Coffee n Talk | Productivity

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

Join my VIP program. Join it. Try it at EffortlessEnglishClub.com EffortlessEnglishClub.com 88 degrees here in Osaka, Japan. That's Fahrenheit. Do you remember Fahrenheit?

That's the American temperature system. 88 degrees. What does that mean? It means summer is here. It's a summer day. Now, if you remember, in the Fahrenheit system, the temperatures in the 70s, 71, 75, 78, it's kind of perfect.

It's warm, but not hot. 70s. It's that perfect weather. 80s temperatures in the 80s 81 85 88 like today it's hot it's getting hot and 90s is very hot you know temperatures in the 90s that's like Thailand that's like the southern part of the United States where I'm originally from Georgia that's hot hot hot

Above 90 is very hot, so it's 88 now, which means it's getting pretty hot here in Japan. It's definitely summer weather here. My wife says 88 is already very hot. She doesn't like the summer.

I like it. I grew up in the South in the United States. I like the summer weather. I like the hot weather. Yesterday, I was very productive. Very, very, very productive.

People ask me sometimes about time management. Time management. AJ, how do I manage my time? How do I get more done? And my usual answer is, it's not time that's the problem, it's energy.

It's focus, it's discipline, it's concentration. That's what most people lack, what most people don't have enough of. You have enough time. If you really examine your day, unless you're a super workaholic...

For most people, if you look at your day, you've got lots and lots of time during the day where you're kind of not doing anything useful. Where you're watching TV, where you're just going to work, coming home from work, or driving around and doing different things.

All of those times you could be listening to English at the same time, and I hope you are. I hope you are. Now, I have a huge amount of time because of having financial freedom and having my own business. I have a huge amount of time every day to do what I want.

I like to have a lot of time for just relaxing. Spending time with my family and doing a little exercise, going for long walks, all those things I like to do.

But in terms of work and being productive, right, being productive means to get useful work done, to do useful work. I find that I am most productive when I focus, when I do a lot of work in a short time.

So yesterday I was recording like all night. I'm also more productive at night, I notice. I'm a night person and I do my best work at night. In the daytime I like to kind of go slow.

Mornings I'm very slow and relaxed. Afternoons when I like to think and plan things, maybe do a little bit of... communicating by phone or email but when I really want to record and do work and create things and get lots of great work done for me it's evenings it's after 6 or 7 o'clock that's when I really get going and so I was recording all last night recorded a whole new VIP lesson and a show and wrote out some mini stories did a whole lot of things last night

See, the advantage of focusing and doing a lot of work at one time, is you get into what's called a flow, right? You've probably heard of this, flow. It's this feeling where the work starts to become effortless, where you get more and more productive.

Because you're focused, you're concentrating, you have the work mindset, right? Your concentration gets better. Your energy gets better. You're not distracted.

That's when you get most productive, right? So you just turn off all the distractions. You know, I turned off my phone. I closed all the social media accounts.

And I just focused. And I just went, boom, boom, hours and hours. I stayed up late last night. Went to bed after midnight. So that's what I recommend to you.

And you can do this for like a whole month or a few months if you've got a big project. Now, for example... if you're thinking of starting your own business start your own business start your side business start your freelance business whatever it is this is a great way to do it instead of working like one hour a day on it for months and months and months instead choose a couple months and just work work work work work as much as you can and all during your free time maybe that's only at night and the weekends well that's when you do it then

See, as you get into the work, usually the first hour is the hardest. The first hour is the most difficult because you're thinking about other things. You have to change your mindset, change your attitude, get focused, get your ideas clear, get working. All that kind of takes a lot of mental energy and some time.

But once you're into it, once you're really producing, once you're going, then it's much easier to keep going. So that's why it's not good to take too many breaks. It's not good to just do small amounts of work.

If you want to be productive, if you want to get a lot done in a short time, it's really best to concentrate and just go, go, go, go, go. Now, you don't have to do this every day of your life. Then you do become a workaholic.

You can do this in, you know, short periods, like one or two months, where you just work, work, work, and you get a project done. You get some big project and you just finished it as quickly as possible with a lot of concentrated work. This is something you can do with your English, by the way. And I'm going to do a whole VIP lesson about this.

