How to use habits to help you learn: 3 methods

Doo-doo-doo-doo. Wonder if there's anything to smoke? Hi. James from

engVid. Welcome to Canada's flora. "Flora" is a fancy word for flower;

"fauna" being animals, "fauna" being flower. So, some vocabulary to start the

lesson. But what lesson am I going to teach you today? I want to do a learning

process video, which means I'm going to give you some hints on how to learn

better, more effectively, and efficiently; and, also, hopefully make

it more fun for you. One of the key things students have... that they have

difficulty with is that they say: "Doing English is hard. I have to think about

doing it." So, I had the idea: Why don't we think about how to form habits and

English work? That way... well, a habit like brushing your teeth — you wake up

in the morning, you brush your teeth; you don't think about it. You get up, go

to the bathroom, brush your teeth, eat your breakfast. It's done before you

think about it. If we can make learning English like that, you're gonna soon

find that English becomes fun because it's going to be automatic; something

that's not work — it's just a habit. Cool? Now, in order to do this lesson, I

read up on B. J. Fogg, who's a professor out at Stanford, and James Clear. James

Clear has a book called: "Atomic Habits"; and B. J. Fogg is, I think:

"Tiny Habits". I can't recall exactly. But these two guys are, like, the gods

of habits. So, let's delve into it. And that means: Let's go into it. Okay? So,

I'm gonna give you three parts. And when we do these three things together, we

should be able to form habits that will make English learning fun, effective,

and efficient.

Number one: Stacking. In North America, especially in the winter, we like to

have pancakes. Pancakes, mm. Homer style, you know? We put pancakes on top

of each other — this is called: "stacking". And you're going, right now:

"Habits. Pancakes. I think that guy gone crazy. I wouldn't... too much oxygen's

going through his head." Bear with me; just stay with me for a second or two.

When we stack our pancakes and we put beautiful maple syrup, it's delicious.

But the key is: We put one on top of the other, and sometimes we put butter and

it sticks together. The butter and the maple syrup gets sticky, and they stick

the pancakes together. Okay, I'll explain. What I want to do is I want to

take one habit you already do. Do you remember I talked about brushing your

teeth? Okay. You do that automatically or going to the washroom, and I want to

stack it with another habit that you want to learn. So, in turn, what happens

is it becomes something you just do. Okay? So, one habit could be: We go to

bed at night. Right? Well, if you want to do more reading, why don't you put a

book on your pillow? Stack the habit of going to sleep with that step... the

habit of reading. You go and you see the book, you're like: "Oh yeah. I'm gonna

go sleep. I'll read a page before I go to bed." Okay? You can stack habits in

other ways. When you have the television, instead of having the

television turn on, you could have it turned on to a... an English channel.

So, the habit of watching TV at night to relax — boom — you are studying. So,

"stacking" is taking one habit that you do already, and getting the new habit —

which is going to be our English study — and putting them close together, so one

leads right to the other. You can stack before; you can stack after — your

choice. Okay? So, that's "stacking". That's the first part of our habit form.

Okay? So, try and stack your habits. Find habits that go together somewhat.

So, you don't want to do reading and running. Okay? You... but you could do

audiobooks and running. You like to jog? Good. Stack it with a habit of listening

to English audiobooks. Okay. That's number one.

What's the second part of our habit-forming principle? Well, it's

easy-peasy. A lot of you know I was born in England. Funny thing. A fun fact:

There's a website out there that seems to be tracking me, and says I was born

in England but I live in Canada. I'm getting scared. I'm getting really

scared. Stay away from me. Anyway. What we want to do is make it easy-peasy.

That's an English saying for: Make it very easy. How do we make it easy? Well,

one of the ways to make something easy is to make it very small. A lot of

students have really big goals, and I... I think that's amazing. That's great.

But the problem with big goals — it's like trying to reach for the moon.

Difficult to do. But a smaller goal, we can do. So, parts we're going to do to

make things easy is number one: Make your goals small. Instead of saying:

"I'm going to study for an hour on English tonight", tell yourself you're

going to study for one minute. Chill. All you guys are like: "He's crazy; he's

lost it." No, no, no. Just wait. If you tell yourself you're going to study for

one minute every day, you're probably going to do it. If you tell yourself

you're going to study for an hour every day, you probably aren't going to do it.

