Learning Languages with a Full-Time Job

Uh but before we do that, I just wanted to talk about a few awesome things about my move here. And as some of you know, I've always liked England, and I knew I wasn't going to stay in Denmark because it's too boring for me. I never really felt like I I fit in, you know? Uh so I decided to move to England, and I found a job in Manchester to help ease the transition. And actually I was lucky to find a very multilingual job that yeah, working in a call center in Manchester. We have over 40 languages represented, so I thought, man, this is a great opportunity to uh show off some languages, or not not show off some languages, but practice some languages, and um really put some uh practical use to some of the studying that I've been doing.

And um on that note, the last update, it's been a while, uh I've been still focusing on my Russian. That's going to I'm probably going to say that forever. I I remember like a year ago I was saying, "Yeah, I'm still doing Russian." And I still felt like I was useless, but at least now I feel more confident. Feel more comfortable. My vocabulary is definitely getting bigger. And I can have sort of basic conversations. I understand a lot. Uh lately I've been watching a lot of native-level content. Uh there was a HBO special, or was it Showtime? Whatever one of these American news networks put out a four-hour special with uh interviews of President Putin. And, you know, political views aside, he's a really eloquent eloquent and well-spoken man. Uh so he's a really good learning resource. And also, you know, politics is sort of interesting, so having that vocabulary can definitely uh help me in uh going forward when I need to discuss this with other people.

So, I feel like my Russian's going pretty well. I'm not extremely happy with my progress in Spanish. I felt like I was doing really well and on track, and then I kind of got side-stabbed. I was a little bit uh disinterested in it, and uh after the first initial uh interest, I was sort of hit a bit of a wall, but I know that I'll get back to it. And I there's a lot of Spanish speakers at the company. So that'll be an easy way to practice it. I did speak a bit of Spanish with some of the my Spanish colleagues, which was great to see that I actually already understood some. Still can't perfectly roll my R, but I can sort of imitate it in a way, which is kind of weird. I can imitate it to a point where the Spanish speaker said it was a good pronunciation. Um so I'm not sure about how that works.

Um but yeah, so I've been speaking pretty much all my languages at work except for Esperanto, which I have at a very questionable level anyway. But I have a German colleague who I spoke, who I pretty much exclusively speak German to if we're, you know, on break or whatever. And I have a Russian colleague I spoke some Russian with, the Spanish team. And uh what else was there? I think that was it. Of course, Danish, I have some Danish colleagues. And uh the working language is English, of course, so we we speak a lot of that as well. But just going from studying in my bedroom or whatever room I was studying in, and never really meeting any speakers to having all these opportunities to practice the language. It's just amazing. And although I haven't spoken any Hungarian yet, which is also one of my weakest languages, I noticed there are quite a few Hungarian speakers as well, and there's a even a group on our internal Facebook where they uh hang out. So I'll just uh eavesdrop a bit on them and see if I can uh try to improve my Hungarian enough to uh speak a bit with them. But yeah, so that's a great uh advantage.

And um regarding the podcast some of you might want to just get a little update and I said when I was moving over here that there was probably going to be uh sort of a a breakdown in episodes at least for a while until I figured out my stuff. And uh that's definitely what what's happened, and it's happened in the past before, so it's not entirely new. But um, you know, when you shake up your entire life, you you get some disruptions to your routine. And um what I hadn't prepared for when I moved over here was how hard it was for me to actually open a bank account, which is in case some of you don't know, is like the foundation of when you move a country. Like that's the first thing you set up because once you have the bank account, you can get your new phone number, you can get your um, you know, you can put you can get your salary, you can get paid, actually. And you can do all these things, and you can pay for stuff without having to pay exchange fees at your bank, and you know, you can have the local currency, which is really important.

And just I was just hitting a wall because here in this beginning of this year, they made a new law that due to anti-money laundering regulations, banks really needed a firm address uh verification. And as a foreigner, the only thing I could get was pretty much a bank statement. So I had to change my address in my Danish bank and wait for them to actually send me a new statement with the new English address on it before I could open a UK bank account, which was just ridiculous. There are other ways of doing it, like your national insurance number can be enough, but that takes, you know, up to six weeks. I only just got mine after four, so, you know, it's not easy. And um I didn't really count on this. And obviously, the uncertainty of even getting paid or, you know, how am I going to get all my stuff together, just floating around my head meant that I couldn't really figure out a way how to do the podcast.

