a language and therefore the chance of wanting to put it off can also be pretty strong.

Allowing procrastination to take over is going to affect our language goals, so it’s very important that we do not allow this to happen so we can always keep on learning.

Tomorrow Never Comes

A huge problem with language learning is that it takes a very long time. The end goal can seem so far away and it can seem like waiting a little while longer to study will do no harm.

You will find a lot of people start procrastination and then they find it very easy to say “I will do it tomorrow” but guess what, tomorrow never comes.

It is extremely important that you do not fall into this trap. The people who say this, very quickly find that 3 months has passed and they have studied nothing, and then they usually give up all together.

They could have made so much progress in that time and you need to be aware that it could happen to you. Being aware of the danger is the first step to trying to avoid it. Knowing that tomorrow will never come should hopefully make you understand that you need to be studying today.

Motivation Levels In Language Learning Are Not Constant

Your motivation levels to learn your new language will go up and down throughout your journey. There are many things that can affect how motivated you feel and it’s not as simple as being in the mood or not.

We need to accept that sometimes you will not be motivated and procrastination will be the go to activity during these times. This is perfectly normally. You shouldn’t feel any guilt if you find yourself being extremely lazy or having a complete lack of intent. It is something we all feel from time to time.

However, being able understand that we may have dips in our performance is a big step in fighting procrastination. We need to start being aware of our motivation levels, or lack of motivation.

If we are aware of how we are feeling then we can then work out if we are just having a natural dip, or if we are having a bit of a bigger issue.

Try and keep track of how often it is happening. Every now and again is nothing to worry about, but if you find you are having a problem every time you go to study you may actually be suffering from something else, such as burn out.

Burn Out

Burn out is basically when your motivation to study is totally gone. This is more than a natural dip and more like a total exhaustion.

Sometimes you can end up studying too hard and your brain just can’t handle it anymore and basically gives up. You will feel exhausted and just not interested in learning any more.

If this happens you need to take a step back and rest and allow yourself to recover.

You will know you are burnt out as you will have been pushing yourself too hard for too long. After a few days away from studying you should start to feel the motivation come back, but be careful after this. You need to pace yourself properly and go a little slower.

(You can read more about –  What Is Language Learning Fatigue?)

Have A Clear Reason And Goal To Learn A Language

One of the best ways to keep us from procrastinating is to have a clear reason for wanting to learn a language and a clear goal of what you want to achieve.

I’ve probably already said this a thousand times, but you need to have a language goal. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you get there?

We all learn languages for many different reasons and we all want achieve different things. It doesn’t really matter why we want to learn a language, or to what level, but having a reason for doing it can keep us going when we are not fully in the mood.

Perhaps it’s for your career, maybe it’s to help with travelling or maybe you are looking for love. It doesn’t matter but this reason should keep you wanting to learn.

This reason should drive you forward and help give you the motivation to stick at it.

Enjoy How You Study Your Language

An easy way to fight procrastination is to just enjoy how you are studying. You probably have bad memories from your school classes, but learning a languages does not need to be like this, it can actually be fun.

If you are filled with dread opening your notebook, you are really going to struggle to force yourself to open it. If you actually enjoy it, then it will be a lot easier to sit down and do it.

The learning apps do a good job with making things fun. They make learning like a fun game, you actually look forward to “playing”.  

Immersion is also a pretty fun way to learn a language, as all you really need to do is just sit down and watch stuff in your target language. You can pick anything you are interested in and sit back and enjoy it. It really is a million miles away from the horror of the verb tables they made you do in school.

(You can read more about – How To Immerse Yourself In A New Language)

Enjoy What You Are Studying

Another way to keep the procrastination away is to study something you are actually interested in. This can be a little difficult in the beginning as you may need to learn some basic, but boring topics such as basic grammar.

However, usually at this time you are just excited to be learning anything so motivation is not really an issue.

Once you become a little more experienced you can start to look for material to immerse in that you are interested in. Perhaps it is videos or a book that is about a topic you really love.

Having this added layer of interest in the material you are studying is going to keep you wanting to study. If you are just reading something super boring, you are not going to want to read it. Studying will become a chore if you are not enjoying it.

Make sure you enjoy what you are studying and it will become something you really look forward to each day.

