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How To Have More Time And Energy To Do The Things You Care About

What would you do if you had more energy? What could you learn? Who would you help?

How often do you feel that you should do something but somehow never manage to do it? Of course, you WOULD and COULD BUT you feel tired or are not in the mood or … (insert some random excuse).

If I got a penny for every time my clients tell me “Nope, I didn’t really learn because ya know how it is”, I could buy a solid aluminum bat to whoop all those lame excuses out of them.

Where does your energy go?

There might be a lot of reasons why it is so. But have you ever considered that you are wasting away all your energy?

Concentrated energy is powerful beyond measure. It can be like a powerful laser beam of creativity and knowledge. Wherever you direct it, it spreads well-being and shoots up people’s IQ. But the problem is that usually, it’s not like a laser beam. It’s get diluted into hundreds of tiny rays which can’t do sh*t.

So where does your energy go? Why are you squandering it when you could do so much good in this world?

I’ve prepared a list of energy devourers. Stuff which might be as well called parasitic creatures feeding on every good fiber in your body and processing it into the grey lazy goo holding you captive in your armchair.

I’ve been guilty of all of them and I’m still trying to purge some of them from my life. And so can you. You owe it not only to yourself but to everyone who you’ve come to contact with.

1) News

I still remember when I read a 4h Work Week of Tim Ferris for the first time. It was like a door to the new world. The world of endless possibilities. But there was once concept which stood out. The concept of “information diet”.

Tim argued that you don’t need to read newspapers every day. Nor do you have to visit the news websites in order to be up-to-date. It was beyond me. “Does he not understand that I’m an educated person and I need to know STUFF?!”.

At that point in time, I was devouring every newspaper and weekly news magazine I could lay my hands on. Not only did I have to read them every day but I also had to read them cover to cover. No news was small enough.

If you find even a tiny bit of yourself in this description I beg you – stop! Stop doing it. You’ll never be up-to-date. You will never be able to keep up. But that’s not even the point. The point is that you don’t need it.

Will you become a better person by reading that the bomb exploded in Somalia killing 20 innocent children? Or that some psycho ran over a child and left him for dead? Or maybe you enjoy reading about the latest corruption scandals in your government? I hope not. I really do.

Because that’s the nature of news – they are supposed to be scary and negative. They are supposed to prey on our lowest emotions and instincts. We keep on coming back because we want to know about all the dangers which lurk in the dark. As if it was supposed to help you.

2) Social Media

Have you heard about the FOMO syndrome? It’s one of my favorites ailments of our modern times – the Fear Of Missing Out.

This terrifying voice in the back of your head which keeps on telling you that if you don’t check your Twitter or Facebook account RIGHT, FU**ING NOW you might miss some important piece of info. Or some funny quote. Or a picture of your friend doing something crazy things.

There are just two solutions which might help you

A) Delete your account.

You still have your mobile and e-mail box. Do it and save months or years of your life. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to see the following sum-up of your life in your final days

“Jim, what a loser he was, spent 6053 hours of his life on Facebook, 5300 hours on Twitter and 2000 browsing pictures of cats”

B) Start blocking it with software

It’s no shame to admit that you have no control over the use of social media. But if it’s true, and you don’t want to delete your accounts, try blocking them with this software:

Leechblock – for Mozilla
StayFocusd – for Chrome

There is also a third group, rare as legless unicorns – people who can actually use social media with moderation. But I don’t trust anyone who says so by default. Almost NOBODY has such a strong will.

3) TV

I can’t entertain you with any personal story here. I don’t own TV and haven’t watched it since 2003.

I’m pretty sure that there is no purpose of having one. Why would you have to go through the trouble of watching hours of some worthless junk in order to see something interesting? You can find everything on the internet anyway,

4) Gossiping

“Kim Kardashian has a huge cyst on her right buttock who does a great impersonation of Gary Oldman” (disclaimer – I made it up). That’s worth reading. Maybe a little less than “allegedly lured by tacos, a man shot in buttocks by pellet gun”.

But seriously – how can anyone care enough to read this garbage?

It’s even worse when you realize that most of your conversations are made of bad-mouthing your boss or friends. If the gossip is the last thing standing between you and the awkward conversational silence, what does it say about the quality of these conversations?

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

5) Having an opinion (when it doesn’t matter)

You know the type. People who always have to have the last word. You begin a polite conversation and just a moment later their faces wear this demonic expression of madness. They start splattering saliva all around the table as their eyeballs turn white.