It it also has to be said that I moved into a room, sort of a a small room, and this is uh deliberate because I wanted to save up money for for a period of time to potentially either buy my own house or maybe an apartment, or at least move into something more permanent, uh rent my own place. But renting when you just get here would be impossible because, you know, they need credit checks and everything. So I had to move into a room anyway, and as you know, when you live in a house shared by others, you need to respect them, and the walls aren't the thickest, so I can't really do like uh, you know, welcome to the podcast and and and talk especially out of hours, and people work all sorts of times here, so uh it is a little bit more difficult, and I don't want to interrupt my housemates. Uh and also just the practical thing like this huge microphone takes up like half the room, you know, these are not not making it impossible, but it's definitely making it harder to uh sit down and record. And um I now that I've got my bank account, I've got everything settled, I hope to um bring the bring the podcast back and and try to get some guests on. I already have one episode lined up for you guys that I recorded before I left, actually. Uh but I just hadn't really taken the time to edit and and put it up. Uh so that'll come out soon uh after this one, a week after, hopefully. I don't want to, you know, put out two episodes in a week and then don't have an episode for the next week.

Um so the reason that I wanted to talk about language learning and work and sort of routine was actually sparked a little bit by my recent appearance on the Creative Language Learning Podcast, which is uh Kirsten Cable's podcast that she hosts occasionally with Lindsay Williams, who uh couldn't make it for this episode, so Kirsten asked me to join, and that was uh oh, not the I forgot the episode number, but you can find it on the website for sure. And uh we were talking about like motivation, and like what does it actually take to learn a language? And it it I had so many thoughts on the topic that we spoke for more than an hour, and I still felt like we hadn't really discussed the whole thing. And and this was also part of the reason why I I created Language Motivation Mastery, where I sort of explored, well, what does it really take to get that motivation that it takes to actually learn a language, or learn the language as well as you want to learn it? And as some of you uh regular listeners will know, I've also struggled a lot with motivational problems in the past. Uh definitely uh before I started Actual Fluency, it was just a struggle to do anything productive. So I've come a long way on this topic, but I still feel like there's a lot to to be said and and talked about.

So it's just going to be me today uh talking about this experience as um as a sort of new to the working environment because I haven't really I haven't had a job and done language learning ever because when I was when I found out about, you know, the polyglot movement, I was in uni, so that's kind of different. And uh halfway through my last few years, I got a job that was sort of freelance, sort of flexible, and from home or from anywhere. So I never really had that fixed routine whilst being a language learner. So I couldn't really comment on that. Um what I told people was, and you know, there's just advice that wasn't really tested by me, but I I got it from other people who had busy lives said, "You know, squeeze it in where you can. Try to have the fixed time, fixed routines, and um really take advantage of stuff like commutes or chores or anything where you can put in like a podcast or any kind of training uh that will be really beneficial." But now that I've tried it myself, I feel like I can really really talk about the difference because there is a big difference. It's not all, you know, good or bad. There's definitely uh advantages as well, but I'm going to get into that just now.

So, what are the advantages as a language learner to having a fixed routine or like a full-time job or you know, something that dictates how you spend your time? I think the number one main advantage to this is that you know exactly when you can learn languages. Like you you have your weekly schedule. You know when you are at work. And you I mean, you can use your lunch break, of course, but when you are supposed to be working, there's no way you can uh you know, uh actually do language learning. So, uh that's a a really big advantage for me.

