Perfection

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Go there, commit, don't quit, EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Today we're talking about perfection, action, and success. And it's the general topic. So we're really talking about success in life.

And by success here, I mean achievement, okay? Sometimes people use the word success very generally. You know, like to mean, I don't know, generally happiness or something. But that's not what I'm talking about today.

I'm talking about success means just you achieve some goal. You achieve some, you know, difficult... Level of skill, right? You accomplish something difficult.

That's what I mean today when I talk about success. So I'm not talking about a successful life, okay? That's a very philosophical question. Today, being much more practical, just focus on, okay, you want to do something.

Let's say you want to be good at golf. You want to play golf. You want to start your own business. You want to have good health or good fitness. You want to have a good family.

You want to... speak English fluently, whatever, right? These are kind of very specific, practical things. So what are some of the key points, key mindsets to have to achieve that success so that you achieve a very good level of success, right, ability in these areas?

Now we're live on YouTube today. Lots of people checking in and saying hello, our usual group. Nice to see you. I will check in with you in a minute, discuss the topic first.

Now a few other updates very quick. Number one, the Business English course is ready. Yes, we're just going to test the system really quickly to make sure everything's fine.

That'll require a few more days, let's say Thursday, so probably next week. This will give us, you know, next week we'll test the system. Right now I'm not in a hurry because August is kind of a slow time. You know, a lot of people take vacations in August, especially in Europe and the United States.

So, a lot of people kind of slow. This is why I wanted to start our challenge in August because August can be a bit of a lazy time for some of us, you know, right in the hottest part of the summer in the north, at least, in the northern hemisphere.

And, well, even in the southern hemisphere, it's in the middle of the winter. And so it can kind of be a little bit of a lazy time. We go on vacation, and often schools in different parts of the world have their vacation in August. So I thought, well, that's a perfect time to start a challenge.

Instead of being lazy, we're going to do the opposite, and we're going to make extra effort. And that'll give us this good power, this good momentum going into the fall. And the fall is often, especially because of our training with school system perhaps, but I always think of the fall as a good time to work hard, to be very active.

And that's actually a good memory I have of school, especially university, because I had a very nice time in university. I criticize the university system a lot, but as just a life experience, it was very nice, very positive for me. I loved the University of Georgia. I had a good time.

And there was always a lot of excitement in the fall when I was at the university in Georgia. The summer, lots of students would go home in the summer. The town, Athens, Georgia, would become very quiet, kind of more relaxed and slow-paced. But then in the fall, there was always this energy, all the students coming back into the city, into the town.

The university becoming alive again with lots of activity. Football season, American football season starts in the fall, and that's a big thing, especially in the south where I'm from.

So there's always this great energy in the fall. So we're going to start a little early. We're starting in August. We'll kind of get that energy going.

And then hopefully September, bam, we're all going to be really doing well with our language learning. So anyway, the point is the business English course, a couple more weeks. I mean, it's basically finished, but I'll be sending out discount codes first to the VIP members.

That'll probably be a couple weeks from now. Then at the end of the month, maybe beginning of September, I'll give you, during the show, the podcast, I'll put it on the video, I'll do it in the audio, I'll give all of you a discount code to get that Business English course. You could use the Business English course as part of your challenge. Lots of listening and reading, too, if you want.

So, thumbs up on all that. But let's just talk about the topic very quickly. Perfection. There's a nice saying, a nice idiom in English, especially business English, actually, in the business world, especially in entrepreneurs, you know, people who start their own businesses.

There's kind of an idiom, a little bit of a saying, and that's perfection is the enemy of good. Perfection is the enemy of good. Seems a little bit of a strange idiom. What does that mean?

Perfection is the idiom of good. is the idiom, is the enemy, is the enemy of good. What it means is this, what we find a lot of times with entrepreneurs, people who want to start their own business.

There are a lot of people who dream about starting their own business, leaving their job, starting their own business. And there's a very common thing that happens, very common.