Where you make a big jump in a short time. So when you decide to work, when you decide to do something productive, this could be at your job, it could be you're working on your side business or investments or something.

Do your best to turn off all distractions. Don't answer the phone, turn it off in fact. And then just concentrate for several hours and just work, work, work and do nothing else. Once you get going, you're going to find you'll become much more productive.

We waste so much time. Every job I've ever had, when I looked around at all the employees and myself included, we were just wasting so many hours. If we had just focused and worked hard with no distractions, we could probably finish our work in half the time, sometimes less.

It's exactly the same issue I talk about with schools, how schools waste so much time. And if the kids and the teachers just focused and worked, worked, worked, and without any distractions, without any of the ridiculous nonsense, without any of the busy work, they could get more done, more learned, more In half the time, kids could just go to school three hours a day and learn more, achieve more.

That's the great homeschool advantage if you do it well, if you do it right. And what's great about that, then it leaves children with tons more time, lots more time to play, to be creative, to be children, to be free.

And the same is true for us as adults. It doesn't have to change when you become an adult. I still have lots of free time because when I need to work, when I have a big project or something important, then I just go. I work and I focus and I can do a huge amount of work in four hours.

Four or five hours if I focus... It's amazing how much I get done. It's the distractions that are the problem, right? I could work 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day if I'm distracted and I'm constantly checking my phone and looking at something else or I'm looking at things on the internet or I get up, I take a break.

Well, then the work can stretch out for hours and hours and hours and hours every day. If instead I turn off all distractions and I just do the work and nothing else, well, three hours a day consistently like that, I can do a huge amount, a tremendous amount of productive, useful work.

So that's the key. Speaking of enjoying family and relaxing, my cousin Olivia is here in Japan. We are meeting her tomorrow. Meeting her tomorrow in Kyoto.

We're going to spend a couple days with her in Kyoto, which is my favorite city in Japan. Then she's going to come back and she's staying with us here in Osaka for one month.

I've talked about my cousin Olivia before, but to remind you, she is 18 years old, just graduated from high school. Just finished high school in Indiana, right in the middle of the United States.

So this is her summer vacation right now, and as her graduation trip, her summer trip, she... is visiting Japan. She studied Japanese in high school. She took Japanese classes in high school.

That's her language. And now she's coming here. The first part, for two weeks, she has been traveling in Japan for a school trip. So she came over here with a teacher and some other students from her school.

Students in her Japanese class. They went to Tokyo. They went to Nagoya. Now they're in Kyoto. So the school trip, the official school trip, is ending tomorrow.

Her school friends will go back to America tomorrow. Her teacher will go back to America tomorrow. But luckily for Olivia, she has a cousin named AJ who lives in Japan.

So she's going to stay here a whole extra month, four weeks, with us. So she's excited about that. She loves Japan. She loves it. So this is a good time of freedom for her, which is great.

And then she's going to go back to Indiana after next month. And she will start college, starting university. She wants to be an engineer today. I believe she said she wants to be a civil engineer.

She may change her mind later, of course, but right now, civil engineers, they build roads, they build bridges, that kind of stuff. It probably is a job that requires a college degree.

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing it probably does, so I guess it's necessary for her to go to school. Hopefully she will enjoy being an engineer and she'll like it and have a good experience at college.

However, for most young people, I do not recommend going to college immediately. At least wait. At least wait a few years. Okay. You know, Olivia's a little different.

I don't know why, but she's been very focused on being an engineer for a few years. So, you know, maybe for her it's not a problem. She's super clear about exactly what she wants to do.

Seems like she has no doubts about it. We'll see. We'll see. But on the other hand, her brother, Philip, who some of you know, has had a terrible time.

Really struggling. Really struggling. He did the normal thing. He went off to college because that's what you're supposed to do, right? He went off to college, but he really had no idea what he really wanted to do.

And he thought, well, I want to do business because I want to be rich, which is kind of a typical thing some 18-year-olds might think. So he went off and he got a business degree at his university and also got a lot of student loans so that he owes money.

Already in debt. Starting his life in debt. His adult life in debt. Graduated. Got out. And then reality hits. Has to start looking for jobs. Finds a job.

