How to Use Systems (Instead of Goals) to Get Results in Language Learning

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What’s your language learning goal?

Perhaps you’re aiming to reach A2 level in French in the next 3 months. Maybe you’re looking to gain basic knowledge of Italian before your trip to Rome in a couple of weeks. Or perhaps you’re aiming for German mastery.

Whatever your goal, setting a goal is the natural thing to do when you start learning. Choose your language, set a target and work towards it.

Over the last 13 years, I’ve set some big language goals. Some I achieved, and some I didn’t. I’ve also helped hundreds of thousands of language learners achieve theirs with this blog.

From all my language missions and goals, I learned a valuable lesson:

The goal isn’t what’s important. What matters is the system you follow to reach your goal.

In fact, the wrong type of goal can hold you back from learning a language. Let’s look at why.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

Goals vs. Systems: What’s the Difference?

A goal-based approach focuses on where you’re going, while a systems-based approach focuses on how you’re going to get there.

If your language goal is “to become fluent in Italian in six months”, a very simple system could be daily Italian practice.

For example, one of my big goals in language learning was to learn Arabic while living in Brazil. That was my goal. But it was the systems I put in place, including daily Skype conversations and finding and filling the holes in my knowledge, that allowed me to travel through Egypt using my Arabic.

One way to tell whether you have a system in place is to remove your goal and ask: if you just focused on what you do every day, would you still end up where you want to be?

If you took away my goal to learn Arabic in Brazil and I still did all of my tasks every day, would I still have learned Arabic? I think so, because by that point I’d put in at least 150 hours of practice and had spoken the language for 91 days back to back.

I’ll share some specific systems you can use for language learning in a moment.

First, let’s look at why the difference between systems and goals matters to language learners, and why goals might be stopping your progress.

The Problem With a Goal-Based Approach to Language Learning

There are more drawbacks to setting goals than you might think, especially when it comes to language learning.

Learning a language is a huge task that takes hundreds of hours. As such, language goals can be overwhelming. As Scott Adams points out, the enormity of your goal can start to create negative emotions. And nothing can stop your language progress faster than feeling bad about what you’re doing.

James Clear makes a similar point about how goals relate to feelings: you don’t feel good about yourself until you achieve them. Of course, this can leave you feeling glum.

The difficult emotions created by setting goals are part of the reason you’re tempted to throw your arms in the air and exclaim, “I’m just not good at learning languages!”

Let’s say you’ve set yourself the goal of learning B1 level Mandarin in three months. That’s a heck of a big goal (as I well know!) and if this is your first foreign language it can feel like you’ve got a mountain to climb. But you set out to do it anyway. That means you’re going to need to:

• Immerse yourself in Mandarin (phone, computer, television, books)
• Study for at least two to three hours each day
• Have at least one conversation in Mandarin every day

That’s a lot of work to try to fit into your schedule.

And if you miss a day or two (because life happens and you might just do that), you have a tight deadline breathing down your neck. If you miss enough days, you’ll be tempted to say, “Screw it, I’ll come back to it at another time!” and give up on your goal altogether.

I’m not saying that goals are always bad. I’ve previously written about setting appropriate goals. I’ve achieved and seen people achieve goals that most people would have called “unrealistic” or “impossible”. But in almost all of these cases, it’s been the system they committed to, not the goal itself, that created that success.

So why are systems the better choice?

Why Systems Are a Better Choice For Language Learners

Many language learners I speak to are surprised when I ask them to remove their goal and just look at what they’re doing every day. They often find that their goal and the system they’re following to achieve it don’t match up.

That’s why I consider systems thinking the first step in getting real about language learning.

By focusing on a system rather than a goal, you give yourself more control over your language learning.

If, instead of saying that you want to speak B1 Mandarin in 3 months, you were to say to yourself, “Every day I’m going to practise Mandarin in a way I enjoy”, how much more achievable would that be?

