It wasn't.

You see, my biggest problem was managing my time, and knowing how to study language efficiently during the free time I did have.

After all, I wasn't a student any more. I was working full-time and had limited supplies of time and energy to devote to language learning!

So, I spent years reading books on time management, habit building, and productivity. (I must have read them all!)

In some of those books I found useful ideas.

But sometimes, the advice they were giving actually made things worse for me!

"Wake up an hour earlier to make extra time!" - easy to say, but I need my sleep!

"Schedule every minute of study in advance throughout the week!" - sometimes other commitments just get in the way!

"Cut back on your social life and family time!" - no way!

This kind of advice is easy to give, but hard to follow.

Like I said, there were a few useful ideas, but I always felt like there was something missing. An "incomplete" system created by someone who didn't really understand my life and the way I work.

Then, one day, after trying everything under the sun, I had a Eureka moment!

I realised the fatal flaw in everything I'd be doing.

I realised that the secret to effective language learning is NOT the TIME.

It's what you DO with the time.

You know the feeling when you sit down to do 30 minutes of language study, but feel like you've totally wasted your time and not learned anything?

That right there - that’s the problem.

You didn't use the time effectively.

As I started to focus on the WHAT rather than the WHEN, everything began to change.

I discovered that you can make huge gains in your fluency in a foreign language in as little as 15 mins… if you know what you’re doing!

They have the same 24 hours you have.

So how come they seem to achieve twice as much as you?

Well, they’re probably good with managing their time… but that's just the start.

They are masters at getting their priorities straight and controling WHAT they do with their time first and foremost.

When they sit down to work or study…it really counts.

And so with languages.

It took me 15 years to learn 8 languages.

But you know what? I could have done it in half the time if I’d known what I know NOW about effective language study.

You see, none of the time management and productivity books I read had anything at all to do with what I care most about: learning to speak a language fluently...

I’d just moved to a new country, was busy working a full-time job, and was even doing a master’s degree at the same time.

Needless to say, I was busy and stressed!

I was committed to learn Cantonese, but really struggled to carve out the time.

Firstly, I was tired after work, and found it hard to focus on language learning.

Competing commitments often prevented me from getting any study done.

I’d start the week with great plans to study every day and improve my Cantonese. But when it came time to sit down… I just didn’t follow through!

Sometimes, I did manage to find the time to study.

But even then, I’d get frustrated, because I didn’t know how to use my time effectively. I had lots of books and materials from the internet, but didn’t know how to use them in the most effective way.

In short… I was wasting my time.

The months started to pass, and my Cantonese didn’t improve.

I began to get more and more frustrated with my progress. Sure, the lack of time made it hard, but it was the fact that I couldn’t focus or study efficiently that really irritated me.

This pattern of ineffective study became a kind of robotic behaviour I couldn’t snap out of.

I wasn’t fulfilling my potential.

Thanks to the connections I made from writing on my blog every week, I became friends with other successful language learners. I began asking them about their time-management techniques, and how they managed to learn lots of language efficiently.

I learnt a lot from well-known polyglots such as Richard Simcott and Alex Rawlings, and began to reflect on how I studied languages myself.

But would you like to know what surprised me the most?

My most surprising discovery was that none of the people I spoke to did anything unique or revolutionary in their language learning.

There were no “hacks” or “shortcuts” the rest of us don’t know about.

They simply focused on the basics.

And they did it consistently.

That’s what I’d been missing!

I’d been looking for shortcuts. But, in fact, I just needed to go back to the fundamentals of language learning that had worked for me in the past...

1. Become super clear about your goals

2. Fit your learning around your lifestyle (not the other way round)

3. Study consistently, until it becomes a habit

So here’s what I did...

To make matters worse, I was living in the Gulf, with no Cantonese around me!

It wasn’t going to be easy. I was also starting to doubt whether I could do it or not.

But I knew if I wanted to learn to speak, it was time to get serious.

1. Goals: I examined my reasons for learning Cantonese, and decided what I really wanted to achieve in the short term. I stopped thinking: “I want to be learn Cantonese” and switched to: “My goal for the next 2 weeks is to be able to confidently talk about my life and work with a native speaker in Cantonese.” I saw instant results. With a clear, narrow focus, I was able to focus my study on exactly what mattered, and ignore the rest.

2. The One Thing: I had so many Cantonese books and courses, but most of them weren’t going to help me reach my new goals. So instead, I asked myself: “What’s the ONE THING I need to focus on in order to reach my goals quickly?” This was revolutionary! I chose a small number of materials directly relevant to my goals, and stopped wasting my time with everything else. Straight away, I always knew exactly how to use my free time, and stopped wondering: “What should I do now?"

3. Micro habits: The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how to study consistently, however busy I was or however lazy I was feeling. I had noticed that the hardest thing for me was often getting started. When you’re busy or tired, the thought of sitting down to study for an hour can put you off doing anything! So I started giving myself little 5-minute challenges I could do throughout the day. This made it much easier to get started. And because these challenges were directly linked to my goals, there was no time-wasting. Every minute I spent brought me closer to my goals. Learning languages was now much quicker and easier than before, but best of all, those 5 minutes often turned into 10, 15 or 60-minute session! The secret was just to get started in the first place!

These were the three keys that helped me revolutionise my learning, and finally start to GET STUFF DONE!

Now that I had my time under control, I could start to really focus on the job of actually learning a language.

The best thing of all: language learning stopped being a source of stress!

Not only did I start speaking more fluently in a matter of weeks, but the entire language learning process became fun again, as I watched my progress pick up before my eyes.