How can you not agree with them?!
How dare you?
Don’t you know that X is better than Y?!
And how could you vote for W instead of Z?

My take? I take my part in the discussion or give advice when asked but at the first sign of any emotional uproar I back off. I don’t care enough to lose 30 minutes of my life and a big part of my emotional reserves trying to convince somebody. I have better things to do with my time.

6) Caring too much about what other people say and do

I don’t believe that you can force somebody into any kind of change. You can only let them know that you’re there if they need you. I’m trying to help anyone I can, both online and offline, but I’m not going to waste my time to shove my advice down their throat and convince them that it works.

7) Stop being jealous and comparing yourself

It’s still a bit of the problem for me. But in the past, it was much worse. “Why can’t I be taller or have more money?”. “Why everybody seems to know what they’re doing with their lives?”

It all started fading away when I began to work my ass off. You won’t have time to compare yourself to others when you concentrate on being better each day.

8) Learn how not to worry about the things you don’t have any influence on

Because why bother if you can’t change? I know quite a handful of people who live their lives through problems of other people. They worry that a friend of some distant friend is sick. Or that somebody they don’t even know had a car accident.

It’s sad. It really is. But that doesn’t mean that any part of your day should revolve around such events. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care. Or that you’re a cold-hearted bastard. You simply save your energy for the things you can change.

9) Curb your internet time

It’s fascinating. You have the biggest source of information in the universe at your disposal. Yet, most of the time you use it for some mindless entertainment.

I don’t know many people, myself included, who show any restraint when it comes to the use of the internet. I’ve tried a lot of strategies to somehow regain control over the way I use the internet. To no avail.

And that’s ok. I was too weak to do it and I accept it. I learned not to trust myself when it comes to this matter. These days I simply turn off the computer when I want to get more productive or simply block every single page that I consider a waste of time.

Leechblock – for Mozilla
StayFocusd – for Chrome

Surprisingly, most of us don’t use more than just a couple of time-wasting websites so it’s quite an easy task to block them all.

What about you?

Are you guilty of any of these?

Also, if you have a friend who you think might benefit from this article, go ahead and send him this article! You might save him hundreds of hours of time in the process!

Productivity

How to Learn Grammar Fast – How to Learn a Language on Your Own (Part 4)

Bartosz Czekala 15 comments

Can you feel it? We're going on an adventure! By now, you should have everything we need to start learning.

If you've read the first part of this guide you should have some grammars book. Internet sources are also acceptable but book is always more reliable.

But before we start, just a small disclaimer.

THE SMALL DISCLAIMER

The process which I'm about to present work like a charm for me. But we're all different, so remember that your approach might vary from mine. That's why you should consider tweaking them a little bit so they're more tailored for your needs.

This part of the guide will seriously get you started but of course, it's not possible to cover all complexities of particular languages. I'm selective.

I don't give a damn about being 100% correct at the beginning because nobody cares. You know what is really tiring? Stuttering with perfect grammar every second word.

Sure, you'll make mistakes but it rarely happens that they are serious.

- "I really do love rapes officer!"
- "Pardon me? You are a sick and twisted person! Oh, wait! Did you mean grapes?"
- "Oh yeah, me thanks and love you long time!"

You see? At least you're politely making a conversation.

TWO MAIN BRICKS OF YOUR LEARNING FOUNDATION

There are two things which you should know before learning anything - your baseline and general outline of the subject you're about to learn.

So what's baseline?

This is the manner in which you can refer what you already know to the material you want to acquire.
It's possible most of the time. However, sometimes you have to be really creative!

When you learn a new language, you can, of course, compare it to the ones you already know.

General outline

You should know more or less what the given language consists of. Why? Very important part of learning is knowing what you don't know.

Skimming through a grammar book can give you a pretty good picture of the language. You can learn how many tenses there are or conjugations.

Now the real art is to pick grammar constructions which are the most useful to us and will enable speaking as quickly as possible while maintaining a relatively high level of grammatical correctness.

I'll stress just for clarity's sake - you need a general outline of a language. You're not learning at this stage.

WHAT'S THE MAIN GOAL?

I'll try to describe in as many details as it's only possible how I usually approach learning languages.
Once again - my goal is to start speaking as soon as possible.

