#430 - How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Getting FLUENT in English — Try These 3 Solutions and Start Making Progress in 5 minutes
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You can control the moment when you want to do these things that we covered today. So they're not a distraction. You know, about my phone, I always keep it away from me. Right now it wasn't away from you. Well, not always, I guess, right? I'm joined in a global studio today by the one and only Xenia, our resident lesson wizard.

Oh wow, lesson wizard. I like that. So if you guys watch this lesson until the end, you'll learn how to defeat procrastination. I'm talking about when you plan to practice your English every day, but when it's time to take action, you procrastinate. You get distracted and you do everything else instead of learning. So to help you overcome that, we're going to give you three solutions in this lesson. First, do what needs to be done first thing in the morning. Second, always start small.

And third, create a sense of urgency, a real sense of urgency. And we're also going to give you a bonus tip at the end, a fourth solution there. So, Xenia, let's get started with our first solution here. That is, do what needs to be done first thing in the morning. You know, if you're having this issue of putting things off too much, you know, like the things I really want to do.

Do it first thing in the morning. So you don't have any option. Like it's quite binary. Yes or no. Did you do it first thing? No. So you failed. It's quite simple, right? Yeah. And that's the magic of the morning. Yeah. Because like...

You have time there. It's just like a matter of time management, waking up a little bit earlier. You know, I have a personal example with that. There was a time when I was struggling to find time for my reading. Like by the end of the day, I was really drained. It was like no energy left. It was too late for anything. And like, you know, I could only think about like just, you know, hitting the pillow and sleeping.

But I was really sad about this thing that I couldn't find time to read. That's exactly what I did. I just like, you know, I was still in bed. So actually it's still resting mode. But I would grab a book. That's why I always had it at hand, you know, on my table, that table. And I would read in the morning. So those first 20, 30 minutes in the morning.

And that works. It totally works. It's such a simple tactic. By the way, today we're talking all about procrastination. And not many students may know this word, but the phrasal verb to put off is another one that will be very useful to learn. Right. It's related to procrastination. Could you define that? It's basically a synonym. It means the same thing. If you're procrastinating, you're putting off.

that activity off, you're delaying it, right? By the way, I decided to look up the word procrastination, the etymology of it. So it comes from Latin and it basically means the same thing, putting things off for tomorrow, like literally. Very interesting. Yeah. And I would say you are also an etymology wizard because you're really into it and you know a lot about that. So that is really nice. It's really interesting way to make words stick with you.

So you can remember them like forever if you do that, if you understand where it comes from. So anyway, I said this is a very nice tactic. A tactic is like an action or a strategy to accomplish something. You know, you're a planet, so it's like a tactic.

And the example you gave is really great for English learners too. I think if you want to practice your English, reading is amazing. It gives you a lot of new vocabulary and inspires you with new ideas if what you're reading is practical, is useful for you. But it could also be like a novel. Not necessarily reading. Like, you know, if you don't have enough time in the morning, like let's say your work starts really early or you are not a morning person. So it

Choose something that requires only 10 minutes a day, like reviewing flashcards, let's say, reviewing vocabulary. Yeah, it only takes 10 minutes. With these lessons, right? Because we do have chapters with these lessons. So it's not like it's going to take you

30, 40 minutes with these full lessons, right? All you guys listening and watching, you can go to our app and consume our lessons there in little chapters and in practice the vocabulary that we're using here like tactics or to put off or wizard, as I said, like a lesson wizard. And all these words are going to stick with you. You're going to learn them

Forever so practicing ten minutes a day first thing in the morning simple as that right in fact We're gonna leave the link in the description for all of you guys to access this lesson over there Or can simply search for real-life English on your favorite app store But the link will take you straight to today's lesson on our app. So what else I think you could also maybe listen to a song right just a simple song it's one song and then read the lyrics in English and

If you're not into music, who's not into music, right? But if you're not into music, I guess you could watch a part of an episode of a TV series. And this is what I wanted to say. Like the next action for you guys with this tip of doing what needs to be done first thing in the morning is pick your activity. I highly recommend you guys to do something related to media like music or movies, TV series, books, or podcasts like this one. So pick whatever you want to do.

