You’re not “too busy,” you just don’t want to learn a language that badly

Chris Eubanks
5 min readSep 4, 2023
Photo by Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash

One of the top questions I get about my language journey is how I squeeze so many hours into a busy schedule. Aspiring learners want to know with work, family, and social obligations, how they can steal more hours from their day. At the time of writing, I am averaging 4.6 hours of language immersion per day. I maintained this effort through both full-time employment and unemployment. Employment has made almost no difference. When I have so little time, I squeeze every 15 minute opportunity. When I have a ton of available time, I get lazy and squander the hours away. You can see my timesheets graphed cumulatively here:

My time tracking system for language learning time in Google Sheets.

I strongly recommend keeping timesheets to hold yourself accountable. I include my own Google Sheets template you can use for yourself in my other article:

Language learning: how timesheets supercharged my progress

It’s easier on your ego to believe a language is unattainable rather than making small adjustments to your daily routine

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Chris Eubanks

Language learner. Rapidly learning the Finnish language. Follow me for specific knowledge to speed up your language journey.