And the common thing is that they never start. They never start. And there are many reasons for this. One big reason is fear. They're too worried about fear and fear of failure.

And as part of that, I think, I think it's part of the fear of failure, there are many people who think they must be perfect. Perfect. Before they start, right?

I need the perfect employees. Like everything has to be perfect and then I will start. Then I will open my business. But of course, perfect is impossible, number one.

For humans, perfect is impossible. So number one, perfect never comes. It never comes. The business plan will never be perfect. It can always be a little better.

You'll never have the perfect amount of money to start your business. You could always use more. More money could always be useful. It always seems like it would be useful.

You could always learn more. You could always be better at marketing. You could be better with your product. Your product could be better. It's not perfect.

Or your service. It's not perfect yet. So it can always be better. And so this becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason to never start. So these people, they never take action.

They never open their business because they think they must be perfect first. And this is, number one, impossible. But number two, it's backwards. It's backwards.

You become not perfect, but you become better by doing. By doing and learning, then you become better and better and better. You start the business, then you make the business better and better and better and better, and then maybe it does become very, very good.

This is very obvious if we look at health and fitness. I like sports examples and fitness examples because they're usually more clear. We can kind of see the main ideas and the psychology more clearly when we look at our physical bodies. It's just more simple and direct.

So imagine this. Imagine you say, I want to be strong. I want to lift weights. I want to start lifting weights to be strong. But then you say, but I can't start lifting weights until I'm strong.

I can't start until I can lift heavy weights. Right now I'm weak. I can't lift heavy weights, so I can't start. I must get stronger first. Then I'll start to lift weights.

Well, that's clearly crazy, right? That's crazy thinking. It's not logical. Because you get strong by lifting weights. Lifting weights is what makes you stronger.

If you wait to be strong first, you'll never start. You'll never get stronger. Therefore, you will never start lifting weights. Very obvious. Same with running, right?

You want to run a marathon. You say, well, I can't start running now because I'm too tired. I have no endurance. First, I will have good endurance. Then I'll start running.

Again, it's crazy. It's crazy thinking. It's totally backwards. You get better endurance by running. You have to start running first. Even just five minutes...

And then, little by little, you get better and better, and then you will do a marathon or an ultra-marathon or whatever you want to do, right? So very clear if we look at fitness. You have to start first, and you get better by doing.

But somehow with mental activities or business or other things, we forget this. Again, I'll blame the schools. Why not? I think it's the school thinking, this idea of grades, right?

Because we're so afraid of tests and tests and tests. We're afraid to get a D. We're afraid to get an F. We think, oh, I must study, study, study, study, study and get an A. And then I take the test and I have 99% and I have a good grade. I take the test after I'm totally ready.

But this is not life. It's the opposite. And life, a C, 70%, many times is enough, is good enough, is very good. In some areas of life, you know, a 33% success, 33%, one-third.

In some parts of life, that is great success. Now, in school, that's an F. It's failing. But, for example, in baseball, in baseball, if someone's a hitter, they hit, they measure the hitting by a percent. How many times do they hit the ball when they are at, it's called at bat, you know, they have a chance to hit it.

How many times do they get a hit? Well, in baseball, 33% is excellent. It's excellent, right? That's, you know, professional player getting 33%, hitting 33%.

That's a 333 batting average, if you know baseball. That's very, very good. 40% is super. 40% success in baseball hitting is like superstar, super, super, superstar.

Like almost no one ever does it. Like, for example, this year... In America, with baseball, professional baseball, I think probably no one is hitting 40%. No one.

Most years, nobody can do it. So 40% in baseball is super success. That means they fail 60%. It's a little different, actually, because if you know baseball, they can get walks and things, but it's still very low.

So it depends in different areas of life. And so in this thing in business, for example, it's absolutely crazy to think that, oh, first I'll become perfect in all the business areas and all the skills and accounting and marketing and my product, my service, everything. And then I'll start the business. No, no, no, no.

