Photo by Victor Nuño

I’ve found lately that one of the hardest things to do during the time I’ve blocked off for studying is to, well, study. Now that the initial romance of the idea of learning a new language has become quotidian, I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to keep learning exciting.

In my current routine, I wake up at 7:15 and make coffee. By 7:25, I’m studying. I typically begin with Rosetta Stone, and do 2–3 exercises. I’ll then turn to Anki and drill my vocabulary words before returning to Rosetta Stone until about 8:45. Then I’ll get ready for work. That night, I’ll re-drill any vocabulary I forgot for the day on Anki, then perhaps do a few exercises on Rosetta Stone for iPhone or iPad (which are typically speaking drills of the vocabulary learned that morning).

However, I’ve recently decided to diversify my learning, and to try to pick up some of the finer grammar points of Mandarin. So I’ve begun an uncomfortably high number of study sessions by thinking, “I’ll just look on Amazon for a grammar book, then I’ll get right to the drills.” Almost invariably, that leads to reading customer reviews, which leads to reading excerpts of a number of books, and before I know it, I’ve squandered half of my studying time.

Procrastination’s Disguise

This cycle reminds me of a TED talk I recently saw in which the speaker, Joshua Kaufman, breaks down the 10,000 hour myth. In short, the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers is that it takes 10,000 hours to reach world class ability in any discipline. When passed around as conventional wisdom, however, the colloquial thinking has become that it takes 10,000 hours to become “good” at something, subjective though that word may be. Kaufman’s research suggested otherwise; rather, he argues, it takes about 20 hours to become reasonably proficient at something, and 10,000 hours is what you would expect to spend becoming an expert.

His research into proficiency and expert status revealed some important aspects of the learning process, and some common impediments. One such impediment, he suggested, was procrastination that can easily disguised as practice. For example, browsing for books, looking for new resources, or reading blogs in search of learning tips and tricks. It can be alluring to convince yourself that the time you spend amassing materials is actually practice time, when in reality, it is just as effective toward meeting your goals as sleeping: tangentially related and necessary, but not “practice” in the strict sense.

Revisiting this notion has helped me to realize that the time I spend looking for Mandarin grammar books, while potentially productive, is not studying, and shouldn’t be counted as such. And while learning efficiently does take a lot of research into the most effective materials, this should be added into my day under the rubric of “research,” as opposed to “practice.” Because ultimately, to reach proficiency in any language, nothing will take the place of pure, unadulterated practice. Hours upon hours of speaking, writing, vocab drills, and the like.

The takeaway, then, is to reserve material research for the time outside of the time I’ve routinely set aside for language practice. What are your worst procrastination temptations? And how do you protect the time you’ve reserved for actual study? Sound off in the comments.