Find your motivation
Stop procrastinating, start acting
I’m a master procrastinator. For example, I had a desire to learn Mandarin Chinese more than 5 years before I started.
Since taking action on learning the language 5 years ago, progress has been slow. My main learning sources have been following Mandarin teachers on YouTube, who regularly post quite detailed teaching videos, and phone apps. Initially Duolingo (I’m not a fan) and now one I find quite good, called ChineseSkill (I’m not sponsored!), plus a flash card app called Chinese Words.
For a native English speaker learning Mandarin is…. HARD! On a difficulty scale of 1 to 4 , one being easy and four being hardest to learn, learning Mandarin is up at 41. There are just four other languages that sit at the ‘hardest’ level, and they won’t surprise you: Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Getting to “General Professional Proficiency” in these takes, on average, 88 weeks full time study, or 2,200 hours in class.
So needless to say, with a tendency to procrastinate my self-taught efforts are going to take a long time. My wife is Chinese, this helps. She watches a lot of Chinese TV, and we attend a Chinese church together.
Being around the language helps. But, unlike my four-month-old daughter who is learning Mandarin (although she doesn’t realise this yet!) with the benefit of a child’s sponge-like brain, the osmosis only helps me with tiny increments of learning over time. I have a goal to be conversational in Mandarin by the time my daughter is, but even with my massive head start, it seems like a massive undertaking.
I don’t know how many ‘hours’ I’ve put into it, it feels like more than I should have for my level of proficiency. My progress is like building a newsletter subscriber list. Painstakingly slow! But with consistency, progress is inevitable.
Ultimately discipline is required, so my wife is helping with that. To spice up our love… I mean, language life, we’ve turned to Peppa Pig. It turns out the family of four pink piggies that like to jump in muddy puddles speak fluent Mandarin (and at least 20 other languages, it seems she’s quite the linguist).
I am currently learning to sing the Peppa Pig ‘Let’s Get Ready’ song in Mandarin. In this song, Peppa is teaching her little brother, George, to get washed and dressed ready to go out to play and jump in said muddy puddles. It’s a lot of fun to sing, and quite a useful part of the language to learn.
I’ve probably learnt as much practical Mandarin from this one song as I have my entire endeavour of self-directed learning.
I found a way to make learning practical and fun, and in doing so, a way to make consistency easier. You see, learning the language in 88 weeks full-time study isn’t so much about exposure. It’s about consistently putting in the effort.
The added motivation of having fun is important. Ultimately, I’m a big kid. Last year I went to Disneyland in Shanghai and loved it just as much as the next 10-year-old.
Just like being drenched at Disneyland is fun, singing kid’s songs is fun. Plus, it’s going to be even more fun when my daughter is old enough to sing along with me.
Many of those who know me, would be surprised to hear about the big kid thing. I spend a lot of time in serious mode. Those who know me best would say I don’t let that kid out enough.
Anyway, I digress. The point is motivation and consistent action leads to results. Yet, one need not proceed the other. I find they drive each other. Acting leads to motivation and motivation leads to acting (consistently), and vice versa.
This is what Mark Manson calls The “Do Something” Principle:
Action → Inspiration → Motivation
The idea is that action leads to a feeling of inspiration, which creates motivation, then it loops back to action. Manson gives the example of redesigning a website. It’s a big project that’s hard to start, but just starting with the redesigning the header results in an accomplishment that provides inspiration, which motivates you to keep going. I generally agree with Mark on this principle, and it certainly holds for projects with a definable start and end, such as redesigning a website or completing a degree.
But for things with no discernible end point requiring consistent action over time (when are you ever “done” learning a new language), sometimes an external source of inspiration is needed to keep the consistency going or kick it off again. For me learning Chinese, the current source of inspiration is having fun singing Peppa Pig songs in Mandarin.
But not having an external motivation for something you’ve been putting off, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take action. The truth is, while it can help, you don’t need it. Try the “Do Something” approach while waiting for a source of inspiration, try taking the next little step, and maybe that’s all you’ll need: the inspiration and motivation will follow.
Now lastly, how’s this for an external motivation:
I’m going to make you, beloved reader, a deal. If I get to 50 subscribers to ‘Watts the point’ by the end of September 2024, I will post a video of me singing Peppa Pig ‘Let’s Get Ready’ in Mandarin. It may be equally awful and hilarious. If you want to see this please, subscribe if you don’t already and, send this article to as many people as you can and ask them to subscribe!
Cover image: Photo by Drazen Zigic on Freepik
It’s not just me saying Mandarin is that hard, it really is. See: Foreign Language Training - United States Department of State