Atomic Habits, Resolutions, and Polyitis

[@futurez12]

It's absolutely true that the deeper you get into a language, and the better you become, the _more_ time you have to spend on it to make further gains. People definitely believe the opposite is true. That early stage from zero to intermediate is by far the quickest progress you'll make Vs the time spent.

[@ProfASAr]

100% true!

[@bm8814]

Yes, but at the beginning stages, you have to put forth deliberate and strenuous effort to study. With a language that you are at the intermediate stage, you should have integrated it into your life, making your gains kind of "automatic" and natural. For example, conversing 1-2 hours per day in your target language with your friends, reading purely out of enjoyment in your target language, etc.

[@Christopher_Stead]

A few months ago I re-watched the video on "back and forth study" and have found using 15-minute time blocks to be very best thing I've done for time management. I had assumed, wrongly, that jumping between tasks with such short intervals would negatively affect my concentration, but it has had precisely the effect described - namely it keeps each task fresh and reduces the risk of boredom and distraction. One of my primary goals this year is to improve in both languages and mathematics, and rotating between them in this fashion has proved to be such a simple and effective means of studying, I'm annoyed with myself for not having attempted it sooner!

[@ProfASAr]

Wonderful to hear and glad to help!

[@gabriel-x7x9g]

Thank you for the video, Professor Arguelles. I've been introduced to you recently. Since then I've been following your work. You have encouraged me to learn languages. I specially appreciate even more your more recently activity on youtube. That was a great move and I bet it's bearing great fruits. James Clear is teaching in his book something that the aristotelian and thomistic moral philosophy has been teaching for centuries. Which is the existence of habits. Habits are repeated actions. Good habits are virtues and bad habits are vices. There are human virtues that constitute a man's character like prudence, temperance, studiosity, patience and intellectual virtues that are pursued in relationship to the intellectual activity, it's operation and objects. Aristotle tells us there are four main human virtues or moral virtues (Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude) that are subdivided into specific acts, according to the object and nature of the action. Saint Thomas Aquinas develops this doctrine even further and gives us his Ethic of Virtues. He systematizes the subvirtues of each moral virtue, resulting in around 64 subvirtues that belong to the main four, including it's opposite vice (for example: we have modesty as a virtue and imodesty, it's opposite, as a vice.)

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you for the appreciation, and for pointing out the deep Thomistic / Aristotelian roots of the force of habit.

[@gabriel-x7x9g]

@@ProfASAr And thank you for being responsive, Professor.

[@words-in-context]

Thank you for recommending the principles in James Clear's Atomic Habits for language learning. I've been wondering how to apply them. It's inspiring to have someone of your stature say how useful they are and to suggest a course of action.

[@ProfASAr]

You are very welcome. I hope this is helpful for you.

[@scienfish]

This was a terrific video and I want to say thank you for mentioning that even those with a high level proficiency in many languages like yourself struggle with making strategies to tackle various language learning desires. For myself, working on getting to literary proficiency in just my second and third language, it's been difficult to keep those plans and promises that I set. I just finished reading Atomic Habits for the first time last month and it seemingly primed my mind for taking everything back to a more rudimentary approach to keeping current in the languages I know while pushing them just slightly beyond my comfort level. Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Always an inspiration

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you for the appreciation. I am glad it was useful!

[@chadprivett1143]

Gratias, Magister, et tibi quoque Felicem Annum Novum!

[@ProfASAr]

Tibi quoque!

[@TheJesusNerd40]

This is highly useful. I need to read this book. Thank you, Dr. Arguelles. Happy New Year and Jesus bless you!

[@ProfASAr]

Same to you!

[@rato_gordo]

Im really glad to find your channel. Few days ago i bought a "learn spanish" book. Will do the 15minutes practice. My goal is to have a second and third languages. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@ProfASAr]

You are very welcome. Best of luck to you in your studies.

[@LiamPorterFilms]

Following the advice contained in your videos back in 2012, I also tracked my time in 15 minute chunks for my first and, to a lesser extent, second foreign languages. I counted over 1000 hours for the former and some 500 hours for the latter. It was useful at the time, but with the third language, I had become tired of this approach, and had long since stopped counting with my existing languages. I now prefer a daily obligation "to complete two tasks of roughly 30 minutes work each for the current language I am learning", as a rule of thumb which is also vague enough to be enlivening to the learning process.

[@ProfASAr]

Thanks for sharing. It is natural and normal for one's study style to grow and evolve with time.

[@MsMetalslave]

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy 2022. I'm looking forward to more lectures about polyliteracy from you and Merlin in the New Year.

[@ProfASAr]

Same to you, and these will be forthcoming.