And in the morning, it's going to be already selected. You just need to do it, right? So you'll be practicing that old saying. Well, I guess not so old. This is from a very nice book that Ethan introduced to me called Hyperfocus. You'll be practicing intention before attention. Oh, what a beautiful phrase. So know what you want to do, your purpose.

before you even try to pay attention to it. If you don't know what you want to pay attention to, how are you going to do that, right? So intention, like be aware of what your intention is and then you can practice attention. And if you're struggling to do that, even if you're struggling to execute, then we can talk about our second solution.

that is always start small. Yeah, yeah. That's a nice one. I think I've heard about it a lot, even from our students, from our community. Here, I really wanted to read a message that I received just today from one of our members in the Fluency Circle.

community. This is Marco from Italy, who's currently living in Australia. And he wrote me when I asked this question in our community, what do you think about procrastination? How do you fight procrastination in your life? And he says that two approaches for tasks are getting an easy win, right? What we just covered, something really easy. Start with the easiest thing. Or eating the frog.

Do you know this expression, Izzy? He actually explains it here. Is it like bite the bullet? It's like bite the bullet. Exactly. Another great phrase. So eating the frog, it's starting with the hardest task.

He says, I usually prefer eating the frog first, but for people who tend to procrastinate, getting an easy win can be a good tactic to build momentum. Another great word here, right? So I really loved that he used this idiom, eating the frog or bite the bullet, like you said. It's tackling the harder thing first because you have energy and you have time and then you have this relief that, oh, now, like,

the hardest part is done, now I can just live my life and do some easier stuff. Right. So there's a small difference, by the way, between eat the frog and bite the bullet, I think. Maybe, like a nuance. Yeah, because when you bite the bullet, that simply means just do it, like Nike's slogan, right? Just do it. Whether you have motivation or not, just do it. Bite the bullet.

Yeah, so one of the reasons why we struggle in our fight with procrastination is because we don't have momentum, right? We are at this state of slowness and inertia, I would even say. If you guys learned physics, you know, inertia is like when you are simply stopped and you're not moving. So it's harder to move because of inertia. That's one of the laws of mechanics, I believe, in physics, right? So...

That applies to habits, right? To overcoming it. So it feels hard because it is hard. How do you overcome it? By starting slow. Any car, any vehicle that you want to start moving, you start slow, right? And then it picks up speed. It gains momentum. That's exactly what that means, right? It accelerates. It gains momentum. Another student wrote that the hardest part is to just get started, right? Making that first step.

Here, I really love reminding myself and my students this beautiful quote about every journey begins with a single step. We just have to make this first step. Yeah, and this is when it's small, when you break down

hard project or difficult project into bite-sized pieces like it gets easier and it's easier also something we covered in our previous lesson that i i did with ethan about habit building we learned that

Once you start doing something, even if it's just for five minutes every day, it's going to affect positively your sense of identity, who you think you are. So you're going to start to feel like, you know, I'm the kind of person who reads in English every day. And that's powerful. If you believe in that, you know, I am the kind of person who reads in English every day and you do it. You start believing it by honoring it. Right. With the daily action of doing that, even if it's for just five minutes every

Your mind is not going to judge yourself and be like, oh, five minutes? That doesn't count. It's not going to do that. It will believe you because it's true, right? Five minutes is a lot. If you think about it, five minutes a day, every day, that's 35 minutes a week. If you amp that up to 10 minutes, that's 70 minutes, right? And in 70 minutes in a month, you read almost...

Entire book. Yeah. The more time you have, the better, the quicker you'll do it. It's just I'm talking it because I have only 50 pages left in a book that I'm currently reading. And this is a 900 page book, which I started in December. But that's all thanks to exactly this. I don't have like an hour every day for my reading.