That's crazy thinking. No, you start the business now. You start it now when you're not good. Of course, manage your risk. Don't risk a lot of money. Maybe you keep your job and you do your business part-time.

But you start. How do you get stronger in business? By doing business. Because that's how you really learn. So then you start your little tiny business.

And you're not good. You're not good, probably. Your marketing sucks. You're no good. You don't know how to market. Your sales, no good. Your product, not so good.

So-so. Or your service, so-so. It's okay. Just like you start lifting weights and you're weak in the beginning. You start running. You're weak. You can't run much.

But it doesn't matter because you're focused on improving, improving. You're taking action. And the action makes you better because then you learn. So you realize, well, marketing.

I don't know marketing. My marketing sucks. It's terrible. So what do you do? You learn marketing. You read marketing books. And more importantly... You try different marketing ideas in your business.

And some fail, but some succeed. And you learn from both. You learn from the failures. You learn from the successes. Your marketing ability gets higher.

Your skill gets better. Your business improves. Same with your product. Let's say you're selling a product. So your product in the beginning, so-so. Customers complain about some things.

Ah, I don't like this. I don't like this. So again, you learn. Your customers teach you. Your customers teach you how to improve. They tell you. They're like, I don't like this.

I don't like that. The price is too high. The price is too low. Whatever it is. And so what do you do? You improve your product. So you make it again.

You design it again. And it's better. And in this way, step by step, your product gets better and better and better. Or your service, same idea. Your service gets better and better and better.

And it's the same with the accounting and everything else. And this is how you grow your business and get better and better. By starting, you take action.

Action first. Action fast. And then you get better, better, better. You don't wait to be perfect. You don't even wait to be very good. You can just be so-so when you start.

So-so is good enough, usually. So-so is good enough. And then you get better. And this is probably one of the key reasons I succeeded in business is I just took action, a lot of action.

And yeah, sometimes a lot of things failed and some of the things I did were not very good. And even when I was just working a job, This is how I got better as a teacher. I tried so many techniques and different ideas and a lot of them failed.

A lot of them were boring. A lot of them, the students were confused. But they told me and I learned from them and I got better and better over time. I just took action.

I did not worry about being perfect all the time. This is the same with your English. So many people, oh, I've got to speak perfectly. You're never going to speak perfectly.

Never. I don't speak perfectly. I'm 51 years old. I'm a native speaker. I still make mistakes. When I speak English, I make mistakes. You will too. You always will.

But you'll get better. Okay? So jump in. Jump in. Take action. Chat. If you have a chance, talk to some people. Just enjoy it. Read books. Even if you can't understand every word, it's okay.

Of course not. Of course not. How do you get better? By reading more. How do you get better? By listening more. And that means when you start... Maybe you don't understand a lot.

You have to use a dictionary. You have to look at the words. You have to listen 30 times, 50 times or more to the same audio. It's okay, but you're taking action.

You're taking action. You're not just waiting. Action beats perfection. The people who try to be perfect in the beginning, they usually fail. Usually they don't start.

Usually they never start. But even if they start, their motivation is too low. They get frustrated too easily. When they make a mistake, they get really upset.

When they do something wrong, they get upset. This is like some people learning English. They get so upset if they can't remember a vocab word or they make a pronunciation mistake or they have a grammar mistake. They get so upset.

And this hurts their motivation. But the people who just take action, action, action, action, they're just listening, listening, listening, reading, reading, reading, talking, having a good time, making mistakes, but getting better little by little. They succeed much more long term. They have a higher level of skill long term than people who are trying to be perfect.

And it's the same with fitness, okay? It's the same with fitness. Again, you know, it's like, again, I always use my poor mom as an example. Poor mom.

But she's a good example because my mom has a terrible attitude about fitness. Her whole life she has. And this is why she does not have a good fitness level. And she often has this kind of idea.