And the other advantage that I've found is that um having colleagues or practical chances to use the language has really made it more realistic for me and it's not just theoretical learning. Um and also commute. It sounds funny, but like when I was uh just had when I had complete control of my time, I would really struggle to take walks or yeah, take time out of watching YouTube or, you know, working on my website or whatever I was doing to do language learning or listening or watching native material. But now that I have a commute to work, which is about if I walk it's about half an hour, 45 minutes at most, so I I'll I'll listen to uh some kind of podcast there. I've been listening to Pod 101 a lot lately. Um if you want to find that in your language, you can go to actualfluency.com/languagepod101. There's a list of all the languages they have, which is like 40, and it's a a really inexpensive option. Um been listening to that for Russian and Spanish. And um also been listening to some just random podcasts, but you know, having that commute forced upon me has actually kind of opened up the day because I'm saying, "Okay, well, before I kind of had to fake the commute, or I had to like take random walks in order to put the language learning in or in order to actually do the language learning. Now I'm like, okay, I'm walking to work anyway, so I might as well put something in my ears in the meantime." And that makes a huge difference. Um so that's that's one great thing, and I know in America especially, people have really long commutes. And like over an hour, maybe several hours if you're in a not in a big city. Or maybe you are in a big city and you're driving in from far away. Um there you can, you know, like the old classic one of listening to tapes is there, but you can use the digital versions as well. Um so that's uh definitely one advantage about having a job, a fixed routine, and it's it really puts it it's it makes it more easy to wonder when to learn because you're not worrying about learning all the time, which is a huge negative about, you know, not having a fixed routine.

So, if you're a independent entrepreneur, or freelancer, or whatever, if you have to design your own time, then it can be tough to make up these commutes. I definitely struggled with it in Hungary and other places, um just going out because I I don't know about you guys, but I have this problem with I'm very logical. So if I'm like just taking a walk for the sake of taking a walk, it's like I can't really I can't really make that up. And if I need to take a walk to do language learning, then I'm like, why do I need to walk? You know. But of course, you need to walk because it takes you out of the kind of stale environment you're sitting in, maybe you're watching TV or YouTube, or you're talking to your your friends on Facebook. So it gets you out of that environment, and you know, also it's shown that exercise helps promote learning. Uh it gives you exercise as well, which is a good uh side benefit. But um so I've definitely seen the advantage of that.

The other advantage is that my energy levels are much more stable during the day because I get up at the same time roughly every day. I go to bed roughly the same time as well because if I don't, then I know that I can't get to work at like 7:00 or uh 6:30 or whatever. Uh sorry, 7:30. 6:30 was a little bit too early anyway. Um so that kind of goes with the self that now suddenly I have full days, full 18-hour days or whatever. Oh sorry, 16 hours, well, my math is terrible. Um whereas before, you know, maybe I was working on a project, I would stay up late to finish it, or I would just, you know, couldn't be bothered to go to bed. I was just watching a series, binge-watching or whatever, playing a game, being on YouTube, whatever, and I would have really different bedtimes, which really affects your overall energy levels because the body just can't adjust. Um so I right now I feel extremely regular in terms of time, and also food, because it's very defined when I can eat or when I should eat. So I also feel healthier, and I also feel um that that contributes to greater energy levels overall.

And if there's anything that helps in sort of motivation, it is better energy levels because a lot of the time you have to sort of you push yourself a little bit to be to do the stuff. And, you know, I'm talking about this like it's some chore or something to learn languages, but for many people, myself included, that's kind of what it feels like sometimes. You just, you know, sometimes you just open the book and you sit for hours and it's fine. But, you know, every like a Monday morning, if you just uh getting out of bed and you don't have to do anything, if you don't have work that day, and you had the option to do nothing on YouTube or do language learning, then a lot of people would just not do the language learning. So, I know it's different for everyone and and some people might say, well, Kris, if that's the case, then why are you learning languages, you know, shouldn't you do something you're excited about and stuff. Well, I am kind of excited about the result, but that doesn't mean that I'm super excited about, you know, grammar or listening to this one podcast about how to say, I'm sorry or whatever, you know, I can appreciate the process, and I can appreciate the outcome, but that doesn't mean that it would be my first sort of activity to do. I I really appreciate the guys out there who are completely obsessed about languages and would do it no matter what, but for me, I need that kind of push, and that's where the job really helps to put in those gaps where I need to fill it out. It's it's a bit similar like having instead of having lots of different shirts and and and and uh trousers or pants if you're from the US, you know, you reduce the decision fatigue. Like should I learn languages now, or should I watch YouTube, should I uh go eat, or should I this and that. So that sends I've been extremely positive about the having a job.

Now, it's not all fun and games, it's not all good. Uh the some of the problems with having a job when you want to learn languages is that if you work, let's say, eight hours a day, and you have to get there a little bit before, you have a break added, and you have a commute home as well, there's not that much time left in the day. And if you have a family you need to take care of, a house or a flat or an apartment or whatever, then there's just not that much time. And I would say that's probably the biggest problem for most uh full-time, or even people who work more than full-time, workers, is that there's just not that much actual time left in the day. And for me, right now, it's not a problem because I don't have any sort of people depending on me. I don't have a huge house. The house I live in, you know, shared, so I just have my own room to take care of. And there's nobody else coming into this room, so they don't mind that it looks like a mess like right now. But I I try to do my best anyway.