But every day counts. And even if I have just 10 minutes, I read it. So it's been almost two months now and I think I'm finishing it this week. I'm so happy about it. And that's exactly the example of small steps every day. Anyway, so there's a couple more examples based on what we learned from the first solution of

focusing on the morning routine, right? Starting doing it first thing in the morning. If you're listening to a song and you think that listening and activating your English with this song takes too long, because by the way, activating is super important, right? If you're just passively listening, that's good, right? You have some immersion in English every day, but if you're going to take advantage of it, you'll be looking at the lyrics and be like, Hmm, a nice word here. And I like the way they pronounce this, right? Um,

And if you think that's taking too long, practice the thing you're saying here. Always start small. So make that half a song or a TV series. Make it a scene. You know, it doesn't matter. That's the beauty of this. And for the next action, the very next thing that you guys should do if you want to take this lesson seriously and start really defeating procrastination with it is make your own habit tracker. Create your own habit.

This is a sheet of paper that you're going to just mark off each day where you complete a habit that helps a lot with these daily actions if they're small and it's super easy to create these, right? I love all those trackers. I use the app that tracks my reading. It's so satisfying to go there at the end of the month and see that every day is marked with the book cover. Like you see that you read it every day. Love that thing. So motivational and it like really, really helps.

You don't want to skip a day. That's why so many apps have streaks. Yeah, you don't want to skip a day. Like the real life app again, right? We also give you the chance to set up notifications so you can remind yourselves if you're in a practice with our lessons. Oh, and by the way, there is a really nice quote.

that I love, which is Standardize Before You Optimize, which has everything to do with this. This is from favorite author, James Clear. I always talk about him. Atomic Habits. His book, yeah, his previous lesson. I talk about it all the time. I need to start talking about something else. But really, I'm doing this because this is a nice, this lesson that we're doing today is a nice follow-up to the one that I did with Ethan because we're

It's great to have a plan, but what if you're procrastinating? Then you need to address that. But what does it mean? Can you explain like in human language, what does it mean? Standardize before optimize? Like a robot kind of thing? No, I mean, it's like difficult to understand what it means. Yeah. Standardize is when you make something standard, when you make it regular, right? Make it regular, make it like a daily habit. For example, we always say this, like make English a daily habit, make it a part of your life.

So standardize before you even try to optimize, to increase it, to make it even more optimal.

bigger, more powerful, more efficient, more productive. Don't worry about that. Optimize first. I'm sorry. Standardize first. As you said, this comes from Atomic Habits. You know, the funny thing is, is that our Japanese student, a student from Japan, from our Fluency Circle, shared with us that she learned the word procrastination exactly in that book by James Clear in Atomic Habits. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah, we're talking about it again, second time already in two lessons because it's the beginning of the year, right? It's a great moment to really dive into all this knowledge about behavioral psychology so we can make this year different for you guys, right? I think we always set goals, but we don't know how to address the issues when they come up. So it's important to learn that and

start changing our lives for real and you know the beginning of the year also creates this urgency i know that's the third step you want to bring now right there you go yeah yeah creating a real sense of urgency and i would even say a sense of responsibility there's a very nice ted talk uh with tim urban we recently showed that as well in another lesson where it's this guy who was sharing his story when he was in college that he had to deliver a paper you know like a thesis

And he would always procrastinate and he'd have like months to work on it, but he'd only actually work on it when he had three days left to deliver it. And we always do that, but we end up doing it anyway. So how can we create a real sense of urgency earlier? Right. Or in this case, there's nothing really pressuring us to do it. Right. Like to learn English. What's going to happen if you don't learn English? So maybe...

Nothing serious, but, you know, your dreams will remain dreams, you know, and the life of your dreams, as I said in the beginning, learn how to use your English as a doorway to the life of your dreams. That's never going to happen. So how can you actually do that? Create a real sense of urgency. And I know we have the perfect example of that yourself because you're sharing with me your 30 day challenge to learn German.