Realizes he learned nothing in college. Nothing useful about business. It was all bullshit. And And that's what business school is in universities, by the way.

It's bullshit. Complete nonsense. For a while, he wanted to start his own business and talked about that. I hope he does it someday still. And I tried to help him with that a little, but it just didn't work out.

And again, I think he was surprised by how difficult it could be, how much work was necessary. And I think the really hard part, though, this is true for a lot of young people who come out of school, is the decision making.

right? Their whole young lives, the teachers are just telling them what to do. Okay, do this. Read this. Write this report. Study for this test. Study these pages.

This will be on the test. This will not be on the test, right? So everything's told to them. They're directed. They don't have to make any decisions about anything.

Suddenly he gets out. This is true for a lot of young people. They get out. If they Especially if they try to start a business and suddenly no one tells them anything.

Every single decision they have to decide on their own. And guess what? In the real world... The decisions are not always clear. You don't always know what's going to happen.

You have not enough information or not enough experience and you have to make a decision and sometimes you just have to do your best and you decide. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And that's how you learn. And hopefully your decisions get better as you get more experience.

But so many of these kids, these young people, are terrified of doing that. They're so brainwashed by the schools of being told what to do. Some authority, some person above them will tell them what to do. Here, do this.

Here, write this paper. And you have to return the paper on this date. Right? They're just used to getting these directions about everything. constantly being told what to do and when suddenly that's gone they freak out they don't know what to do they really really struggle because then you have to be self-disciplined then you have to make the decisions yourself and even at a job it can be rough right it can be tough at a job because at some jobs it's the same they expect you to make decisions they expect you to be self-disciplined this is the tragedy of schools

Now some jobs it's a little easier because they get trained in a very specific skill and then they go to a job and they're told exactly what to do and that's why some people like those kind of jobs and do well and that's okay.

But a lot of people struggle, and this is why I say, you know, instead of going to college right out of high school, when you really have no idea about the world at all, you have no idea about the work world or money or anything really, because people have been telling you what to do all the time, and suddenly you're supposed to be an adult, right?

So you need to get out there and make some decisions first. You need to get some experience because otherwise your decisions are probably going to be bad. Just get used to it. In the beginning, you don't know anything.

You have no real world experience. You're not used to making all these life decisions. So a lot of them will be mistakes. That's okay. That's how you learn.

But... Don't spend huge amounts of money at college avoiding that. First, get out there and work. Get out there and travel. Get out there and learn things.

Make connections. Try things. You can try to start your own little side businesses. You can do anything you want. Just make a decision. Make a decision and try it.

If it works, great. If it doesn't, you learn and you keep going. Do that for a few years first, at least. And parents, tell your kids to do that, okay?

Stop trying to force your kids to go to college immediately. You're just stressing them out and you're pushing them into something they're probably not ready for.

And you're wasting a whole huge amount of money. Get out there, live, work, travel, get experience in life for a few years. I'd say three to four to five years. I mean, my advice would be at least five years to do that.

Yeah, be poor maybe. Maybe you're going to be poor. Maybe you're going to have crappy jobs. That's okay. That's part of learning too. Learning what you hate.

Learning what you don't like. What kind of jobs do you hate? What kind of things do you really not like? That's helpful too. And then after that five-year period, now you've got some life experience.

Now you have some ideas about what you might want to do or what you would enjoy doing. Then make the decision. If you then need to go to college or university because it's necessary for the career you want, fine. Then go to college with a clear plan.

Making a clear decision based on experience, not just some fantasy. Or maybe you find at that time you don't need to go to college. It's not necessary at all. You can do what you want to do without it.

You can save all that time and money. For those of you who want to be entrepreneurs and start your own business, do not waste your time at college. You are wasting time. You are wasting money.

You are avoiding getting real world business experience. Don't do it. Don't do it. Just start a business. That's how you learn. Start something. Start something small, but start something.

All right, I'm going to end here. I'll be back with a regular Effortless English show later tonight, today. Hope you are having a great day. I'm going to go back in the coffee shop.

Take a little sip, a little drink of a nice cold iced coffee and enjoy my relaxing afternoon. Lots of love to you. As always, go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com Join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com