Preempting Burnout

[zKing]

I'm taking a "goal pause" break this week as I've been pushing fairly hard recently and I'm feeling that fuzzy edge of tiredness that shouldn't be ignored or 'pushed through'. This prompted me to think about preventing burnout and, for the fun of it, I thought I'd throw out a list of possible preventative measures and see what others might come up with.

I've said many times: I feel motivation is the crown jewel of language learning and it must be jealously guarded; the sure way to NOT learn a language is to quit. Therefore my strongest recommendation is: When you first start to feel your motivation wane, take action immediately, don't wait until you are about to jump out a window before you do something about it.

Other ideas, in no particular order:

• Scale back, particularly on the less fun stuff. Change your goals or timeline if needed, your pace may simply be too aggressive. For most of us, language learning goals and the pace are arbitrary choices, not life or death.
• Carefully examine your goals: Are there particular ones that grate on your nerves? Make a change either temporarily or permanently. For anything really irritating: completely change it / drop it or "postpone" it (perhaps indefinitely).
• Switch your content: less repeat listening of "should watch" stuff, more listening to new "interesting" stuff, even if 'less effective'.
• Take a _defined_ (i.e. has a specific endpoint) multi-day break, i.e. a long weekend or 1-2 weeks.
• Refocus heavily on extensive input, perhaps even with L1 subs, for a while. (if you don't already)
• SRS: Continue reps, but 0 new cards
• Make your output very simple or skip it altogether for a while. Maybe have a "silent period" break.
• Go on a content hunt (shopping spree?): Give yourself license to explore fun content for a while.
• Make a big structural change to your study habits, e.g. if you were heavily intensive listening focused, switch to journaling a lot (perhaps with some background extensive listening). Understand that there are many ways to skin a cat... whatever your current methods are, there are LOTS of other choices. Try something new.
• Temporarily focus on 'consolidation' more than learning new material: Listen to things that you know well or are relatively easy for you (if this won't introduce boredom on its own).
• Temporarily focus on pronunciation (e.g. reading out loud, shadowing, etc.) so that your brain can take a break from trying to remember/decipher things. Parallel idea: take a particular bit of content, work with a native, and attempt to perfect your pronunciation of it as much as possible. How 'near native' can you get?
• If you are learning more than one language, switch up the ratio or even focus only on one language for a while.
• Vent on this forum

What other ideas do y'all have to stave off boredom/burnout or perhaps alternative language learning tasks when you need a bit of fun?

[iguanamon]

I'm taking a "goal pause" break this week as I've been pushing fairly hard recently and I'm feeling that fuzzy edge of tiredness that shouldn't be ignored or 'pushed through'. This prompted me to think about preventing burnout and, for the fun of it, I thought I'd throw out a list of possible preventative measures and see what others might come up with. ... I've said many times: I feel motivation is the crown jewel of language learning and it must be jealously guarded; the sure way to NOT learn a language is to quit. Therefore my strongest recommendation is: When you first start to feel your motivation wane, take action immediately, don't wait until you are about to jump out a window before you do something about it.
What other ideas do y'all have to stave off boredom/burnout or perhaps alternative language learning tasks when you need a bit of fun?

Wow, I almost got burned out just reading the list . For me, I've found it best to work without goals in language-learning. My motivation comes from within so I don't need to count time spent on activities in order to get things done. My inspiration for no goals comes from Leo Babauta the creator of Zenhabits.org. He wrote a couple of good posts about this philosophy the best goal is no goal and achieving without goals.

It may seem counter-intuitive on a forum where people are here because they want to learn a language, but I'm not talking about meta-goals. All the progress bars, pomodoro blocks, and stressing out over srs reviews can sometimes hide the forest for the trees. Leo says that goals can be de-motivating in reality because they are artificial and sometimes have the opposite effect than what is intended. We often feel bad when we don't reach them or when life gets in the way. So, you don't see progress bars for me or counting time. People asked Leo what a life without goals looks like. Here's what Leo says about it:

...What do you do, then? Lay around on the couch all day, sleeping and watching TV and eating Ho-Hos? No, you simply do. You find something you’re passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.
And in practice, this is a wonderful thing: you wake up and do what you’re passionate about. For me, that’s usually blogging, but it can be writing a novel or an ebook or my next book or creating a course to help others or connecting with incredible people or spending time with my wife or playing with my kids. There’s no limit, because I’m free.
In the end, I usually end up achieving more than if I had goals, because I’m always doing something I’m excited about. But whether I achieve or not isn’t the point at all: all that matters is that I’m doing what I love, always.