Those 30 days or seven days challenges are my thing. I always look forward for something like that because it really works for me and I think it can work for many people when they take this seriously. Why they work for me because

First of all, again, the thing with streaks, I don't want to skip a day. Then it creates for me kind of a structure. So I have 30 days and I have to do something every single day to mark it as, okay, challenge complete. This time it's related to German. As you said, the beginning of the year, I thought, okay, what are my plans for this year? And

I think I shared it earlier in some episodes that I majored in English, but my second language back in the uni was German. And right now it feels so frustrating that I haven't been using my German since...

university for these all 15 years and I thought what a shame I should somehow come back to it that's what I do that's how I started January so January 6th was the first day of my 30 day challenge and yesterday I attended a zoom call celebration for completing the challenge I made all 30 days I'm so super proud I'll tell you more about this in future episodes because yesterday I was

I was taken off guard. I wasn't prepared for this, but I spoke German for the very first time in 15 years in breakout rooms with other learners. That was crazy. I wasn't prepared at all, but that was so much fun. Wow. Now you said you were taken or caught off guard, right? In that situation. What does that mean?

When you're caught off guard, you are taken by surprise. You don't expect things that are coming. Yeah. There's a nice pronunciation there, though, with the connected speech, like a caught off, caught off, caught off. And then guard is kind of advanced, the pronunciation of the word, because you would assume that's like a guard or something like that, right? Especially for Portuguese and Spanish speakers, I guess we could...

I guess we could say that. So yeah, caught off guard. But this is really nice. So you created a program for yourself that would create this pressure. And something that I remember that I did and I still do from time to time this year right now, I'm doing exactly that, is I have an accountability partner.

Do you know what that is? An accountability partner? That is awesome. Yeah. So basically you're asking one of your friends, if you're lucky to have those friends who can become your accountability buddies or just a co-worker you're working closely with so that they keep you accountable. Yeah. They track your progress. They are asking you about, okay, EZ, did you read yesterday or something like that?

Very nice. Yeah. That's exactly what accountability is, right? When you do what you say you want to do and people expect you to have that. So you have accountability in that situation. Right. And it really could say it lights a fire, you know, under under my ass. I would say when there is this kind of pressure.

And it's nice because I get other people involved. I think the secret in this is exactly because you're getting other people involved, people who care that you do that. So the next action for this is exactly this. If you want to, let's say you want to put into practice some of the things we already shared, right? Read a book or watch a TV series, watch this podcast and practice with it. Don't just choose a friend to be your accountability partner, I would say.

For example, if you are married, if you guys like watching, listening to this right now, if you're married, maybe your partner is a perfect person to do that because you improve your English. You know how much that can impact your professional life. You know, your family's life can get better.

So that person will seriously, you know, care and count on you to, hey, what's going on? Like, oh, didn't you say you're going to do that? If that's not the case, I say if you live with your parents, the same thing. They know how that can be a great thing for you and maybe you'll be able to

get a job or if you already have a job to get a better job or just improve your life in general. So choose somebody to be your accountability partner that is not just a friend, but somebody who truly cares and is with you in that journey somehow. I think that is a very nice trick. In my case, I'm reading books with Ethan

I forgot to mention the example that I had, who my accountability partner is, right, is Ethan. And I've read several books with him or that he had already read. And I committed to do that so I could discuss the books with him. So that was really nice. So set a weekly deadline.

So you can discuss that with that person, you know? And if you use the habit tracker, it's going to be great because I have to show them, here's the habit tracker. You know, like, oh, I'm not doing it. I said I would do it, but I'm not. Okay, what's happening then? They can ask you and you can reflect, like, okay, if I'm not doing these, it's because maybe I'm not starting small, right? So you can...

put all of these solutions into practice. That's all so nice what you're sharing, but I really wanted to take us back two minutes before when you shared this funny expression, something with firing your ass. Is it the same with kicking a butt or something like that? Maybe I didn't catch that.