If yours is only to read or write - it's still the approach I would choose as it helps you to build a grammatical scaffolding where you can later set vocabulary.

Grammatical correctness usually follows quickly once you start speaking. To depict the said process, I'll use Esperanto as an example.

It's much easier than most languages and that's precisely why it is perfect. Just like scientists who use simple organisms to understand more complex ones. I'll use an easy language as an example so you can later transfer this knowledge to more complex ones.

HOW TO USE THIS PART OF THE GUIDE?

I suggest the following - go through it (more or less) step by step. It'll set you on the right path.

But the most important advice which I can give you is - ignore ALL the other things from further steps until you cover the ones you're actually trying to learn. It takes the burden of overthinking off of you.

When should you move to the next step?

Once you can use the structures from the current one with confidence.
Of course, feel free to change the order of these steps and adjust them to you if you feel it suits you better.

FIRST BABY STEP- Personal Pronouns

The first question which we have to ask ourselves is: what elements of language are the most important? The answer is - the ones which you can't substitute with anything else.

That's why I always start with personal pronouns (subject pronouns). For the sake of brevity, I'll limit my examples to a singular form.

mi	I
vi	you
li	he
ŝi	she

Step 2 - PRESENT TENSE

Once we get a grasp of subject pronouns we can move to present tense. This choice begs the same question as before.

Why present and not past or future tense? Assuming that we have really little time at our disposal, we can always say something like:

"I eat dinner yesterday"
"she goes there in 3 days"

Sounds terrible - I'm pretty sure we all agree here BUT It helps you to get your message across! If there are more than 1 present tense in your target language, it's better to choose the one which's used for general events

Step 3 - CONJUGATION

Esperanto makes everything simple. All verbs in present tense have endings -AS.

Obviously, in a language of your choice, you'll face more conjugations. And the great thing is that you know how many because you learned beforehand what the grammar outline of your target language looks like. (You READ it, right?)

Now we have to learn how to construct:

affirmative sentence
negative sentence
questions

Questions are least important as you can always ask one using an affirmative sentence and changing your tone of voice.

AFFIRMATIVE SENTENCE (in present tense)

POSSIBLE TRAPS: In many languages the order of the sentence is fixed - e.g. The conjugated verb is always the second sentence element in German.

Be aware of it.

Let's select some verbs, so we can start creating sentences.

Short list of the most useful verbs:

an = povi
must / have to = devi
should = devi
might / may = povi
have = havi
be = esti
get = ricevi
give = doni
take = preni
want - voli
need = bezoni
buy = aĉeti
sell = vendi
go = iri
come = veni

and 3 nouns

money = mono
time = tempo
book = libro

Now the best part - building sentences:

mi prenas libro = I take a book
ŝi vendas mono = she sells money
vi havas tempo = you have time

Please note that these sentences are incorrect (we should add -n to nouns in this case) - I'm trying to show the process of grammar acquisition as precisely as it is only possible.

As for now, we know nothing about declension. Nevertheless, such sentences can be understood without any problem.

NEGATIVE SENTENCE

Typically, we can negate either a verb or a noun. The most important for us is how to negate verbs. In English, we use the adverb "not" to do so. In Esperanto, we can do it using "ne" before verbs.

Examples:

Mi ne havas mono = I don't have money
ŝi ne vendas mono = she doesn't sell money
vi ne havas tempo = you don't have time

QUESTIONS

Close-ended questions

Some most popular ways to form a yes-no (i.e. close-ended) question in many languages is to use intonation, inversion (present in English), inflection, auxiliary verbs (do, have, etc. in English) or a grammatical particle.

The latter is true in, among others, Polish, Esperanto and French.
In Esperanto, we use the particle "ĉu".

Examples:

love = ami
Do you love money? = ĉu vi amas mono ?
Do you have a book? = ĉu vi havas libro?

Open-ended questions

If we want to learn some more details, it's great to know the most popular interrogative words:

List of interrogative words

which
what
whose
who
whom
where
when
how (much, many, often)
why

Examples:

Who = kiu, what = kio
Who do you love? = Kiu vi amas?
What does he want? = Kio li volas?

Step 4 - OTHER USEFUL PRONOUNS

The final step to make our sentences clearer and fancier is to learn some more personal pronouns

POSSIBLE TRAPS: You have to be aware that in some languages you can encounter many categories of pronouns depending on the case.

POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS

my - mia
your - via
his - lia
her - ŝia

Examples:

Let's add two adjectives to spruce things up a bit:

big - granda*
cheap - malmultekosta*

* All adjectives in Esperanto end with -A

My book isn't big - Mia libro ne estas granda
His time isn't cheap - Lia tempo estas malmultekosta

OBJECT PRONOUNS

me - min
you - vin
him - lin
her - ŝin

She loves you (yeah, yeah, yeah) - ŝi amas vin
Do I need her? - ĉu mi bezonas ŝin?

DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS

Why are they so great?

Because you can simply learn them, point at some object and grunt:

"This!"
"Not this, that!"

Lovely, right?

this - (ĉi) tiu
that - tiu
these - (ĉi) tiuj
those - tiuj

This person is stupid - Tiu persono estas stulta
He gives that money - Li donas tiu mono*

* I still make mistakes on purpose. It should read "li donas tiun monon".

INDEFINITE PRONOUNS

List of indefinite pronouns:

enough
little
less
much
more
most
several
few
fewer
many
more
most
no one
nobody
neither
none
everybody
everyone
all
both
someone
something
some
anyone
anything
either
any

Examples:

Someone = iu, everything = ĉio
She knows everything = ŝi scias ĉio
Someone wants you = iu volas vin

I've decided to skip reflexive pronouns. But feel free to read about them.

Step 5 - CONJUNCTIONS

Long and (almost) complete list of conjunctions:

after
although
as
as far as
as if
as long as
as soon as
as though
because
before
even if
even though
every time
if
in order that
since
so
so that
than
though
unless
until
when
whenever
where
whereas
wherever
while
and
nor
but
or
yet
otherwise
so
either...or
not only...but (also)
neither...nor
both...and

whether...or

just as...so

The ones that are the most important to me at the beginning are:
because, and, but, or, after, before, that, that's why, to, although, if, until, since, although, otherwise

Conjunctions give us this nice feeling of confidence when we speak. They combine two or more sentences and add a great touch of logic and cohesion to them.

Examples:

because = ĉar
I love you because you're pretty = Mi amas vin ĉar vi estas bela

understand = kompreni
I understand that's why I sell = Mi komprenas tial mi vendas

That's it when it comes to grammar basics. More to come!

REMEMBER:

You can create your own context and the world within a language. You'll have time to adjust the accuracy later.

As long as use logic and try to avoid any idiomatic expressions you should be understood.

CONCLUSION

Know the general outline of grammar before you start
Learn grammar step by step, once you feel quite comfortable within some grammar structure - move on
If you want to start speaking as fast as possible, learn the thing which can't be substituted with anything else first
Your brain craves sense and meaning - create your own context, have fun, start saying some silly stuff!
Embrace imperfection, we all have to start somewhere

Languages

Do’s and Dont’s of Learning Languages – How to Learn a Language on Your Own (Part 2)

Bartosz Czekala 2 comments

By now you should know clearly why you want to learn a language. Don't you ever forget about the source of your motivation! Let it be your guiding light and fuel for what's about to come. Now it's time to get familiar with do's and dont's of language learning

Do's and Dont's of Language Learning

1. Get Ready

Describing what it means to be ready is always quite tricky. The reason is simple - there won't be many situations in your life when you feel really ready and the conditions are conducive. However, in the perfect sugar-coated world your readiness should involve three elements:

Being ready physically

Comfort is important. Before you start learning, make sure that you're not hungry, tired or sick.Get some snack or a nap if you have to. Otherwise a few minutes deep into the learning you will start having dirty fantasies about rubbing a chocolate on your chest while being wrapped up in sheets.

Being ready mentally

"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair." - Edmund Burke

Do your best to clear your head before you get down to learning. Stress is probably the worst enemy of effective studying. It dumbs you down drastically. Meditate, take a walk - do what it takes to unwind.
Anything is better than suddenly realizing that instead of being focused on learning you catch yourself plotting against your boss.

And come to terms with the fact that you'll probably never be able to speak a language like a native speaker. Let go of the ideal you nurture. I know it all too well. I combat my anxieties and fears on a daily basis.

Being ready emotionally

Incite emotions and get excited. Think about all the things you'll be able to do with your newly acquired language! Imagine the world of possibilities! Make it vivid, so vivid that you almost feel that it's real. Get yourself pumped.