The task of learning a language to a high level is huge. There's a lot to do, but we can't do it all at once. Sometimes the enormity of the task can seem overwhelming. Using a sports analogy, there's no 90 point shot in basketball, it's one basket at a time to get to ninety points. Eventually I get there. I work on what I need to work on when I need to work on it. My motivation for learning the language is from within. That's what gets me through a course, drills, reading, speaking and writing struggles. I like doing these things because I know that by doing them I'll learn more of the language. I know, because I've done it before. Along the way, I may go off on a tangent but I always come back to what I know I need to do in order to do be able to do what I want with a language.

"No goals" is just one alternative. It's one that works for me. I fully recognize that for many people, they may feel like they wouldn't get anything done without having goals. If goals work for you, great! Keep it up! For me, I'm happier to work without them. Doing this hasn't hurt me in language-learning.

[Teango]

Great list, zKing!

A few other things I'd add to the list would be regular daily exercise, a healthy diet, sufficient quality sleep (if and when you can get it), and making positive nurturing relationships and connections through the language.

[zKing]

I've found it best to work without goals in language-learning. My motivation comes from within so I don't need to count time spent on activities in order to get things done. My inspiration for no goals comes from Leo Babauta the creator of Zenhabits.org. He wrote a couple of good posts about this philosophy the best goal is no goal and achieving without goals.

Wow, thank you for posting that. It is really an eye opening idea for those of us who've been doing the Dilbert-like work world thing for far too long. I certainly have a natural tendency to toggle from the extremes of "do nothing" to "militantly marching to a laundry list of goals". It is so easy to go from "thinking up some task that might be fun and effective right now" and turning it into a "etched in stone multi-month commitment".

To deal with the fact that hard core goals rarely work well long term, I've learned to be quick to modify my goals and allow for lots of slip. But the idea that they really aren't all that necessary in the first place (provided you still "do" something with passion) is interesting. You are right... I ENJOY learning languages, I really don't need some nagging goal list to push me to continue.

Good stuff!

[Adrianslont]

zKing, I nearly got turned off this thread by your up front mention of goals - like Iguanamon, I’m basically a no goals kind of learner (though not quite as pure as the Iguana) - but I did read all of your post and thought it was great. I do many of those things on your list either consciously or subconsciously myself. I thought they were excellent ways to keep going without burning out.

Iguanamon, thanks for mentioning the Leo/zen stuff again - it’s good to be reminded.

I’ll add one more idea for when burnout threatens - I ease back on the study pretty much completely and spend a couple of days just reading or watching videos about my “target cultures”. This can be done in English or a target language if simple enough. It seems to refresh my interest in the language and motivate me while providing a break from actual study.

[coldrainwater]

For many, motivation is too fickle to depend on for consistent progress. For greater certainty, I rely heavily on cultivating habits. Well engrained habits work even in the absence of motivation. Teango's recommendations in favor of exercise, diet, and sleep are worth a double (or triple) mention. I use all three along with mindfulness to help achieve balance and reduce the likelihood of burnout.

[garyb]

I agree with the no-goals philosophy. I find it a little stress-inducing even to read other people's Weekly Goals in their logs and the more-often-than-not failure to meet them, usually for perfectly acceptable reasons that come down to "life gets in the way". That seems like a prime example of Iguanamon's point about goals becoming more demotivating than motivating.

I do however find it important to have at least a vague plan, especially at the beginner stage where consistent small efforts are paramount, but nothing more complicated or rigid than "do one Assimil lesson most days". At the beginning and the intermediate plateau, there's perhaps something to be said for "no pain, no gain" within reasonable limits - progress will always feel slow and getting one's head around a whole new language is never easy - but while avoiding being hard on oneself and remembering that any work on the language is a good thing even if the progress isn't immediately obvious.

In more advanced languages, I try to do some reading and listening every day, but I know that missing one day won't do much harm and taking a short break or even a longer one of several weeks or months won't have much consequence other than a little rustiness in my output.

What's important for me when I feel burn-out coming on is to consider my sources of motivation and my current relationship with the language, as stress usually comes when I'm forcing myself to study for the wrong reasons. I believe that there's good motivation and bad motivation, and the bad type does the job but is unsustainable in the long term. In all my languages there have been moments where I've lost sight of the original healthy reasons for my interest and become focused on negative ones: wanting to impress and prove myself to native speakers or to fit in and feel accepted by them, frustration at a bad conversation or an embarrassing mistake or people switching to English, or something else where my language ability has made me feel inadequate. A little bit of frustration can give a healthy push to get back on track, and I'm aware that my log is full of stories where a particular event made me buckle down more on my studies, but when it becomes the main motivation it can start a vicious circle.

