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16 Months of Language Time Tracking: My Secret to Persevere
Perseverance is easy, but this is the hard part.
I’ve logged 2,043 language-learning hours over the past 16 months, an average of 4.1 hours per day. Assuming 8 hours of sleep per day, that means 25% of my waking life was spent learning languages.
How did I discover an endeavor I was “jumping out of bed” in the morning for? And how did I persevere for so long and so consistently, particularly with the Finnish language?
In my last 1-year update, I talked about how self-worth is just a construct. You can read more about this here:
1 Year of Language Time Tracking: My Biggest Hard Truths
This time, I want to talk about why it’s so hard to persevere. On the surface, perseverance seems easy. “Just show up” is constantly reiterated by motivational influencers. If everyone “just showed up,” wouldn’t we all know our target languages by now?
Something is missing from our preconceived notions about perseverance.
Little did I know that there’s a hidden secondary mechanism behind perseverance.