[@okazakibuddhist]

I missed this video when you first posted it, but I'm going back and trying to catch up here a bit. I love this advice. It is very similar to what I have often taught. In my own teaching, I usually tell my students to try to "touch" their target language (which is usually English or Japanese, depending on the student) for at least 5 minutes per day, every single day. And I often compare languages to a feather floating down, and that daily touch is blowing the feather up, but it just keeps drifting down again, so we really want to "touch" it as often as possible, but at least once per day. I suggest 5 minutes, but after a few weeks increase that to ten, fifteen, and eventually twenty, which is the number I had always settled on in the past. "Baby steps, baby steps". I stole the phrase from the movie "What About Bob" (a silly comedy, but that one bit of advice given from the straight man in the film jumped out at me when I first saw it). Anyway, I am glad to see you also give this advice and to hear about it in this book. I will order this book to read what he says. Anyway, thanks as usual for the great video! (apologies if this is more of a ramble and not terribly useful)

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you, you Dave, it is always useful to me to hear from fellow teachers that I am not the only one giving the kind of advice that I do, taking the kind of approach that I do...

[@cognosco493]

Happy New Year! Keep up the great linguistic work - we all appreciate your generous contributions!

[@ProfASAr]

Thanks, you too! I appreciate the appreciation!

[@cognosco493]

@@ProfASAr Do you have an email by which I can ask you questions?

[@polyronin]

Best wishes for you and your family. 😊

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you and likewise!

[@Chris-lc5vf]

Started reading Atomic Habits at least after reading this, I must say that I agree. I've kept my Assimil Spanish nearby at all times to work on in my bag and bedside. It really cut down on the friction and excuses for not having it with me to practice with.

[@ProfASAr]

Great to hear, Chris.

[@azhivago2296]

Another wonderfully helpful video, thank you! Very best wishes for the new year!

[@ProfASAr]

Same to you!

[@jrdking1]

Happy New Years!!! Appreciate the sage advice as always. I can relate with this conundrum, your eloquent video provided a fresh perspective to my approach that will greatly support my Polyitis in 2022, благодарам многу 😁👍🏻

[@ProfASAr]

Same to you, and very glad to help!

[@ProfASAr]

Beginning in May of 2022, I will offer virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, to engage in Great Books discussions, and to provide support for the self-study of foreign languages. If these might interest you, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.

[@Yan_Alkovic]

Happy New Year to you, too, Professor! Very good advice, indeed, I myself have found that getting oneself mentally primed for an activity overtime is a really great way to lessen the burden of the new habit that you're forming. Funnily enough, I decided to start implementing a language rotation scheme just today, where every 5 days (my Excel spreadsheet is broken up into rows of 5 days, so it's easier for me to keep track of it that way) I will switch one 15-minute slot between languages that I have dropped for one reason or another. That's a language-related Resolution, of sorts.

[@ProfASAr]

Let me know how it works for you!

[@levonbudge4266]

helen abadzi did an amazing lecture (perhaps one of the few worth watching) at the polyglot conference and she touched on relearning old languages... the trick is using your old textbook... these efficiently reopens your neural pathways since the order of presentation has been encoded into your long term memory. If you were to run through your assimil or linguaphone text or whatever you used, you'd be suprised how well the brain reconsolidates infomation you previously believed lost. Her lecture btw: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nV6UoHt_o8qGhNk

[@ProfASAr]

Thanks for this. Indeed, I have long since noticed that if I do get out an old well-worn manual and dust it off, it is almost as if I had not aborted it. The problem is, I need to let it go... not bring it back!

[@whr840]

Thank you Levon, it looks interesting. 🙏🏻🌸

[@The_Lord_Of_Confusion]

good advice, will check that book, thank you

[@ProfASAr]

I hope it helps!

[@changeluhia]

Gëzuar vitin e ri!

[@ProfASAr]

Edhe ti!

[@Ruslan1989o]

To learn a language, record your voice on the phone, saying the words and sentences you learn every day. Then you need to listen to the audio recording several times a day. Because the human brain recognizes its own voice, it sends it to the memory without thinking. is a method I have proven on languages Islam.s from Azerbaijan

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you for your comment. Indeed, listening to recordings of one's own voice does have some real benefits.

[@Walinator]

Hello, Thank you for the great video! I had a question for both the Professor and other commentors. I am currently studying Arabic (I already am fluent in English and Farsi) and I am currently contemplating an immersive, overseas study of it, specifically looking at the Qasid Institute in Jordan. The question is, at what level should I be (ideally) in order to fully benefit from an immersive program like this? Would I be better off saving my money and continuing intensive self-study on my own this summer and instead go next year or would going this year be ideal? With regards to my level of Arabic, I would say I am still a beginner since, even though I've been studying for a year, it only got consistently intense in the last few weeks. That means, if I continue intensive self study over the next several months, I should be at an intermediate level by the summer.

