Why Your Comfort Zone Can Become the Danger Zone

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A few years ago, I started learning languages through self-study. I enjoyed the process, but things did not always go as well as I hoped.

One lesson mattered enough to share: a routine can keep working mechanically after it has stopped stretching your language.

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.

How I Hit “the Wall” in Language Learning

I speak seven languages to a high level these days (plus I’m learning two more). A few years ago, with each new language I started, I’d keep hitting a wall.

I’d start out well. I’d look up new resources that worked for me, which is one of my favourite parts of learning a language. I’d create a schedule/system that worked for me.

Then I’d rev the engine, and I’d be off!

It always started out well. I’d be picking up new words, getting my head around the grammar, and even having real conversations with native speakers.

I’d found something that worked for me, so I stuck with it.

I’d make progress every day (feeling great about it), until…

…one day I didn’t.

The system I’d put into place stopped working. I wasn’t learning anything new. And worse, I lost my mojo. The thing I loved to do just left me cold.

What Happened?

Let me share a story with you, to give a specific example.

When I first studied Mandarin, I had an ambitious goal. I wanted to pass the HSK 4 (upper intermediate) exam only a year after starting the language. I studied each day, prepared for the exam, and took regular lessons. And I passed! The system I’d set up had worked.

But here’s what happened next…

After passing the exam, I settled down into a too-comfortable routine. I did daily flashcard study, some reading aimed at language learners, and kept meeting my tutor for a weekly session. For about a year, this pattern continued. The result?

My Chinese didn’t get any worse, but it also didn’t get much better.

That’s when I realised:

My Comfort Zone is the Danger Zone

It was one of those “aha!” moments. I only wished I’d spotted it sooner.

When I realised what was happening, I began looking for new ways to stretch myself. My comfortable routine was maintaining my level, so I needed a different challenge to improve.

I thought about what I actually wanted to do in Mandarin, and the answer was already in front of me.

Here’s How I Found the Next Step

To work out what I should do next, I asked myself: “What’s the most important thing to me right now, when it comes to Mandarin?”

At the time, the most important thing for me was to share the language with my infant son. So I turned to his reading material. I bought books that were slightly outside of my comfort zone and matched his interests. I found a collection of Disney bedtime stories, bought other books that featured his favourite characters, and scoured the local Chinese bookstores for new material.

I also asked my teacher to tweak our lessons to focus more on grammar and less on conversation.

The result? My Chinese was given the kickstart it needed. Boom!

What Had Happened to Me

By getting comfortable, I stopped trying new things. I stopped looking at the material from different angles. And when I get comfortable, I can only get so far.

I later saw the same pattern in an update from a member of the original Add1Challenge:

This Add1 student had found a system that really worked for her at the beginning. One that helped her to build her understanding of Spanish.

But as she began to approach more difficult aspects of the language like forming sentences, she struggled. Her system failed her.

The challenge prompted her to change the routine and try the harder task she had reached.

Changing the task gave her another way to work on the sentence-building problem that had stalled her.

How can you apply this to your own learning?

My 5 Power Moves to Climb Mt. Fluency

These are the five moves I use when a routine has gone stale. Pick the one that matches the problem rather than changing everything at once.

Power Move #1 – SMASH Your Routine!

Sometimes our plateaus occur because we keep trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Routine is incredibly powerful, so this Power Move is only for you if your established routine, is starting to get stale.

If you ever feel as though your progress has slowed, one of the easiest ways to get going again is by making a change.

Normally work with a course book? Try switching to a podcast. Normally study vocabulary with flashcards? Try memory palaces or the Goldlist method.

As you saw in my example from when I hit a plateau with Chinese, I only made two small changes.

Sometimes, you only need to make one small change to see a big difference.

Power Move #2 – Aim a Camera at Yourself and Hit the “Record” Button

I actually learned this Power Move before I got into languages.

When I was a music student, one of my teachers told me that I should record every performance. These recordings would be great practice tool for me. I could go back and listen to them to see what I did well, but more importantly to see what I needed to work on.

I took the advice, though it felt super awkward to set up the recording equipment, and even worse when I first listened to myself.

I quickly saw the results, though.

Even though I was there performing and experiencing that concert in real time, my view of the concert from a performer’s perspective was quite different from my view as a spectator, watching myself on the recording.

Sometimes when I thought I did poorly, listening back proved otherwise. And, of course, other times when I thought I did well, the recording showed that it was actually just okay. Either way, it gave me a lot of material to work on. Listening to my recordings with some distance between my practice sessions and the recorded performances allowed me to be more objective and honest about where I was at with my playing and it gave me very specific things I could work on.

