What Happens When You Make These Goal Setting Mistakes
In one of my previous posts, I talked a bit about goal setting and habit building, and why it’s important to identify both in your language learning routine. When we set out to learn languages, one of the first things we do is think about our goal. We ask ourselves, ”What is the destination we want to reach in our language learning journey?”
And what often happens is we set to reach that destination, thinking that once we do, we’ll be done and we can move on to something else. This mindset was one of the many mistakes I’ve made in my language studies.
(If you want to read about other mistakes I’ve made in my language studies, you can check out this post or this one, where I share even MORE ).
I want to continue to share them with you, so you can avoid making the same mistakes I did.
So, in this post, I want to talk about:
- 5 Mistakes I’ve made when establishing goals in my routine.
- Why these mistakes prevented me from staying consistent.
- What you can do to avoid making similar mistakes.
Mistake #1: Not Setting Any Goals
There was a time in my language studies when I decided I wasn’t going to set any goals at all. I’d tried writing down my goals and working towards them, only to get overwhelmed and quit. It felt like I was trying to reach for the impossible, so I tried just “going with the flow”.
This meant I studied what I wanted, whenever motivation struck.
…and this also meant that there were many days at a time when I just didn’t study at all.
It was a mess, honestly.
I had no direction, and I felt like I was going nowhere.
Why?
Because goals give you direction. Instead of knowing what I wanted to strive for, my language learning routine looked a bit like this:
- Study random vocabulary I found from a list online.
- Listen to random videos on Youtube to “Boost” my listening skills.
- Avoid studying for days because I didn’t know what to do next.
- Pick up a random textbook I had and start from the beginning (again).
Like I said, it was a mess.
So, how can you avoid this mistake?
Goals are not meant to stifle your language studies. If you’re feeling a lack of freedom in your routine, it’s most likely because you don’t have any personal connection to the goals you’ve decided on.
Are you making plans to take a language proficiency test —one that you don’t want to take— simply because others say you should?
Are you forcing yourself to practice speaking in your target language when all you want to do is read books and understand them?
When you set goals for yourself, the most important thing to keep in mind is this:
Make your goals PERSONAL.
If you don’t have a strong enough reason for doing it, chances are you’re going to do everything you can to avoid it.
Mistake #2: Focusing Completely On Goals
Like with many things in life, too much of something can be just as harmful as not enough.
And it’s the same with goals.
When I realized NOT setting goals left me drifting in my studies with no purpose, I decided I needed to reverse my process. This time, I would set very clear, very specific goals for myself so I knew exactly what to do.
The problem here was I wanted to do #allofthethings. I wanted to improve my reading in Japanese, and my kanji recognition. I wanted to get better at speaking and writing as well.
And I wanted to improve those same skills in the 4 other languages I was learning at the same time.
As you probably might expect, things became overwhelming very quickly.
It wasn’t the act of studying multiple languages that made things challenging for me.
It was the fact that I wasn’t pacing myself. Instead, I wanted to rush through each study session and spend tons of time trying to get to where I wanted to be fast.
This didn’t work in my favor. I quickly became burned out, and once again, stopped studying for a period of time.
So, how can you avoid this mistake?
Here’s something I want you to know: Learning a language isn’t a race.
It’s not meant to be a sprint to the end.
And really, even when you reach fluency, you’ll always have more to learn.
What you want to do instead is find your “middle ground”. Ask yourself, “How much direction do you personally need in your language studies?” and then do exactly that.
And I always recommend breaking your goals into smaller action steps so they’re easier to manage.
Mistake #3: Not Tracking Progress
Another mistake I made with my goal setting was not keeping track of my progress. I didn’t check in with myself regularly to see how I was progressing with my goals, and adjust or change things that just weren’t working for me.
Or sometimes I did check-in…but only for about a week.
And then I couldn’t keep up with the habit.
Because tracking your progress IS absolutely a habit you have to build in your system.
