Preempting Burnout

[Expugnator]

I can't place myself at the goal spectrum. While I do long for the day I'll be able to do X in Y language, I can't foresee a deadline. Ok I set some goals at the end of the year but they're more like predictions based on current and previous developments than deadlines, and I don't revisit them during the year.

I'm rather into the habit formation school. In this sense, I can say I have daily goals. This also relates to how I prevent burnout, the topic of this thread.

I tend to have my sessions as short or as long as I can handle them before mental straining takes place. This means reading no more than 20 pages in a row in a strong language, 10 in an intermediate one, a couple in an upper-beginner one. For video, my threshold is really low. 10 min is ok at a series or film a day, and I struggle to keep focused on the Estonian soap opera I watch for 14 minutes a day. I tend to split my sentence-method sessions in blocks of 2-4 languages as well (I do 18 languages on Clozemaster daily, 14 of them in 4 rounds and the other 4 in 8). I even alternate to other apps in between before I start to get tired of Clozemaster that day. Surprisingly, writing in my TLs at the end of the day, after I feel the sense of accomplishment for studying a little of each of my TLs for that day, has turned out to be much less strenuous, even if it takes rather long, like 20 minutes on a short paragraph for actively A2ish languages.

The efficiency of this routine for me can be demonstrated when I try to do something on days I'm not sitting at the desktop and studying. These days, even starting to do something can add some stress (with all the distractions adding up to the stress). Having a simple list of tasks of what to do next is liberating in my case.

[kulaputra]

Not having goals works a lot better if you can get into serious environmental modification. Without goals people usually follow the path of least resistance. Nowadays all my internet connected devices are set to Spanish and/or French so when I search for something informational a Wikipedia article in one of my target languages is usually the first hit (often even when I search in English, thanks to Google magic). I don't have a concrete goal to read any specific number of Wikipedia articles on a regular basis; all I did was modify my environment. And yet I read around 9000 words online in my target languages every week, mostly on Wikipedia (and that's not counting several thousand words on Twitter I read every week, which I don't keep track of). I'm just following the path of least resistance down the behavioral grooves I've created.

[AndyMeg]

For me, the approach that has worked the best for preempting burnout and keeping my motivation high is my current one: "Fun and enjoyment as a guide". I'll quote a bit of my current log:

(Mon Dec 25, 2017)
Last year I experimented a lot, trying to find the best way for me to learn the language while having fun but, sometimes, I continued doing activities even after they had stopped being fun or even if they were not as fun as I had initially thought they would be.

For this new year I want to be guided by fun and enjoyment. This basically means that I'll be doing different activities guided by what I enjoy doing at the moment. If, at any time, I stop enjoying doing that activity, then I'll stop immediately and try another activity. I may intercalate activities, completely stop doing some of them, or come back to some of them after some time. Fun and enjoyment will be my guide.

(Sun Dec 31, 2017)
These few days, having fun and enjoyment as a guide have been quite a pleasant and liberating experience even if it's somehow not as easy to achieve as one may think (I've been battling with myself by trying to enjoy the journey without overthinking about how much what I'm doing will help me with my language learning or if I'm doing/choosing the right things to do and making the best use of my time).

(Tue Jan 09, 2018)
Some reflections:

I know I’m just two weeks into this “fun and enjoyment as a guide” approach, but I want to share some of my thoughts so far.

As I’ve said before, it is a liberating experience, but now I’ve come to realize it is also a motivating one. Last year I often found myself procrastinating instead of doing the activities I was supposed to be doing, and then I felt guilty for not doing them. But now, with my new “fun and enjoyment as a guide” approach I don’t feel guilt any more. This is because this time I can freely stop doing any activity I’m not enjoying without feeling that I failed (that is one of the reasons why this whole approach is so liberating). But I’ve also noticed that, with my current approach, instead of procrastinating I’m continuously trying to find and squeeze time for engaging in my korean language related activities. It’s just so much fun!!!

This approach has also helped me to better calibrate the difficulty level of my activities. Last year I would decide on a schedule or an objective just to realize it was too difficult or hard to follow after a few days or weeks in. And, if I wanted to adjust it, I would feel guilty of "not accomplishing" my initial goals/objectives and that usually undermined my overall motivation.

My new approach prioritizes "fun and enjoyment" and allows me to be as flexible as I need in order to keep the "fun and enjoyment" going on. So now I no longer feel guilty of making the adjustments I find necessary whenever I find them necessary.

Another thing I've left out of my language learning journey are time limits. Sometimes I may decide on a specific objective but I don't put a time limit to achieve it, I just work towards that objective whenever I feel like it. And I don't have a predetermined schedule either. Sometimes some activities become a rutine for a while, but that usually happens naturally, without me forcing it. And sometimes life is too chaotic and any semblance of a rutine completely brokens and I just do what I can (and enjoy) whenever I can.

This approach is adaptative and liberating. When I can do more, I do more; when I can't do much, I don't do much and I don't feel guilty or frustrated about it. If I need a break I take a break, but I usually come back in a few days (or weeks) simply because I enjoy the activities I do for my language learning journey and I feel intrinsically and spontaneously motivated to go back to them.

[zKing]

Wow, I really want to thank everyone who responded to this thread. I didn't expect such a wide spread of insightful, and just plain useful, responses when I wrote the original topic. Maybe I underestimated y'all? This will definitely impact my approach going forward... and likely in more areas than just learning languages.

We often learn the most from people who do things differently than ourselves... if we are willing to pay attention.