How To Prevent Burnout When Learning A Language

Burnout is something you can easily avoid when you are learning a language, but it is often what causes so many people to give up.

I will go through what is it and how you can avoid it in the first place, which should hopefully mean you can actually reach your goals and master your new language.

What Is Burnout In Language Learning?

Burnout is simply when you have been fatigued and overwhelmed for so long that you start to hate studying your language. You are just drained from doing too much and start to drag your heels when it comes time to start studying.

This can be extremely dangerous as it often causes to people to stop studying and eventually quit all together.

Luckily it can be easily prevented, which is what I will be going through below. Your studies might be a struggle from time to time, but overall you should be enjoying what you are doing and shouldn’t be overwhelmed to the point where you hate it and want to avoid it or quit.

(You can read more about – What Is Language Burn Out and Why Does It Happen)

Study At A Slower Pace

One of the simplest things you can do to avoid burnout is to just slow down and study at a slower pace.

You can do this is in a number of different ways, but basically you need to reduce the intensity that you are currently going at.

This could be as simple as just spending more time on one topic before moving on, or it could be reducing a part of your study for while. For example you may be reading and listening every day, so why not cut this down and do some reading one day and listening the next.

You might do this slightly differently, but it has the same effect. Let’s says you are reading for an hour and listening for an hour. Why not reduce these both down to 30 minutes each, this way you can still feel like you are doing everything you want while just reducing the intensity.

I think it’s important to realise that you don’t need to do this forever, once you feel like you have more energy you can slowly increase the intensity again and if you play around with this you should find a happy medium where you can be productive, but not also not burn out.

If I am starting the feel burnt out, the first thing I do is cut back on my immersion. I might drop right down from 3 or 4 hour a day to only 30 minutes a day, for about a week or two.

This can really make a huge difference and help you overcome the problem and help you feel more refreshed. I know if I kept going at the same pace I would quickly crash, so don’t be scared to do this if you feel things are getting too much.

Take A Break From Your Language

For me taking a break is too much. I would rather just keep going at a lower intensity and bring things down to the bare minimum.

However, sometimes you do need a break.  If you really have burnt yourself out, or you are extremely close, then a few days off may really save you. It is totally fine to have a break and it is really common for people to do. There is no shame in it.

My fear is that if I stop, I won’t start again, but I  think this is because when I did burnout in the past, I didn’t “take a break” I quit. I totally give up on learning and walked away from it. After a few weeks I felt better, but it still took me a while longer to actually sit down and study.

It took me 3 months to start again! That really did not do me any favours and is why I am now a little hesitant about stopping again.

If you are going to take a break be realistic and honest with yourself. Give yourself a few days or even a week to clear you head and then promise yourself that you will start starting again. I would start back at a very low and slow intensity and go from there.

Just make sure it is a break and not quitting all together and you will be fine. 

(You can read more about – Can Taking A Break From Language Learning Cause You To Forget What You’ve Learned?)

Revaluate Your Goals and Plan

If you are getting burnt out you should take a look at your goals and your general plan. There is a high possibility that you are trying to do something unrealistic. You are probably trying to do too much too quickly and while it can be great to push yourself, you need to know your limits. 

It can be fine to keep the same goals, you may just need to be realistic with how long it may take you to reach them. Learning a language can be deceptive, you will start out and say “I can do this in X time” but you will very quickly realise that this is not easy and if you refuse to accept that you can burn yourself out trying to achieve what you want.

Just revaluate your plan and your goals and realise you can still get there, it may just need a different, or longer approach and that is okay. 

Change How You Are Learning The Language

Another problem that could be adding to your burnout could be how you are learning and changing this may really help you.

If you are doing a lot of intense study, such as covering grammar all the time it can really overwhelm you. This is really common for beginners who take a course or watch a playlist on YouTube about the basics. These sorts of lessons are important, but they can be a lot to take in. If you are just smashing through them it can quickly overwhelm you.

It may be better to slow these lessons down and space them out, then spend the time in between trying to go over what you have learned.

A classic example of this is people trying to learn 100 new Japanese kanji a day until they have learned the main 2000 of them. This is extremely intense and they are maybe spending 3 or 4 hours a day doing this and nearly killing themselves.

You would be much better spending only 30 minutes a day and learning 10 new kanji …then spending the rest of your time just relaxing and watching some shows in Japanese. You are still putting in the same amount of time, but how you are going about things is much more sustainable and less draining.          

Take A Step Backwards

I feel like a lot of the issues with burnout are caused by being overwhelmed and the easiest way to reach this step is to keep pushing forward. If you are constantly learning new things your brain hasn’t really got the time to make sense of everything and very quickly you can become overwhelmed and start to struggle.   

Taking a step backwards can really help with this and all you need to do is just go back over some things you have already studied. You will notice that it is a lot easier, since you have already covered it and it can feel really good to refresh your mind of some of the things you haven’t seen in a while.

I know some of you think this is a waste of time, but it’s really not. Going over old topics really cements them in your mind and strengthens your foundational knowledge, which is never a bad thing.

You are still studying the language and improving, so it is just as important as pushing forward and learning new things, but it is less likely to overwhelm you and stress you out and therefore burn you out. 

Try And Make Things Fun Again

Really a lot of burnout is caused by no longer enjoying what you are doing, and being overwhelmed and stressed out by learning is not enjoyable and the longer this goes on, the more you want to quit.

This can really start a vicious cycle of making things even less enjoyable and only making that urge to quit even stronger.

This does not happen if you are having fun and often when we get burnt out the fun is long gone. If we can make our studies more fun, we are less likely to get burnt out.

This is probably going to be most easily done by just spending some time immersing in content you like, such as TV shows, movies, music or even computer games. You could also make some new friends with some native speakers and just chat about whatever you are interested in.  

These things are a lot of fun and certainly more interesting than studying grammar. You often do not feel like you are learning anything when you are doing these fun things, which is exactly why they are so good.

Your subconscious will still be learning while you are enjoying yourself and the risk of burning out will be extremely low.

Experiencing Burnout Can Help You Prevent It In The Future

I can’t really tell you to go and experience burnout for yourself, that wouldn’t be very sensible of me.

However, a lot of you reading this may have actually suffered from it. If you have reached the point where you dreaded studying and wanted to quit then you have probably been close, if not actually burnt out.

If you know what this experience is like, then you know how bad it is, but more importantly you now know what it feels like and you can pay attention to see if it is happening again …and stop before it goes too far.

I was stupid enough to burn myself out and now I can spot it fairly easily if I am getting close again. If that happens I just need to take a step back and slow things down and do exactly what I’ve discussed above. 

Burning yourself out can really knock your progress and can even make you give up completely, so it’s really important that you can recognise that it might be happening and avoid it and annoyingly the best way to recognise it is to have already experienced it.

Conclusion

As you can see burn out is a real issue and it can happen very easily, especially for a beginner who hasn’t got much experience with language learning. It is very easy to push yourself too hard and expect to much from yourself.

Constantly fatiguing yourself and getting stressed will quickly make you hate the whole experience and you will get burnt out.

The more you can avoid this, the more progress you will make. Burnout really is the enemy when it comes to language learning so don’t let it get you!   

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Language Learning Burn Out)