New Year's Resolutions - Setting goals

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Okay, Happy New Year, guys. 2024 is here. Happy New Year to you all. Here's Birgit. Just say a quick hi in 2024. Hello. Happy New Year. And Rebecca, what about you? Happy New Year, everybody. Hope you had a good New Year, guys. Hope you celebrated well into the new year. And as this is coming out on the 1st of January, I'm not so sure you'll be actually listening to it today, maybe tomorrow on the 2nd, but who knows? Anyway, Happy New Year to you all. Today, we're going to talk about New Year, New Year's resolutions, targets, habits, all these good things. And New Year's resolutions. I love making New Year's resolutions. It's something I like to do every year. What about other people? Do other people like making New Year's resolutions? How do you guys see it? Rebecca, tell us, first of all, how do you see New Year's resolutions? Well, as you know, I am a certified coach. It's what we do. We make lists. I'm also a person, I love to make lists. And I like to have to-do lists of what I'm going to do. I think you don't have to do this. And it is a bit ridiculous that why on the 24th of December or the 30th of December, you're not thinking about it. And then suddenly, it's January the 1st, and you have to do everything different and change your life. So of course, it doesn't matter when you make your targets. But I do like making targets. And it's just a nice time to kind of reflect on what happened the year before, what was good, what worked, what went well, what didn't go maybe so well or not as how you planned, and then sort of reassess and make a plan for this year. I don't know. Sometimes the Germans, I don't know, do the Germans make Vorsätze, their resolutions? Do you think it's more in a British -American kind of thing? I don't know if that's typically American or British resolutions or Neujahr's Vorsätze. That might be something people might roll their eyes because that comes up every year. But I personally like to keep my journal throughout the year. As you said, Rebecca, to have a plan and what I can achieve in a year and what I can't. So I will have a list for 2024 as well. For example, on my list of 2023 was starting a podcast. So that's tick the box. But what am I going to do in 2024? And that's the first grammatical issue we can have a look at. Going to is always when you have something you want to plan, like a resolution, but you don't know exactly when you're going to do it. I think Rebecca, you once said whenever you can replace it by planning to. I'm planning to, I'm going to. What are you planning to do? Is that correct? Yeah, that's what I teach when people ask me how to use going to. I often say you can interchange it with I'm planning to. So to me, it's not fixed. It really is just an idea. I say it's plan in head. It's not in my diary. It's not fixed yet, not booked, let's say. But it's I'm going to. So I'm going to learn more Spanish this year. That's not specific. That's not a day. That's not a deadline. It's just a general intention. So yeah, that's how I would teach it. Yes. And there can be, of course, a lot of thoughts. I'm going to do this and that. Stay realistic, I would say. So it's no point. And, you know, these stories about the fitness clubs. When you are a member, just in January, it's fully booked. But by the end of March, it's back to normal. Everybody's gone. Dave, what about you? Oh, yeah. Well, I think New Year's resolutions, we're going to talk about a little bit later on, maybe a challenge that we're going to do this year. I live in Spain, and so my Spanish is not as good as it should be yet. So I'm definitely going to do something for my Spanish. And I'll let you know a little bit later what that will be. OK, so we'll come back to the challenge later on. OK, sounds good. Now we have looked at what we are going to do. It's always a good time in January also to look back on what we didn't do in the last year, what we haven't done. And that's a regret. But now on, I would say it's again another teaching here for grammatical issues, because people find it sometimes difficult to communicate that correctly in English. I should have done this last year. I could have done. So it's should, would and could with the present perfect bit, the most difficult tense in the English language. Rebecca? Yeah, I have to say also in German. Ich hätte sollen, müssen, können, wollen. How many verbs do I need? It's one of those tenses where I always think, oh, rain engagement here. And I always think I need a gewesen somewhere. Da weiß ich, hätte sollen gewesen. And I'm like, where's my gewesen? I don't know. I find that really confusing. After all these years. Even after all these years, I have my fixed phrases that I know. But sometimes I still struggle with it. So I completely feel the pain of conditional three. I do. Yeah. That's nice for our listeners to learn that they always, I mean, Germans want to do it all correctly. But after many years, you can still struggle with phrases like these. You don't say very often, but in the January, you might want to say, oh, I should have done more sports. I should have completed that last year. Yes, but you didn't. OK, you're going to do this year, maybe. Yes, exactly. OK, Dave, you wanted to talk. So when we're talking about planning, making plans for the future, you want to talk about habits, because there's always a lot in the media about forming and building habits. And you had something to say about that, right? Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of stuff out there from two books I'd like to just maybe bring in to draw your attention to. The first one is The Power of Habit, which is a book by a guy called Charles Duhigg. Maybe some of you have heard about the book, and he talks about three things that you need to form a habit, a new habit. So when you want to, for example, improve your English, first of all, you need what they call a cue, like a thing that starts it. Then you need a routine, which is the actual habit you want to form. And then you have a reward, so something that you say, OK, I feel good, or this is good about it. How can you do this? Then I'd like to add a second book, and this is where I think we can make it really practical. The second book is one called Atomic Habit by a guy called James Clear, and he has similar ideas, but also he talks about a thing called habit stacking. This idea, first of all, of the cue. Let's say, for example, you wake up in the morning, and maybe you go and have your coffee and you have your breakfast. And when you're having your breakfast, maybe you have your learning vocab cards right next to you. Your habit is always to get up, make the coffee, have your coffee in the morning. That is your normal habit. Then on top of the habit, you have the cards there for you to learn, let's say. And so you spend a few minutes having your cup of coffee, learning the vocab. And then as a reward, so something good for that, firstly, hopefully you feel good that you've done something towards your English already, first thing in the morning. But also, maybe you have something sweet afterwards. Maybe you have something with Nutella or something cool just to say, well done, you've actually done something. And then the idea is, if you do this over a period of time, time and time again, then it becomes a habit. I think with this habit stacking idea, and also in the show notes, we're going to give you 10 ideas of how you could put this habit stacking into your day. Even if you only have one or two of these, it absolutely makes the day and it helps you learn English. So I highly recommend reading the books. They're very good, really. But also if you don't want to read the books in English, maybe listen to them in German or read them in German. But also have a look at our habit stacking. I think there's some quite good stuff in there. Sounds a bit like incentives, doesn't it? For children also, or you can get a little bit of Nutella here. I'm a little bit worried about my weight here. Every morning I do my Japanese and I go, yeah. And then I eat Nutella. So then I've got to form another habit to compensate for eating Nutella every morning. I've got to then go out running to compensate for the Nutella that reward. What's my reward then? I don't know. Well, you see, the thing is, when you're doing exercise, this was another one of these habit stacks that we thought about. While you're going jogging, while you're doing your sport, maybe you can just think about things. Maybe you can listen to a podcast or something. Our podcast. Yeah. So that's, again, another habit and you feel good afterwards, hopefully. The other thing that comes up obviously with resolutions is setting targets. So building habits is, but I think before you even start to build your habit, you need a target. There's always a lot about SMART goals. They always talk about this specific, measurable. Instead of doing the SMART target setting, I like to ask four key questions. The first question I ask when setting targets is what? What is the target? And this should be quite specific. It's not just, I want to learn Japanese. I mean, what does that mean? I want to reach a certain level. I maybe want to do a certificate. I want to do a certain amount every day. But first of all, try to get really specific on what is the target that I'm looking to do. My second question is how? So figure out how am I going to do this? What resources am I going to use? Am I going to go to a class? Am I going to read a book? Am I going to follow an app? Or really get all your resources together and decide what's the best? What do I like to do? What's going to suit me best? And then the two other questions, which I think are actually the more important questions is, first of all, why? Why am I doing this? And a lot of people, they say like, why? What's the trigger? What's the reason? Is it just because? I don't know. And this is my problem with Japanese because when I say to people I'm learning Japanese, they go, why? And it's hard. It's a good point. It's hard to answer because I'm probably never going to go and live in Japan. I'm never going to work there. I don't have Japanese clients. I love Japan. I