S4E2: Patchwork Days

Full transcript:

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

And today, I wanted to talk about that whirlwind of a time where you have so many things on the go at once, and maybe they’re all important, or maybe you’re excited about all of them, and the end result is that you’re spinning so fast you can’t properly do any of them. Lately, I have a lot of separate projects going on all at the same time, and they all kind of contribute to each other, they’re all in the same ballpark, but combined, it was getting decidedly overwhelming. And the way that was manifesting was that no matter how much planning I’d done for my week, every time I’m working on one thing, I kept worrying that my time would be better spent on some other thing that was also on my list. So, I could never get into flow state because I was constantly breaking my own concentration by analysing and overthinking and questioning myself.

That restlessness was maddening. The trouble was, the pressure to do more meant that less got done, and that only intensified the sense of urgency and frustration, and the cycle continued.

And I was journaling about this, and I coined something that I now call Patchwork Days.

And it’s making things so much easier for me, so I thought I’d tell you all about it. 

Patchwork Days mean, I know I can’t sit with anything. And I accept that. So, I don’t plan to do anything for longer than 20 minutes. I make a list of the tasks that I want to do, but never more than six, and I commit to doing as many of them as I can for just twenty minutes each. If I haven’t achieved anything on a particular one after twenty minutes, I stop, and I move to another task on the list. Specifically, I choose the one that is the most different from the one I was struggling on.

So if you think this would help you too, make a list of the things whizzing around in your to-do list tornado, and then set a timer for twenty minutes, pick one thing, and press start. Just see what happens.

Some days, it might be a study patchwork day, where you break up your studying or your assignment into individual tasks and commit to each one for 20 minutes. Other days, it might be a whole life patchwork day, where it’s a mix of everything from specific studying tasks, assignments, things you need to read, household chores, admin, and self care things like walking can go on the list too.

And for me, it’s been so helpful as a means of taking the pressure off. On the days where you know you can’t concentrate, it gives you permission to stop trying, stop forcing, just, start something, and then let focus come naturally again. Because action begets action. At least you’re doing something, and you might find that without that pressure, after the 20 minutes is up, something sticks and you might want to keep doing it. If that doesn’t happen, you’ve taken small steps and made progress on lots of the things that were cluttering up your mind.

You don’t have to keep forcing yourself to stick to the plan, language learners. Do whatever you can to give yourself the best chance today, and that includes meeting yourself where you’re at and adapting to what you need. 

Have a wonderful day, good luck on whatever you have set your mind to achieving today, and I will see you back here at 7am UK time tomorrow.