Watch some motivational videos (like this one - Rise and Shine) or read an inspiring article.Or maybe create a set list which gets you in the mood. Survivor's "Eye of the tiger" seems like a natural choice here!

2. Create a Supportive Environment

Each one of us should have a safe haven. A place which immediately can be associated with learning.
The place which immediately triggers the willingness to learn in you.

But it's hard. It's hard to draw a distinct line between your working and play space and the one for learning.
Still, try to find yourself a nook you can call your own. Go to café or library if you can't find it under your roof.

Once you have it, get rid of all the potential distractions. Turn off the music*, put aside anything that may distract you.
And don't get too comfy. If you sink into an armchair it will smell your weakness and lure you into the oppressive clutches of sleep!

A supportive environment means also one more thing. Tell your beloved ones to give you some space and keep everything relatively down.

3. Focus And Have a Reminder

Now you have a place where you can learn! Congratulations! There shouldn't be many things left which may distract you.

Next thing on the checklist - stop multitasking. Decrease your cognitive load. Regardless of what you've heard - that's another thing which dumbs you down. If you do two things at once, divide your attention and intelligence by two. It basically makes you equivalent of a retarded shrimp. And I can tell you they're not very good at learning languages.

Get yourself a reminder of why you want to learn. It can be a piece of jewelry given to you by your ancestors/wife/husband. A picture of your dream house. Anything which gets you going is just fine.

If you're single, hang a picture of some person who inspires you.

Whenever you find yourself distracted let your reminder work its magic.

4. Be Regular

The chance is that if you've ever stuck to some routine I don't have to convince you why it's so extremely important to be regular.

If not, let me tell you what has been told thousands of time - it's better to learn 10 minutes per day than to do it once per week for 2 hours.
But why? The numbers don't add up. Well, math is a cruel mistress.

There are dozens of rules which govern learning. One which is (probably) the most important for you is:

Spacing effect - you remember things better if they are distributed over a long time span and the bigger the number of repetitions

If learning each day is not a habit for you, you should do all in your power to develop it.
Set some time aside every day for learning - e.g. 25 min at 19:00.

5. Learn In Small Doses

You might have heard this saying before - learning is a marathon, not a sprint. Truer words have never been said. But ...

When it comes to regular learning, try to slice your learning time into pieces if you plan to learn for more than 1 hour.

We're only human. Our attention span is anything between 20 -40 min. After that time your thoughts start wandering into unknown directions. That's perfectly ok. Just be aware of this fact and prepare beforehand.

Take a 10-minute break every 30 minutes. This is, of course, a mere suggestion.
You have to experiment a bit to see what works for you.

Also, don't forget about the Serial Position Effect. We tend to remember the most items from the beginning and from the end of our studying It means that the more breaks you have the better you take advantage of this phenomenon.

6. Create Systems (and why they beat goals)

I believe that goals are a great starting point. But it's only a first station in your journey.
They won't carry you very far. However, as great as they are, they have their limitations.

Let's assume that your initial goal was to learn 10 words per day or 15 min per day. If you fail to stick to this goal, you'll start feeling bad. "I can't even do this one thing right". Every time you fail, the chance that you'll return to your learning schedule decreases. After some time, caught in despair, you stop learning.

What if you manage to actually follow through? You might be so content with yourself that you'll stop there.

And this is a gist of problems with goals. They limit you in one way or another.

So why are systems better?

A good system is characterized by two things. It facilitates wanted behavior and makes it difficult to yield to unwanted one. Who needs strong will when you have systems?!

Example

I know that I have a very strong inclination to browse various websites after a few minutes of working on my computer. That's why I downloaded the app which blocked these websites for better part of the day (here you can find other blocking apps):

Leechblock - for Mozilla
StayFocusd - for Chrome

Thus, I increased my chance to stay focused while learning. What's more, the only objects which I keep on my desk are books and dictionaries. It considerably decreases the risk of getting distracted.

So go ahead. Think about how you can create the system to facilitate your learning.

7. (Learn How To) Love The Grind

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King

Discover an appreciation for what you have to do. Anybody could learn in perfect conditions. But as I said, it rarely happens. Grit is born out of pain. Every time you force yourself to learn you build your habit. Brick by brick.

And don't compare yourself to others and their progress. Everyone has his own fight to do.
And we all start with different gear and skills.

Just show up. Day by day. That's the secret.

"If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Languages

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