have a Japanese friend and I love the language. But the why is a tricky. It's what I call the wobbler is the wobbler. It's like, why am I doing this? You have to find the wobble question and then try and fix the wobble. And the other final question I ask is, can I? Do I have the ability to do this? And I know because I speak other languages. I know I can if I invest time. That's not my wobble. My wobble with learning Japanese is why I was thinking in Japanese. It's like, I don't know. In comparison, when I ran a marathon a few years ago, I knew what marathon I knew how I had 50 different books. And I was like the most over-informed marathon runner ever. I knew why, because I was raising money for a charity. So I was highly motivated. I had a massive why. But my big wobble question was, can I? Can I actually run 42 kilometers without dying? And that was really my big wobble, because even in training as a beginner, you never run the full 42 until the day, actually. So there's always that doubt in your mind, like, can I really do this? So those are my four key questions. What, how, why, can I? I wrote a blog post on this so we can put that in the show notes. But again, it's just another way of looking at targets, questions to ask yourself how you make them and when you make them and what are the key points to think about. Yes, that's super. And I think I can answer all these questions with my resolution and the challenge we're going to set up for ourselves, aren't we? With improving my Dutch in 2024. Okay, so let's do the four questions. Yes, exactly. What? Want to improve my Dutch speaking skills? How? Okay, I have to look at that. Maybe I find somebody I can talk to on a regular basis or use an app. Why? Because I just love it and I frequently travel to the Netherlands. Can I? Yes, I believe I can. Yeah, well, we're going to challenge ourselves, aren't we? Okay. Absolutely, absolutely. So Dave, what's your challenge? What are you going to do? Mine is, as I said before, Spanish, obviously. I find my problem is listening. When I listen to Spanish people, they just sound like all words go together. It's so, so fast. I think that's what I have to work on. I have to work on understanding Spanish easier. That's the what. How am I going to do it? I think I'm going to try and watch a YouTube video a day in Spanish. Maybe even if it's only just a learning vocabulary stuff, but something in Spanish every day. Why? Well, I know why. Can I? Absolutely. Six weeks. Singe. Easy peasy. So we're saying six weeks. This is the challenge, right? The six week challenge. Yes. Starting today. Starting on January 1st. Can we say the second maybe for people? Okay. So starting on New Year's Day is tough. Yeah. Okay. Maybe on the second. Okay. Maybe starting on the second of January. We'll start tomorrow. That's a great resolution, isn't it? Let's start tomorrow. We're going to start. So Rebecca, what's yours? I just said, I don't know why I'm doing Japanese, but I think I am I think I'm going to go with Japanese. So what? Improve my reading skills, actually, because that's with all the different written forms of Japanese, that is very, very tricky. So I'm going to try and improve my reading skills, I think. How? I think I'm going to stick with Duolingo because it is my favorite way of learning right now. It's so easy and it keeps you accountable. It sends you a reminder every day. Have you done your learning? So I just want to keep it simple. I think nothing too complicated. Can I? Yes, I can. If I know I can do it, I can invest the time. Why? Just for the sake of it. And I do love it. I do love it. And I do enjoy it. Yeah. Maybe why is to impress my sensei the next time we meet that I can impress her with some new phrases or vocabulary. She listens to this podcast, so I'm sure she's listening. She's probably laughing. That's my why to impress my sensei. OK, so we will let you know, all the listeners, how it was going for us with the six weeks challenge. So maybe we can motivate some of you to do a similar thing with English learning. Obviously, that's a challenge you're facing. Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to get in touch, you can contact us at our website threeenglishexperts .com. There's a feedback form. You want to say how it's going. Or if you're on LinkedIn, you'll see our posts there and you can comment on how your challenge is going. Positives, negatives. It doesn't all have to be positives. You can learn from the negatives. But maybe also at the beginning, Rebecca and Birgit, they should also post what they would like to do. Yeah, good idea. And maybe even give us updates as they go along. That would be fantastic. Yeah. So hopefully you enjoyed listening to us today. We all wish you a very nice rest of the 1st January. And next time we will be talking about how to choose good material. Maybe that could be interesting for a challenge you want to set yourself. Hopefully you will listen again in two weeks time then. See you there. Bye for now. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website threeenglishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.