And maybe you'll do one hour or five hours — which is really good — on a

Sunday, and nothing all week. When we know... and the science says it's the

consistency that gets you better. "Consistent" means you keep doing it.

That's the second part of easy-peasy. Make the goal so small, but do it daily;

every single day do this thing. Make it so small. Maybe not even a... you read

for 20 seconds. Maybe you're going to read five words of a book. We both know

you're not going to read only five words. Right? And that's the whole

point. You make it so easy that you go: "Even a baby could do it." You're not a

baby, so do it. And then, you do it every day. Right? Okay.

Other thing. Here's what we do: We want to pick a time and a place. Why? Have

you ever noticed when you walk in your house where the television is sitting or

where your couch is? Most houses in North America, if you see a couch, you

see a TV. Hockey Night in Canada is right in front of them all the time.

Right? So we know: "couch means TV". Oven and fridge, where are they? In the

kitchen. What do you do in there? No, you don't have a shower; you go and

cook. Time and place are important. If you pick a particular time of the day...

sometimes I think the best time to do something, like English studying, and it

depends on the person, is either in the day... at the beginning of the day or in

the evening because you have less things on your mind; especially in the

beginning of the morning. You've just woken up, so there's not a lot of

concerns in your head, so that's a great time because you can absorb more

information. Or in the evening when you've chilled from work and you're

relaxed a bit — a good thing to do then is to study at that time. But pick a

time and a place. And what you want to do is keep it consistent. Remember we

talked about daily? So, find a time and a place that you won't be disturbed.

Like, someone's disturbing me. Yeah. Tourists. What can I say? But they're so

cute. Gotta love them. Anyway. So, you want to find a time and a place that

you're going to be consistent. Do you remember we talked about daily? So,

we're going to be doing it in the same place daily. That way... don't pick a

place where you have to change every four or five days — that will start

breaking your habit. But you'll start finding after a while when you enter at

the same time and place, you're going to be drawn or you're going to want to

start to study because that's your habit. You make it small. Remember we

talked about making the habit small enough, right? Consistency — daily. And

now a time and place we've got down. That's the second part of our triad.

"Triad" means three. Okay? Just learned some vocabulary. Because I know it's the

learning process, but it doesn't mean you can't pick up some other things.

Right?

So, what's the third part? "Celebrate good times. Come on." Yeah. Go on

YouTube. You're on YouTube. Check that song out after; I think it's: "There's a

party going on right here." Yeah. "Celebrate". Okay, I'm done. That's it.

No Elvis here. So, celebrate. What do we mean by "celebrate"? We got two things;

two ways that we want to celebrate. Okay, stay with me. We're gonna start

talking about dopamine. "Dopamine" is a drug that your body naturally produces —

that you are given when you do something really well. Your body goes: "That's

just like me. I like that. That's good." It makes you feel good, and it makes you

want to do it again. So, for a habit to be successful... if you think about when

used to play football, for you Europeans; soccer for you Americans.

Okay? When you first got that kick and it went in... the goal went in, what did

you do? Boom — you got it in there. You're like: "Yeah! That's like me.

That's good!" and you felt really good, and you wanted to do that again. We

always do that. When we do something, we score, if you're playing basketball —

boom, you sink it. You're like: "Yeah!" Golf — it's not a sport. Sorry, it's not

a sport. But golf. Whenever we do something like that, we get that touch

of success, we go: "Yeah!" You want to do that. I know it sounds silly. But how

stupid did you look, going: "Yeah!" Yeah, exactly. You didn't care. You felt

good; you wanted to do that again. So, we want to celebrate when we're doing

these things. So, what do I mean? Once you find that place — remember the

easy-peasy — you've got a simple goal, you're doing it consistently in a place,

every time you go to that place and sit down, go: "Yeah! I'm doing it!" You can

say that just before you start; you can be in the middle of it and go: "Yeah!

I'm in the middle of doing it!" Or at the end, like: "Yeah! I kicked its butt.

I did it." Celebrate. Tell yourself you're doing a good job. Feel good about

it. That dopamine we talked about, that's given to you, will be given to

you and you'll feel good. And the next time you walk by that place, some magic

will happen: You'll start feeling good just walking by. And you'll even feel

better because dopamine is released in anticipation of doing something; not the

actual doing. So, it's going to get you sort of kind of motivated to studying. I

know, complicated stuff. Don't worry. You got it. Just watch the video again;

you'll get what I'm saying. So, "dopamine" is a feel-good drug your body

gives you when you've done something good that it thinks is helping you.