This isn’t something you can decide on and just do. Especially if you are in a similar position to how I started—having never tracked your habits before.
It’s like remembering to journal every night, or to update your calendar or your budget. Or reminding yourself to start exercising for an hour every day when you’ve never exercised regularly before.
It’s a HABIT that you create. It’s ACTIONS that support the life you want to live. And so it’s a mistake to expect that you can go from zero to 100.
So, how can you avoid this mistake?
Start small, and absolutely keep track of your progress! Pay attention to what you study, when, and for how long.
And I don’t mean that you have to time yourself or anything. The goal here is to notice how much time is spent actually studying and how much of it is aimlessly scrolling through your feed, or “setting up your notebook”.
When you notice all of these things about your studies, you are better able to see if you’re going in the direction you want to. AND you are better able to recognize your wins and hold yourself accountable.
Mistake #4: Unrealistic Expectations
I know I’m not the only one who has attempted to reach a large goal in a short amount of time.
Just think about how many times you’ve seen the words “Learn X in 30 days.”
An entire language?
In a month?
Language learning is a complex journey, and to put that kind of pressure on yourself is asking for a stressful experience.
When I used to have this mindset, I didn’t realize that you couldn’t just sit down, complete some exercises in a textbook, and BOOM, become fluent.
Each skill (reading, writing, listening, speaking) requires different strategies, and it requires time.
And this doesn’t even include learning vocabulary and grammar.
…or if you’re learning a language with its own written characters, learning THAT too.
So, how can you avoid this mistake?
There are two things you can do to avoid the stress and frustration of unrealistic expectations:
- Break your goals up into smaller “tiny goals”.
- BETA test your goals.
When you break your larger goals into smaller ones, you give yourself multiple opportunities to see what’s working and what’s not working. You get to test out a new app for two weeks or so, and realize it’s not working quickly, which is much faster than committing to using that tool and realizing it doesn’t work months later.
And, when you test out your goals, you give yourself a chance to see if the time frame or deadline you set to achieve your goal is realistic or not. This means that you’ve shifted your mindset from “I have to do X to achieve Y” to “I’m going to try out X to see if it takes me in the direction of Y”.
It subconsciously keeps your eyes peeled for those quick wins.
You’ll start to ask yourself more questions about your study session, like “Did I learn one new word from that Memrise deck this week? One that I didn’t know before I started?”
If the answer is yes, you know to add it to your official routine. If it didn’t help, you quickly know to let that go, and try something else.
And there’s no frustration because you were simply gathering data.
Mistake #5: Comparing Yourself to Others
I talk a bit about why comparing yourself to others, in general, is a mistake here, but in this post, I want to specifically talk about comparing your goals to someone else.
Every once in a while in my journey, I would see other language learners sharing goals that weren’t on my list, and yet seemed to make a lot of sense.
For example, passing language proficiency tests.
This isn’t something that I’ve never had the desire to do, but whenever I saw this, I immediately felt like I was supposed to be taking those exams in order to be considered a “language learner”.
Or that I needed those exams to “legitimize” my goals and progress.
But because I did not (and still don’t) want to do so.
And that’s okay.
My goals are personal to me, which makes me WANT to achieve them just as much as I NEED to.
So, how can you avoid this mistake?
As I always say, instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on where you were in the past and where you are now. Compare your current self to your past self.
Pay close attention to what has improved, and maybe what hasn’t. Make plans that will help you overcome the areas that you still struggle in and celebrate the progress you have made.
And remember that a 1% improvement will always be better than 0.
Have you made any of these mistakes in your language studies?
I hope that this post has been helpful for you and has given you different ways to avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made in my own language learning journey! If you have questions or want to share some of your own experiences with me, you can find me on Instagram @thepolyglotfox.
PS. If you’re making some of these mistakes in your own language studies and want some help, download my free guide that breaks down the exact step-by-step process of creating a study system that works for you.
— The Polyglot Fox