Yeah, no, that was kind of vulgar. Sorry if you guys weren't prepared to hearing that kind of expression here today. But to light a fire under somebody or under their ass, which is quite like you can kind of imagine it, right? That is urgency. Yeah, exactly. They're going to start moving, right? They're not going to stay where they are. So...

And having an accountability partner is great for that. So I promised in the beginning of the lesson that we would have a bonus tip, a bonus exercise or solution for you guys. And this one is managing distractions. Distractions are always present, especially these days. We didn't talk about them. These are the real enemies. These are the things why we are procrastinating, right? The distractions. How do you manage your distractions, Xenia? I turn my enemies into my...

How do you say that? Allies. Exactly. Why I do that? The opposite of enemy. Why am I saying this? Is because coming back to my 30 day challenge. Social media is a huge challenge.

distracting thing but I used Instagram to post my daily assignment in this 30-day challenge that was my accountability body so I just turned my enemy into an ally there you go yeah

Social media can be a social media used to be a good thing, right? It used to be synonymous with friendships and good vibes. And these days the keywords are different, right? Cause like distraction and, um, time killers, psychological issues and all of that, that kind of sucks, right? But you can change that anxiety. Yeah. That's why I keep Mira, my 10 year old daughter away from social media as long as I can. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah. But the thing about distractions that I find interesting is that there's two types of distraction. I learned that from Ethan because he read the book Hyperfocus. We were talking about it the other day. And he said to me,

There's internal and external distractions. So external distractions are the ones that obviously they come from the outside, like phone notifications. Exactly. Like other people at home, if you live with other people, how can you manage that? Well, it's possible because you can know the patterns, right? Or you can control them somehow. Maybe if you have kids, maybe you could get up earlier.

If that's possible, maybe it's not possible. But if it is, or when they're not at home, you can control the moment when you want to do these things that we covered today. So they're not a distraction. And about your phone, you know, about my phone, I always keep it away from me, right? Like when I'm working. Right, now it wasn't away from you. Well, not always, I guess, right? You're keeping me honest again. But the thing is, I keep it away from me when I'm...

Trying to do focused work. Trying to focus. That is not the podcast. Yeah. Have it here with me for the podcast because I use it. You know what I use? I use Pomodoro technique, you know, so it also keeps me focused, right?

There you go. Yeah. So the solution for that is plan ahead how to avoid those. There's always a way, right, to avoid those external distractions. And for internal distractions, usually these are thoughts because you're not focused. So whatever thought comes to mind, like if you have a notebook, you can just like a thought comes and then you're like, okay, you write it down.

push it away and say like i'll deal with you in 10 minutes in 15 minutes and really forget about it right anyway um just to close this lesson uh i came across a video yesterday xenia that was super nice now this is from another author we talked a lot about james clear today but this is from stephen pressfield author of the book war of art none

Not the Art of War, which is another book. We may have heard about that one, but War of Art. People may confuse those, right? Yeah. War of Art is a book for...

Well, knowledge workers, I would say primarily, but all people who want to overcome distractions and overcome resistance. This is an expression that he came up with. I mean, the word resistance exists, but he calls resistance with a capital R, this new concept, as an invisible force that tries to stop you from doing anything meaningful. You know, whether it's like learning a language or going to the gym or doing any creative work, it shows up as procrastination, excuses, self-sabotage,

And it's really nice. And there's a secret that resistance never really goes away. You think like you won the battle one day and the next day you fail. That's why I have this roller coaster. Roller coaster is like that crazy train on parks, themed parks. So roller coasters going up and down. If you feel like your life is a little bit like that, maybe because you feel like you've won the battle against resistance, against procrastination one day, the next day you'll fail.

