Why habits matter

Back in 2015 I decided to improve my German proficiency. So I started to watch Tageschau (the main German news show) - every single day. Initially I found it very hard to follow the spoken language, even though Dutch and German are closely related.

However, over the course of time, my brain adapted slowly to processing the sound of German. Nowadays my listening skills in the language are on par with Dutch and English.

What helped me to stick with listening to a TV program in a language I hardly understood?

Regularity.

Tageschau airs, without exception, every day at eight o'clock p.m. The fact the program only lasts for 15 minutes also helped a lot.

I am a man of habits. At the time I usually took a shower around seven o'clock p.m. and tuning in for Tageschau created a nice moment to sit aback and relax.

You can create habits yourself

Language learning is not an easy task. Fortunately habits will help you.

Habits are actions you do regularly and because you perform them repeatedly, they will become automatic behaviors.

However, creating a new habit is on its own also a big challenge. So start small:

• Watch a single video on Easy Dutch each day
• Or just read a single page of Short Stories in Dutch by Olly Richards every day

And set a fixed moment of the day, when it is convenient for you.

Once you are used to watching or reading in Dutch each day, you can slowly expand: watch two videos or read two pages.

If you want to know more about creating effective habits, I strongly recommend you to read Atomic Habits by Timothy Keller.