Learn To Identify When You Are Not Motivated

One of the biggest issues with procrastination is that we do not notice it is happening. We will sit down to study and the next thing we know we have been scrolling through social media for the last hour looking at funny videos of cats …and you will ask yourself yow did you end up here?

You need to become more self aware and start to try and notice what causes you to procrastinate.

Do you notice a certain feeling or that you are thinking about certain things? This is a hard thing to do in the beginning, but if you try and look at yourself every day, you will start to notice how you feel when you are motivated compared to when you are not. Knowing when you are feeling productive is great, but it is more important to try and focus on the opposite.

Even being able to identify when you are not motivated can be very useful as you can start to try and overcome this and break the cycle of procrastination.

Learn To Break The Cycle and Get Motivated To Learn Your Language

Once you are able to tell that your motivation is slipping, or your procrastination is starting to kick in you can try and break the cycle and overcome it, which should get you back to learning your new language.

Become More Disciplined

You can start  this by being disciplined. This is extremely hard to do at the start, but you will develop this skill if you keep trying. 

If you have told yourself to study, and you don’t feel like it, well, you need to ignore that feeling and just do it.

You need to fight all your urges to be lazy and you need to just open your notes and get going.

Break Your Learning Down Into Small Pieces

Breaking down your language learning into little chunks can make it easier to stay motivated.

This might be as simple as telling yourself you will do one little section. Maybe you need to learn 10 words. Just try for 1. If you can force yourself to do 1, it’s a start. You will usually find that once you get one done, you will find it easier to keep going.

If you really can’t, well at least you got one out of the way, it is still better than zero.  I usually find that once I get going, it is easy to keep the momentum and complete the task I was struggling to even start.

Give Yourself Deadlines

Making little deadlines can also be helpful. They work in a similar way to breaking things down into little chunks. You might have an hour to study, force yourself to do 5 minutes. You can be disciplined enough to force that. After 5 minutes, you will probably be able to keep pushing and end up doing your hour of study.

I also like to look at the clock and say “oh, its 10 minutes to 3, I will work hard until 3 and stop” I then force myself to go for it. And see what I can do in that time limit. Nearly every time I do this, I get so distracted in the task I stop looking at the clock and end up just changing my mindset to “I need to finish this, no matter what”.

The basic principle of all of this is to just make it seem like a smaller and easier task. You can be very overwhelmed by larger tasks, but when you think it’s small, quick and easy then it’s not as intimidating. This can make you be more disciplined with yourself if you think it’s not going to be too painful.

The One Minute Rule

There is a saying, I am not sure where from, or even if I remember it right, but in my head this is what I say to myself.

…“If it can be done in 1 minute, why wait, just do it now.”

Basically if there is a small short, easy task, why not just do it? Surely it takes more effort to ignore it than to just do it. So, just do it.

I do this through my life. Emptying the bin, cleaning something, getting something I need. It doesn’t matter. If I can do it quickly, I just do it, and then it’s done. It has made me more productive over all but I have found it to be very useful for language learning.

I say “I will just do this one thing, it will take a minute” then of course, I end up enjoying it and I’m there for ages, but this does me started. It gets that first foot over the line when I am feeling lazy.

How To Prevent Procrastination In Language Learning

Sometimes prevention is better than the cure, and one of the best ways to prevent procrastination in the first place is to look after yourself.

You will probably start to notice how your general wellbeing can affect your levels of motivation. The better you are overall, the more likely you will be motivated and want to learn.

Have you slept enough? Drank enough water?  Are you hungry? What about your stress levels?

If any of these things are out of balance, your motivation can be non-existent and your procrastination levels can be through the roof.

A little self care and making sure you are emotionally and physically healthy can make a huge difference when it comes to studying a language.

Be kind to yourself and your language learning will benefit from it. 

Conclusion

Being able to fight off procrastination is going to make sure you can stay committed to learning your language over the long term.

A lack of motivation is one of the biggest reasons people stop studying and give up before they have reached the goals they are aiming for.

If you are able to identify when the procrastinating is becoming a problem, then you can start to focus on ways to make it more manageable and overcome it, so that you can get back to your language and start making progress. (You can read more about – How To stay Motivated When Learning A Language)