S3E17: Make questions out of your doubts

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Tuesday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.

So, in yesterday’s episode, I talked about the fact that quite often when we feel stuck and overwhelmed at the prospect of starting a new thing, it might mean that we are guessing about how hard or complicated or expensive it’s going to be, or how long it’s going to take. And more often than not, our guesses are very pessimistic. So many of us around here have a tendency to overestimate the difficulty levels of the things we want to do, underestimate the support available, and underestimate our capabilities, and that can put us off starting the thing for a really long time, or even worse, we abandon the idea. So yesterday, we talked about the importance of separating the guessing from reality, and finding the easiest, most manageable way into starting the new or scary thing. And in today’s episode, I’d really like to continue with that topic, and ask, what questions can you make out of your doubts? 

The thing is, when we commit to something like, running, we have an idea when we start of what that’s going to look like. Even if we have plenty to learn with regards to technique and we have routines to establish and stamina to build, fundamentally when we start we know what running is and we’ve done it before.

But when you’re starting something completely new, like learning a language but also things like navigating the system for publishing a book, or starting a business, quite often we know very little about the process. We don’t know what tools we need. We don’t know where to start. We have no idea what the path ahead holds for us. 

And then the guessing creeps in. Because this person on YouTube is starting with a massive budget and we don’t have anything like that much cash available. Because on a forum somewhere, a group of people are complaining about how hard it is. Because maybe we’ve read some statistics that scared us.  

But what if we stopped guessing, and started breaking it all down into actual, searchable questions?

So today, if you’re going round and round in circles about something that’s really new, really scary, or really foggy, I have a challenge for you.

Get a sheet of paper, set yourself a timer for 15 minutes and write down as many questions as you can, as fast as you can, about the thing you want to start. It might be yes/no questions like:

Do I need X?

Is Y available in my country?

Is X a legal requirement?

It might be open questions where you’re going to need to do some research

How do I do…

How much will it cost to …

Where can I find tutorials about …

And if the thing that has you stuck is that you need to choose between resources or methods or softwares, don’t just write your question as “Do I need X or Y?” but break that down too, into the questions that are actually going to help you to make that decision.

What are the advantages of X?

What are the main complaints about X or problems with Y?

Is X recommended for complete beginners?

If you want to split the questions into different sections for different parts of the process or into categories, feel free to do that. But the important thing is to get all those doubts and all that cloudiness onto paper. It’s to prove to yourself that all these doubts are just questions, and those questions have answers.

I know how hard it is to feel lost and to feel like you’re going round and round in circles. But whatever you’re trying to, this goal isn’t bigger than you. You can do this. You just need to do it one step at a time.

Good luck, language learners. And I will see you tomorrow.