Never fail. It's a battle. It's a never-ending battle, but you can master that battle. Let's check out the video where he says some things about it. There seems to be a force in the world that is a negative force against any dream that we would have, saying, let's not do this today. Let's go have a drink. Let's go to the beach. Let's do something else. And it also would say things like,

who do you think you are to tackle this project? You have no experience. All of those self-sabotage things. An analogy that I always use is if the dream is a tree, resistance is the shadow. And as soon as the tree appears, the shadow appears, right? So it's that negative force that prevents us or is trying to prevent us. And it seems to me

that overcoming resistance is far more important than talent or anything else. Any gift. There are a million people who have talent, but very, very few that can sit down and take it all the way from A to Z. And to look at it in the positive way- Yeah.

Resistance to me is sort of like the villain in a movie. If there were no villain, there'd be no movie. So resistance sort of gives meaning to everything. If it was just there and all we had to do was pick it up,

What would be the point of that? And there's no great stories to tell then too. Yeah. Right? So resistance really gives significance, I think, to the fact that it is so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He is using the same word as you used that I wanted to ask you to define it, like self-sabotaging. What does it mean? Yeah. That is, sounds like psychology, right? You hear that a lot in, maybe if you go to a psychologist's

It's when you do something that goes against yourself. You are setting yourself up for failure. It's another expression that I find interesting. But you're doing that in a way that almost feels like purposeful, that you're doing that intentionally. But it's not intentional a lot of times, right? But you just have that habit of doing that because maybe you don't believe in yourself or simply because of resistance, as he says. So we procrastinate. We know what we need to do.

but we procrastinate as this tendency of self-sabotage. It's like, oh, you know, let me just watch this random TikTok video here. It's harmless, right? It's not going to do anything bad to me if I just spend five minutes doing that, but you're going to lose momentum, right? You're going to lose concentration if you do that. So why do that to yourself? But that keeps happening because of this invisible force, as he says.

That's an interesting and it opens up the whole thing for the future discussion because some people say that it's okay to procrastinate. Actually, there is something good in it, but that's a totally different topic. It depends on which angle you choose. Something new I learned recently is about this diffuse thinking.

So really you have to interchange this really high focus with some rest with diffuse thinking. So really need to take that trust. It's just like the important thing is not to confuse diffuse thinking, diffuse mode with procrastination. It's very important point.

This is also something that Ethan taught me. Same book that he read, Hyperfocus. It's a very short book. And our producer, T, he also read it. I know he's a fan of that. And that is the fact that productivity, people think productivity is like doing many things, you know, several things at the same time, maybe. But the thing is, productivity is just doing the thing that you set out to do, that you plan to do.

So if you're planning to rest, rest. But do plan to rest. It's important. If you're planning to be on your phone, be on your phone 100% present there. When you are distracted and not really accomplishing, not really resting, not feeling rested when we are done resting, it wasn't a productive resting moment. So yeah, sometimes procrastination doesn't need to...

be procrastination if you are intentionally just, you know, relaxing. Very nice lesson, Xenia. This feels like it's about so much more than English, right? Which is important, I think, for just focus on English, like grammar and even vocabulary. We love vocabulary. We think it matters a lot. It's a building block of fluency or like connected speech is also important. But we also need to learn how to manage ourselves, right? Because there's

this aspect of mindset and self-knowledge, self-awareness that is really super, super important. Thank you so much, Izzy, for bringing this wonderful clip for us and for always bringing those recommendations. I think that many students appreciate it when we are not only helping them to learn English, but also bring all those

nice content, right? Books and videos so that they could grow, develop together with improving their English here in this podcast. And yes, guys, if you're enjoying and learning a lot with these lessons, please support us. If you're here on YouTube, you can subscribe to this channel, hit the bell down below and give this video a like because

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So thanks so much, Xenia, for joining me in today's lesson. And thank all of you guys who also joined us listening and watching. And remember, as we always say on this podcast, that no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. 1, 2, 3. Aww yeah!