So, now that you've got that, I said there were two ways to celebrate. Right?

Celebrate while you're doing the activity. Tell yourself: "I've did a

good job. Yeah! That's it. Great. Studied. I did my 20 minutes. Yeah!"

Then give yourself a longer-term reward. You finish a book, you wanted to read an

English book. You said you want to read it in a month, you did — buy yourself a

chocolate bar. Okay, that's not quite a reward, but you catch what I'm saying.

Give yourself something good. So, you've done all this work, you keep celebrating

that you've done it, and then you finish the goal you wanted to do. Maybe you

wanted to learn 100 words in 100 days; maybe you want to be able to read a page

of English in under two minutes. I don't know what your goal is. But give

yourself your reward when you've done that because your brain is always

keeping tabs. It means it's always aware of what you're doing. And if you're

moving towards your goals, it's actually motivating you to keep moving towards

your goals. And your goal, in this case, is to learn English. Right? If you put

the three things I've given you before... what's the first thing?

Stacking. Try and find habits that can be put close together. Going to bed —

put a book on the bed at night. You get up — put the book down to help remind

you. Okay? Stacking those habits together. You're brushing your teeth —

think of... when you're thinking it, ten English words when you're standing on

one leg. Leg, hand, cheese, bread... just force yourself to do something

weird, so you're stacking. You have to do this one; put them together. When

you're stacking, if you can do it, make that... stack it, but make it

easy-peasy. Pick a small goal. Take a goal and break it down. Right? When

you've done that, make it daily. Do it every single day. You brush your teeth

every day. Right? Do it every single day. And then what'd we talk about?

Celebrate. When you've done that, and you've done this silly thing, and people

are going: "What...? What are you doing in there?" You go: "Yeah! I did it! I

did it. I brushed my teeth standing on one leg, saying English." Yeah. Okay,

don't do that. But you understand. That's the idea — this is what I want

you to do. And then give yourself a reward. You're working hard. Life is a

journey, my friend. I know it's gonna sound really, really bad. But life is a

journey. And we want to remember: You got to live it now. And that's part of

the celebration part. If you're not actually happy with what you're doing,

you're not going to keep doing it for long.

I do have a cup... one... a couple of things I wanted to say to you right now.

Because those are the three things I wanted to give you to put together, but

I want to go back to that test retest. Do you remember we started the

beginning; I said: "What are five things you do every day?" Now your eyes are

going: "That's why you said this stuff?" I'm like: "That's why I said it." What

are five things you love to do? What are five English goals that you have?

Remember I said all of that? And I said how it goes together? I'm gonna give you

that ten seconds again. Okay? Take a look at the scenery around me. I'll be

back, and you try and put together all the information I've given you, and how

that would work. You got it yet? Okay. Before I go and give you your homework,

I want to give you a quote by Aristotle. He said: "Quality is not an act; it's a

habit." So, if you want to get good at English, and you want to be efficient

and effective at it — think like Aristotle. "Quality is not an act; not a

one-time thing — it's a habit", something you have to continually do.

Cool? And as you know, you're gonna get homework because it wouldn't be engVid

if I didn't do that to you. So, here's what I want you to do: Take three goals

that you have in mind that you want to do in English, or even one. Here's the

hard part: Break it into 100 steps. Remember the easy-peasy thing we're

talking about? Break it into 100 steps. Find how you can stack each step along

the way. And then remember the reward? Once you've hit that 100th step, what's

the reward you're gonna give yourself? If you do this particular homework I

give you, you will find that you are 80% done learning English. You're like:

"What?" I'm like: You've already done the hardest part: Thinking. That's one

of the hardest things a human can do. And you've just done it. If you do that,

you're going to find that you're already motivated to do all the other things we

talked about when you put those other habits/steps in. And you're going to

master the habit of learning and learning English. Anyway, hope you had a

great time. Before I go, don't forget to go to www.eng as in English, vid as in

video.com. No quiz, but go check out the other lessons we have there. There'll be

other learning process videos; there'll be other language applications you can

do, where we do grammar, conversation, listening. Looking forward to seeing

you. Have a good one. Nice day out.