Um so, for that, I would go back to what I said earlier in the episode, is is simply add time where you can. And that means, are you doing anything where you could be listening to a podcast? Are you um, you know, do you have a lunch break? You could use on it. Coffee Break Spanish, for instance, or Coffee Break uh the other languages are designed for something like a 20-minute lunch break, where you can just listen to it and and and while you eat, because you're not doing anything anyway. So you might as well just cram in some language learning where you can. And of course, the sort of extreme way to uh add time is to get up earlier or go to bed later. And that it's hard for many people. I know myself, I'm not a morning person at all. But I know the times that I have gotten up to do languages as the first thing, it's a good feeling to get it over with, and it starts the day off really well. It starts you off on the right foot, as they say. It's a really awesome feeling.

And um, you know, they say you learn more in the morning. I don't entirely know how or why, but maybe it's something like when we were fighting the dinosaurs or whatever, if we were awoke, whatever information came right away is something that would be very important. Like if I don't run now, this dinosaur's going to kill me, or eat me, or whatever. And if I don't do this now, I don't know. I'm just guessing. But the point is, you as the day progresses, you have less and less energy, and you have less less uh you have less willpower, so you're not likely to work hard on your languages. And well, this is different for many people, of course. Some people really like the evenings. Some people are night owls. I think I'm probably mostly a night owl, but I can adapt. I don't know what the term for somebody who can do both is. And then you have the people who are really uh excited about mornings. And uh, you know, early birds. And I've never been one. So I don't know how that feels, but I know that that time is a wonderful time to sit in peace and quiet and work on your language skills.

So, so what I wanted to do with this episode is just encourage you not to uh despair, because there is a bit of a a trend online right now that the people you see with great language learning results are people who do nothing but that. It's because they're retired, or because they run some kind of online business, or because they're freelance interpreters, or they do something that means they can have complete control over their time, or at least, you know, on paper, it seems like they have a lot of freedom and flexibility. But to be honest, freedom comes at a huge cost because I remember when I was working in in Budapest and I was just working on my own stuff, like Actual Fluency-related stuff. And, you know, if you have the whole week to allocate to learning languages, you quickly get into this like, "Oh, I'll do it in an hour, or I'll do it in two hours, or I'll do it this evening, or I'll do it before I go to bed." Or, "Wait, I'll do it this morning." "Ah, okay, I'll do it tomorrow." You know, you just keep pushing it back because you feel like you have infinite space of where to put it. And this goes back to the suggestion that you should it's a good idea to do something regularly. And I would say like count each day as a day.

And for me, right now, what I try to do is um I'm working pretty hard on a new app called Linguist. It's uh I was introduced to it in the polyglot gathering in Slovakia, which was great, by the way. And if I met you there, awesome. I had a really good time. I forgot I totally forgot about that in the intro, but it was an amazing time as per usual. Um I think they did a fantastic job organizing it. I mean, these were obviously the people organizing it were not beginners uh by any means, but it was their first time organizing the gathering in Slovakia, and it was the first time, you know, with this venue, with the people, with everything. And they had over 400 people there. So it was quite an amazing uh event. Uh flawless, I will say, almost. And I had a great time there. Um so if if uh you're thinking about going to the polyglot gathering and you're in doubt, you know, go, go, go. It's an amazing event.

Um but I forgot what I was on about. I wanted to just say, I think I was talking about encouraging if you have a full-time job or something and you're looking at somebody like, you know, Benny Lewis who has done a lot of video series on him just kind of traveling around and learning languages at the same time. There are other people like this, and they can be very inspirational, and they can be very motivational, but also sometimes it's the reality check hits that's like, yeah, it's good for Benny. He doesn't have to work uh get up to work in his cubicle 40 hours a week. Um so he can just do it. But the fact of the matter is, it's not a lot easier. I'm finding it just as easy now that I have a full-time job. Okay, I have a lot to worry about because of uh because of the bank account and all these things that weren't quite settled, and my finances have taken quite a a strong hit because of uh you know, the moving costs associated. Uh but now that I'm settled in and ready, I'm sure that I will keep going with my usual routine, because it it there is space for it. I have the morning commute. I have the evening commute as a minimum. And then I can add more if I wanted to. Like just before I go to bed, I also sometimes do a few cards.