But that wasn’t the only thing those recordings gave me. They also gave me reference points. I can now go back to any point in my performance career and hear just how far I’ve come. So whenever I feel like I’m not making any progress, I can grab a recording, hit play and hear hard evidence of whether or not I had improved since that time.

And of course I brought this Power Move with me into language learning.

I record my language learning in two ways. The first is with a language journal.

This “journal” is where I keep all of my notes for the language that I’m studying. As I come across something that I don’t understand, I write those questions down in my notes. That way, I know what I need to go over with my teacher in my next lesson. It also means I’ve got a record of the things that have held me back in the past.

When I go over those notes at a later date, they show me just how far I’ve come. By the time I finish a notebook and go back through my notes to copy whatever I still need to work on into my new notebook, I can see just how few of those questions remain. The majority of the doubts or struggles I had are no longer challenges for me.

The second way I document my progress is with video!

When I first starting making videos of myself speaking new languages, I kept them to myself. I was too afraid to put them out in the world.

But then I did Benny’s Conversation Countdown course, and he convinced me. I decided to make the leap.

This was my first ever video in Mandarin Chinese:

https://youtu.be/Lgx2fd4DeKk

My pronunciation is not great in this video, but that’s missing the point. And regardless of what anyone might think of my skill level at that stage, it got me speaking for the first time. Today, it’s one of my strongest languages.

When I look back at that video, how far I’ve come is immediately apparent. But when I’m in the middle of it, it doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress at all.

A language journal or occasional recording gives you evidence to compare when day-to-day progress is hard to notice.

So, aim a camera at yourself and hit record!

Power Move #3 – Do the Thing! That’s Right, the Thing You’ve Been Putting Off

This is the approach that Benny uses whenever he faces a plateau. He adjusts his language studies to approach his biggest problem.

Targeting the skill you avoid will not solve every plateau, but it gives you a concrete problem to test instead of repeating the same routine.

Many learners have one part of the language they keep postponing, and it may be the clearest place to experiment next.

Think for a moment. What do you do in the language that could be better? It’ll be the thing that you tell yourself is “good enough” for now and that you “have time to look at it later”. For a lot of learners, these are things like:

• Noun genders: Is that word masculine, feminine or neuter? Who knows?
• Cases: All those word endings make my head hurt.
• Particles: Close enough!
• Tenses: I’ll just add when it happened and that’ll be good enough. Forget learning the different forms.
• Honorifics: I’m only learning the language, so I can get away with this being wrong.
• Sentence structure: good enough.
• Prepositions: Meh, people will get what I mean

Sometimes “good enough” is exactly what a conversation needs. When the same gap repeatedly blocks what you want to say, though, it is worth giving that skill focused attention.

By taking an honest look at where you’re at, you’ll find the Thing you need to do next.

Power Move #4 – Trust the Process

This one might sound a little woo-woo, so let me explain what I mean. I should also say that you only need to try this Power Move after you’ve worked through the previous three.

Sometimes, when things get a little stale, you just need to stick with it and keep doing the work on a regular basis.

Keep a regular practice you can sustain, then check it against the skill you are trying to improve.

You may need to fit practice around work, family, friends and other commitments. Consistency matters more than forcing a daily streak that does not suit your life.

Regular study creates opportunities to improve, but a plateau is a reason to inspect the task, feedback and difficulty rather than trusting repetition on its own.

Power Move #5 – Increase the Challenge Carefully

If the earlier changes do not help, increase one part of the challenge while keeping the rest manageable. You could practise:

• More often (e.g. daily instead of twice per week)
• With greater focus (e.g. first thing in the morning when your mind is most fresh)
• More intensely (e.g. one hour study sessions instead of 10 minutes)

A structured challenge can provide deadlines and other learners, but it should still leave room to adjust the workload.

The original Add1Challenge used timed assignments and progress videos. That is part of this article’s history, not a description of the current Fi3M offer.

Whatever structure you choose, set a specific outcome you can observe and review after a few weeks.

No challenge can guarantee the same conversation result for every learner, so judge the method by the practice it creates and the feedback you receive.

When you know exactly what you’re aiming for, it becomes easier to adjust what you do on a weekly or daily basis to get there.

Step Outside the Danger Zone with a Power Move

We all want a certain degree of comfort in our language learning. We want to know that we have systems and resources that we can rely on because we want to be confident that we’re doing the right things to make progress in our learning.

But sometimes, that comfort can be dangerous.

When progress feels stalled, test one change at a time: the material, the task, the feedback or the level of difficulty. Keep what helps and change it again when it stops serving your goal.

Have you ever hit a plateau from being stuck in your comfort zone? What did you do to break through it?