In other words, a system is right here, right now and in front of you. If you follow your system, you can make progress with your language skills each day, no matter how small. Much like brushing your teeth before going to bed, language learning becomes a habit.

On some days you may only enjoy learning for 30 minutes. On others you may want to get into your books for three hours at a time.

That’s a system in action.

If you have to miss a day, you can pick up right where you left off and recommit to the process. That takes away the guilty feeling you get when life gets in the way of a goal.

Using Systems to Speak from Day One

The number one concept I talk about when it comes to language learning is Speak from Day One. That’s not a goal for you to achieve; it’s a system for you to follow.

On day one, you may only be able to speak two Tarzan-like sentences, like “I Benny. Me blogger.” That conversation might be 10 seconds long. But after two weeks, that will grow into a real introduction about who you are, where you’re from and what you do, and you’ll be asking questions in return.

You’ll start to see real progress. The system also has a built-in feedback loop. You can see what you’re doing right (positive feedback) and where you need to improve (negative feedback).

In the next section, let’s look at some systems you can use to make consistent progress with your language learning.

What Systems Can Language Learners Use?

The Seinfeld Strategy: A Little Practice Every Day

This system is often associated with the famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld. It’s a way to create consistency and build momentum, which is perfect for language learning. All you need is a calendar and a pen.

The idea is simple: write jokes every single day. I firmly believe that the best way to learn a language is to practise it every day!

Let’s say you want to learn German. Each day you sit down to practise German, however long you practise, you can go to your calendar and put a big cross through the day, marking that you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.

After a few days you’ve got a stack of crosses that show you just how much you’ve achieved.

It also gives you a big positive feeling when you go up and cross out the day. After three months you’ll have so many crosses you can’t help but see how far you’ve progressed!

Habit Stacking: Tying Language Learning to a Bigger Routine

Trying to force a new skill or habit into your day can feel quite hard. But as SJ Scott writes in his book, Habit Stacking, if you tie your language learning system to a bigger routine, it’s much easier to stay on track.

Your day already has lots of routines: getting up in the morning, commuting to work, eating lunch, coming home from work and going to bed, to name just a few. By using habits you already have, you can begin to add other habits to that framework.

Let’s say you’re on your lunch break at work, which might look like this:

• You go for lunch at 12:30
• You get your lunch out of the work fridge and sit at the desk
• You eat
• You wash your food container
• You go back to work

These are all habits you have, whether you realise it or not, and you can use them as a framework for your next habit. So where could you add language learning here?

I’d say you could do it right here:

• You eat
• You review your Anki flashcards
• You wash your food container

You don’t have to move because your phone is probably already in your pocket. There’s also usually a bit of time between eating and going back to work, so you can slot it in.

HabitBull: The Habit Coach in Your Pocket

I love it when I find tech that can help you. HabitBull is a little habit app that helps you create a system for your language learning.

My friend Maneesh wrote a great post about how creating a system of tiny actions, like just opening the Duolingo app, can be the start of a lifelong language habit. That ties in perfectly with your new systems-based approach.

Choose a tiny action like opening your language workbook, logging into Preply (our review is here) or opening Anki, and set it as a habit in HabitBull. Then set it as your habit for that day. The app will remind you when to complete that action.

This brings the last two steps together because you get the satisfaction of ticking the box when you’ve completed the action. You even get a daily motivational message to keep you going!

You can also make it part of a bigger routine, like your lunch break, to cement that habit.

Time to Put Your Language Learning System in Place

Having a language-learning goal to aim for is a great place to start, but without a solid system in place, it’s much harder to follow through.

So now is the time to focus less on where you want to be and look at what you’re going to do. Think about how you want to approach your language learning and build it into your day-to-day routine.

If you’re able to create a system where you can immerse yourself at home for three hours a day, take advantage of it. Or, if small steps and incremental daily progress are your cup of tea, start there. Your system should be unique to you and how you learn.

The most important part of this is to commit to your process and focus on what you can achieve right now.