Monitor your motivation

Motivation means different things to different people. 

It it sometimes used to mean mood (which varies from day to day). It is sometimes used to mean will-power. It may sometimes refer to energy level, or level of frustration. People may use it to refer to their underlying reason for learning a language.  People also use the word to refer to any tricks that they employ to overcome inner resistance (as in: “I must motivate myself!”).

So what do I mean by 'motivation'? 

All of the above? Some of them? None of them?

When I use the word motivation, I guess that I’m talking about that certain something that you always need to keep an eye on. 

Motivation for me is a longterm indicator. It may change over time, but fairly gradually. You have a sense of your own level of motivation, and you know that if it gets too low, you’re in danger of quitting.

Therefore, motivation needs to be monitored. Actually, it is itself a monitor. It’s like one those life-or-death instruments on the panel of an aircraft. 

So keep tabs on your motivation level. Plot it daily on a graph if you like—out of 10. If that line on the graph dips below five or six, then you have a problem. You're in danger of stalling.

If that happens, then you ought to lean back, catch your breath, and figure out what’s wrong. Ask yourself what you need to do.

Don’t PRESS ahead. Cut yourself some slack instead. Don’t risk getting into a spin. You're in this for the long haul.

Institute a routine

If it takes, say, a thousand hours to learn your target language, then that’s at least a thousand times that you’ll need to decide to sit down and ‘do’ an hour. That’s a thousand times that you need to remember, and a thousand times that you’ll need to exert your will power.

Of which everyone has a limited daily ration.

Unless, of course, you get a habit going—a habit that goes under the name of a routine.

Now personally I have problems with routines. I’m good a designing them. I enjoy that part of the process. But I’m no good at following them. I resist them. I resent them.

The trick is to get it slowly into place piecemeal. You can’t afford to have it feel like am imposition or compulsion. You need to retain space to manoeuvre. It needs to be loose. It ought to leave room for doing things on impulse.

A routine that is integral to what you’d do anyway must work best. It needs to fit in with what you’d be likely to do anyway. So it ought to help you, not force you. It should remind you, not order you about. 

You don’t need another parental figure.