[@futurez12]

I've heard a lot of polyglots and bilingual people say that immersion works best when you have a solid intermediate-advanced level. I guess it's the same reason you don't jump into authentic content like novels when you're still a beginner (A1-2/weak B1), because it's just too much of a stretch for your level to get much out of it. I suppose the closer to i+1 you can get, the better; immersion in the country only becomes i+1, or close to it, when you're at around a B2 level. That said, it's not to say that you won't get _anything_ from it, afterall, we were all thrown in at the deep end, starting from zero, for at least one language. But back then we had the time, and the perfect environment, to flourish.

[@bofbob1]

Personally I don't think there's any right answer to that. If you want to go and you can, then go. :-) No need to overthink it. In my book, "fully benefiting" from an in-country program like that has very little to do with your level, and much more to do with your attitude and what you decide to do outside of class. It can be extremely enriching just as it can be a complete waste of time. It all comes down to the individual. If you do go, my personal experience is that you're better off maximizing interaction with locals. It can be tempting to stay with your group of fellow students. Don't. Spend as little time as you can with them (within the boundaries of politeness of course). If there are options to live with locals, do that. If there are no such options and instead they put you in a dorm with the other students, make it a point to have some daily social habit outside. Maybe a coffee shop, a cafeteria, etc. Go there every day at the same time and interact as best you can. Jot down bits and pieces that you hear. Smaller establishments are better, as they attract regulars and it's easier to interact with them since they get used to you (as opposed to larger establishments where the clientele is constantly changing). Do your homework there, rather than at home, and use that homework as an excuse to interact with people ("does this look right to you?"). A lot of people will find it funny (don't forget to leave your ego at the door!) and engaging, and will end up helping you. Buy them a coffee (or whatever!) as thanks, which will then lead to further interaction. I attribute at least half of my initial progress in Spanish (I went as a complete beginner) not to the program I was in, but to the life I lived outside class. And what that life looks like is entirely up to the student. Even if science somehow managed to prove beyond all doubt that immersion isn't that effective in the early stages of language learning, tbh I still wouldn't trade that experience for the world.

[@ProfASAr]

In general, I think it makes more sense to go for a short immersion stay after you are about intermediate. You'll get the most out of it then.

[@eugen_lah]

a video about sacrifices would be very useful,because it`s not that easy to let a language go or to put it on hold because of another language

[@ProfASAr]

Thank you for the good suggestion. I will consider it!

[@el.don1975]

Feel free to do a 15min assimil lesson here. I would live to see you in action. In that 15 min do you follow the program as suggested?

[@ProfASAr]

Note and done!

[@totalityoffacts]

You talk a lot about your learning routine but your main goal, if I understood you correctly, is to readclassical work in the original. With that many languages to maintain and improve via textbook materials, I wonder how much time is left for the actual reading or higher register literature? Do you also have a log of the books written in a particular year? How many books do you read per year on average? And what's the distribution between the languages? Say, you read 40 book last year of which 10 in French, 10 in German, 5 in Russian, 10 in Italian etc. Looking forward to hearing from you!

[@ProfASAr]

I don't use textbook materials myself anymore for Romance or Germanic languages, but rather for exotic ones (Russian, Arabic, etc.). For German, French, Spanish, Latin, etc., all I do is read literature and/or listen to audiobooks. I'm not sure about numbers, but I try to keep a relatively even balance between those big four, with an occasional foray into Swedish, Dutch, Italian, etc.

[@Christopher_Stead]

I meant to ask you recently - how is your resolution coming along??

[@ProfASAr]

Thanks for asking. It morphed from doing a few minutes/one page of several each day to doing about 15 minutes (surprise!) / several pages of just one each day, which is progress over the past few years.

[@yohanan5769]

I'm going to learn french in order to be able to study La Mystification de Leo Taxil 1891-1897

[@ProfASAr]

That is a great reason!

[@MarkErrington]

I'm going to learn French in order to read Proust, Dumas and Hugo in the original.

[@carlosf.rodrigues4018]

Thank you very much, I have been having problems learning french for weeks and with these advice I think I will be able to learn the language more productively, do you recommend any specific french exercise book?

[@ProfASAr]

Please watch the current intermediate level video and you will see some very good exercise books in it.

[@carlosf.rodrigues4018]

@@ProfASAr Thank you very much for your attention and for responding so quickly, I will check the video right now.

[@dowolo]

Are you saying that you can just crack open a book in a language you haven't read for years and start reading it? What kind of black magic is behind this?

[@ProfASAr]

Indeed I can, with languages like Italian, Portuguese, Medieval French; or Swedish, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. I.e., those Romance and Germanic in which A) I do have specific reading experience and B) that are quite close to languages that I still read regularly. Of course, when I do this, it gets easier the more I do, but I have no trouble starting off in any of them. Magic? Merlin must be behind it...

[@cloeye32]

Сном новый годом друг

[@ProfASAr]

Также!

[@Algazhan]

I like the idea of advanced begginer😂

[@ProfASAr]

It makes sense, does it not?