And um the Linguist app is actually quite interesting. It's kind of like a well, it's a flashcard app, which I'm usually allergic towards because I feel like you can't really reinvent the wheel. But what I really like with the Linguist app is they give you different forms of the word, a bit like Lingq. But this one is a little bit more automated, so you don't have to like pick the text and you don't have to like save words and stuff. This is just this just gives you a pre-built deck or vocabulary, whatever they call it, database, and that you can learn from. And it's in a couple languages. I use it for Spanish and and Russian. But of course, the good thing about learning all the endings or the variations or the conjugations is that you get more you get more exposure to the language. Whereas in the traditional flashcards that I've been using on Memrise and stuff had me learn the base form, the nominative or the first person conjugation, or the infinitive, sorry, for verbs, and then I would have to use my grammatical knowledge to sort of conjugate them. Whereas, I think in natural language, that's not really how we learn it. So I think the Linguist way of teaching you the different forms with example sentences is actually better because then, for instance, in Russian, I can learn the sentence, "What are you saying?" instead of learning how to say "to say" and then figure out the correct conjugation. So you can sort of hard-learn some of these phrases or these combinations. Especially in Russian, it's very important to know uh the conjugation of the word that comes after certain trigger words like prepositions and and uh and other words. So for that way, I really like Linguist so far. The only the only sort of slight problem I have with it is that it counts every variation, I believe, as a word, which is slight slightly misleading. Uh but I can see why they do it because otherwise, how would you count, you know, if you know the what is it? six conjugations of a verb, is that six words or one? So some people often call it the difference between language families and just words. Um but I must say I I really enjoy learning all the variations and and it helps me to conjugate correctly. It helps me to see the exceptions, uh where the the irregular words. And it it helps me to uh like I said, get more exposure.

So, not to make this into a total advert for Linguist, I I just want to say that's what I have been working on mostly at the moment. And that's been going really well. I've been doing quite well on that. And something that hasn't been going quite well, which I'm, you know, I I want to share with you guys is is the tutoring because I've I've wrote about, I think it's about a year ago, maybe a year and a half, maybe it might be two years ago. Wow, time is flying. But I wrote how much people have been recommending tutoring to me, like as a as a way to supplement your own learning. And I was really hesitant for many reasons, but firstly, I was just like really nervous and anxious, and, you know, quite shy when it comes to it. And um and when I finally took the plunge and started getting tutoring, I was just like, wow, this is amazing. And within weeks I was just having one-hour conversations in Russian, very slow, very simple, but that sensation was just unbeatable.

And then I sort of came off it a little bit, and I just took a break from it. I had um I Talki for for many uh sort of seasons had been sponsoring me to do certain challenges. They would pay for the tutoring if I mentioned them on the blog and talked about these challenges, which I think are really helpful for your learning. And they stopped doing those sponsorships, and I was just like, "Okay, well," and then I didn't really book rebook lessons with my own money, with my own credit or whatever. For some reason, I just never got around to it. And the anxiety started to creep back again, like the sort of uncertainty and nervousness. I was like, "What if the tutor thinks I'm terrible?" or "What if uh what if the tutor is too fast?" or "What if I don't learn anything, then I'll waste my money." And blah, blah, blah.

And and I also tried BaseLang for a review, a Spanish review, and uh that was before I knew I was actually going to learn Spanish. So I tried that a little bit just as a sort of a mystery shopper just to see the service. And it was a fantastic service. And and, you know, I I I can't I really can't uh recommend BaseLang enough if if you're learning Spanish. Um go check out uh actualfluency.com/baselang because it's like an unlimited tutoring service. And it's uh 100 and I think it's $129 US a month, but you get unlimited, and there's no uh limitation on how many you can book. You can book eight hours a day of lessons if you want. Um and you can even book them within like one minute. I tried that for the review and and that um that worked. So if you want to learn Spanish, that's really the deal. And I've got an account there. It's just uh it's just embarrassing that I haven't been using it. But again, it's just been kind of nervous, and especially with a new language.