In the worst cases, I've just dropped the language and then waited for the healthy motivation to return of its own accord. As I said in another recent thread about motivation, a few months in Italy temporarily killed my interest in the language but it came back again after a couple of months, and I quit French for years after bad experiences but I recently got back into it too. It's also been helpful for me to focus more on input and less on speaking, and to focus more on my other hobbies than languages. This goes against my goals and slows down my progress, but too much time pursuing speaking opportunities and neglecting other things I love like music was just leading to the kind of frustration and unhealthy motivation I talked about.

[NoManches]

For me, I need goals. I've tried to go "goal free" but I always feel like I don't do enough if I don't have something I'm working towards. I've found this to be less true lately because I can just use Spanish (my TL) for fun, with no pressure to do anything difficult. It's so easy now to just binge watch a TV show in Spanish....no real need to make a goal out of this. Although, I am a bit hypocritical saying this because I am participating in the Super Challenge

The key in my opinion, is to make language learning fun. I don't think I've ever made a goal out of something I didn't enjoy (i.e. I will do 1 hour of grammar study and 1 hour of verb conjugation every day).

I have made goals out of fun activities though. For example, I generally like reading but found that I had basically abandoned reading in Spanish. Anytime I could read in Spanish, I would ditch it for a TV show. I had to do something about it. "Trying to read a lot every day in Spanish" was not cutting it. I made a goal to read for 30 minutes each day in Spanish. 30 minutes is certainly not a long time, and since I picked materials that I really enjoy and find interesting, it is practically impossible to have a "burn out" with this goal. (Things would have been different if I forced myself to read for 30 minutes about something that totally didn't interest me). After a month I found that 30 minutes a day was too easy. Now, reading is a habit and I try to go for 45 minutes each day. If I don't reach my goal...it's not a big deal. I might feel a little guilty if I know I slacked off that day, but I don't treat it as the end of the world.

TV shows are another example. I love watching Spanish TV because I can be lazy and justify it because it's in Spanish . With the Super Challenge, I force myself to watch more TV each day than I normally would. As a result, my listening has made huge improvements. If I wasn't doing the Super Challenge, I'd probably just watch TV here and there, but even on the really good shows I would call it quits after 1 or 2 episodes each day. Now I force myself to watch a few more. The good thing: If I wasn't watching Spanish TV I'd probably be on Facebook or something. Maybe I'd be doing something in Spanish....but who knows?

[rstfk]

Like many of you said here, I also easily get "burnt out" when I'm too focused on goals. Recommended reading is the essay On the Meaning of Life by Moritz Schlick. He makes the distinction between "work" and "play" where "work" is anything that you do for the sake of something else, while "play" is anything you do for the sake of itself.

Of course, I think it's fine to have goals if you are the type of person who actively enjoys having goals. I definitely understand that mindset. Keeping track of stats and numbers and the like can be satisfying. In this case Schlick would say these goals are internal to "play," since they are relatively stress-free and are just a fun thing to do, essentially. But if it comes to the point where you are becoming stressed out, depressed or disappointed, etc. because you aren't meeting your goals or you're pushing yourself too hard, then some rethinking needs to be done.

[zenmonkey]

I'm not of the no-goals philosophy. Pragmatically I am trying to get somewhere, sometimes and the idea of simply having no goals would mean a lot of last minute ordered meals, lost somewhere in the world.

I'm more of a 'hold-things loosely' philosophy. Whether it's having goals or not having goals, I believe you can hold either loosely and still find your place. In my opinion, hard goals are impossible and no goals at all is an aspired and unpractical state. Reality holds you somewhere in between where what you define as goals may be moving along as easily as a river, calm on top and with strong pulls underneath.

What seems to work isn't so much whether you have goals or don't have goals but that you find a point or points where those goals or no-goals are not creating friction but simply a path forward.

Bringing that to language and burn out - I have certain necessities - I live and work in Germany, I want to speak German well. I've set for myself a loose goal of interacting with the German world continuously. The tools have been easy to set up - I have German material about me constantly and I slowly increase it. I personally do not currently have a goal of reaching C2 by date x. I might later decide I want to take the exam, but for now this slower journey is sufficient and creates little friction and little chance of burn out.

I tend to try to hold onto task goals - number of chapters per week, learning streaks, etc... because these work for me for a while. When they don't, and they never do work for forever, I let them go. Short periods, consistent efforts, then moving on, keeps me going. Completing a course is about as tight as I'll hold a goal for a language. And that's ok, most of my language work isn't from necessity - If I've dropped quite a few languages I may or may not come back to them. Remembering that letting go of things is ok, without guilt, when they are no longer of interest also helps with avoiding burnout.

edits: clarity.