I don't know if you guys feel this as well, but my Spanish is is of course terrible, but I understand that I'm a beginner, but I also want to use it, and then my I just turn around and I go like, well, I'm too terrible to speak this language, you know, and it's like just this irrational fear that I shouldn't have because why should I be an expert or good in Spanish when I've only studied it for a couple months, very, very sort of uh light effort as well because I've also been working on my Russian. I've also moved countries and stuff. Um but the the irrational feeling is just there. Like what, you know, and that's the that's the that's the thing with tutors is that, you know, if you if you have a very outgoing personality, very extroverted, you'd probably not you'd probably don't even recognize all these things I'm talking about. But if you're like me, a little bit introverted, a little bit shy, I'm not too shy, but a little bit, then it it's hard to press that book lesson button. It really is. And that's probably my biggest my biggest language learning failure lately because I've been really happy with what I've been using. So like uh talking to colleagues and um and using what I know, even though I know I'm not very good.

Um and it's funny to meet Russian speakers because they don't really believe how good you are. They're like, I say a sentence and they're like, "Oh, where did you learn that?" And I'm like, "at home and blah, blah, blah." They keep speaking and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, you're really good. You even have the correct endings and stuff." And I don't think they quite understand the extent of my studies when I I say a few phrases to them, but you know, it's tough to to uh become fluent, so to speak. The conversational fluency that I'm my which is my end goal for my languages, to have to be able to have like conversations in the canteen and talk about everyday stuff. But that's coming soon, I hope.

And um yeah, that's that's pretty much it. And again, I I don't want to seem like I'm I'm just promoting a service like BaseLang. I mean, I do know the founder and and uh I'm a partner of BaseLang, so so they're, you know, I I really appreciate the service. But if you if you want to check it out, go to actualfluency.com/baselang. And if you do enjoy it, you know, the uh actualfluency website gets a little commission back that to help run the costs and, you know, um support the ongoing development that's going on. And then I have lots of new exciting initiatives coming. Uh especially if you're interested in learning Danish. I know I've been saying that a long time as well, but now I've got a lot closer, and as soon as I I settle down a little bit more, I will begin producing some interesting content for Danish uh learners because I feel like I don't know if it's some kind of moral duty or whatever, but I feel like I should be producing stuff for people who want to learn my language because there's not that much Danish content out there, and most of it's quite terrible. And I just feel like that's my superpower, so I will I'll probably create like a small podcast where I speak some phrases every day or maybe once a week or something. Put up some interesting episodes.

For Actual Fluency, I just I just want to keep uh reviewing the all the language learning methods. Like I expect to put out a review of uh the Linguist app, a complete review showing it. And I want to keep doing book reviews and stuff. I just ordered the Russian Tutor book from Teach Yourself, which is supposed to be for upper upper beginner and lower intermediate, which I think my Russian level is pretty much spot on. So I'm very excited about how that can help me uh continue. Uh I just read a couple of chapters of Alex Alex Rawlings's new book, which if the rest of the book is as good, then it's going to be the not only the best book about learning languages ever written, it's also going to be like the manual or the playbook on how to become a polyglot because he is really thorough in his methodology and his description of really what it takes to learn many languages to fluency. So that's what's coming up on Actual Fluency. I I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, you know, updating you guys about my progress, and hopefully, by me sharing what I'm going through, you can you can feel like you're not alone out there learning learning your languages. And and I'll keep doing the podcast, keep inviting interesting people uh who speak way more languages than I do to talk about how they did it, why they did it, and and how they did it. Did I say how twice? Well, I guess how is really important.

Um but yeah, so um so thank you for listening to this little ranty solo episode about learning languages uh with a full-time job, or, you know, when you don't have complete control over your time. Hope you found some of it uh useful. And in the end here, I just want to thank you all for your endless support. And I want to thank you for your emails you send me. That's I really appreciate them. And the people who have asked me about the podcast, you guys are awesome, and you are the reason, well, not the only reason, everyone else also pushes me to uh to create these episodes, but you you know, I'm doing this this for you uh who wants to listen to new episodes and and keep getting that weekly dose of motivation and inspiration from top language learners and and and there's also some comments by me. So, thanks so much for the support, guys. I really appreciate it, and uh I'll see you next.