Because I tell her, just mom, just go walk. She thinks, yeah, but I can't walk very much, so maybe I need to go to the gym and I need to do all... I say, no, just do it. Just walk five minutes.

It doesn't matter. Just start. Start now. Start today, right now. After you hang up the phone talking to me, walk outside and go for a walk. But she always... Everything has to be perfect.

In the summer... The weather's too hot. She says, oh, it's too hot. I'll start in the fall when the weather's nicer. And of course, in the fall, she doesn't do it.

And then the winter comes. No, now it's too cold. Right? Oh, and I need to join a gym. But, you know, I need more money to join the gym. There's always a reason.

It's never perfect. So she never does it. Right? And I just walk out the door right now. Go. I'll go walk. Every day. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Okay? I'm just doing it. I don't care. I don't have to do a marathon every week. Okay? Just do something. Just do something. So this is so important for all of you.

In anything you want, with our English challenge, this is another part, very important. Some of you are going to see on the English challenge, there'll be some big numbers, okay, big numbers. I'm looking right now at the listening challenge. We've got people with, I just entered mine.

Mine is actually six and a half. I think the software jumps it up. It's called rounding. It's showing seven for me, but really I'm six and a half hours today of listening.

And we've got a couple of people with six hours, five hours, four hours. So you might see these big numbers and like, oh my God, I can't do six hours. I'm too busy. I don't have time.

Well, it doesn't matter. Don't use this as an excuse, as a reason to do nothing. right? You don't need to be perfect. Somebody probably is going to do 12 hours one day.

Maybe today someone's going to put 12 hours or 15 hours, some crazy number on there. And I can't do that. I can't do it. I don't have that time. So it doesn't matter though.

It doesn't matter, right? Do anything. 30 minutes is better than zero, right? Walking 30 minutes every day is better than not walking at all, than zero.

So do 30 minutes, right? If you're doing the listening challenge, you can't do five hours. Doesn't matter. Do one hour. Do 30 minutes. Do 15 minutes. Do something.

Action, action, action every day. Same with the reading. Now, my reading numbers are much lower. My reading number is 1.5 today. And probably my reading will be some days lower than that.

So I'm not going to win the reading challenge. I'm not going to win the listening challenge probably either. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Take action.

Take action. The action over time. That's how you learn. That's how you get better. So it's so much better. Even if you're not good, just start. Get into the game, right?

You cannot win if you don't play. If you dream about starting your business, just start it. Start it with no money. Start it part-time while you're doing a job.

Start it when you know nothing about marketing, nothing about anything. Just start it. You'll learn while you're doing it. And that's true for anything.

All right. So that's my little motivation for today for you. Very quickly, I just want to show you our... Speaking of, I'll give you... This software is an example of our topic today.

So this is the software, the website we are using for our challenges. It's not perfect, okay? I spent some time... I spent some time looking for software or an app or a website for our challenge.

And honestly, I didn't find anything very good. Not very good. This website is so-so. Honestly, it's the best I found. Maybe there's something better, but I realized we just need to start.

I don't want to waste more time. I'm not going to waste time trying to find the perfect software because then... We'll never start the challenge. We'll never do it.

So is this software perfect? This website is not perfect at all. It has some problems I can't figure out. Some people having problems, they get a message about entering a code.

I don't know. I've been trying to figure out. What is that? There's no code. I don't know why. It's asking people for a code. I don't know. Um... Yeah, it's not perfect, okay?

And maybe next challenge we do, you know, maybe we'll do one in January. Maybe then we can find a better, we'll improve. Maybe this gives us four or five more months. We can find some better app or a better website, something, okay?

But for now, it's not perfect. Maybe it's not even very good, but it's good enough. At least we're starting. At least we're doing the challenge. We're getting motivated.

We're doing listening and reading a lot. So we're... Just taking action. Take action. And if we find a better app, if we find a better website, we can even change in the middle of the challenge.

We can just enter the numbers we already have, transfer to a new website, and keep going. So if you know a good website for something like this, counting total hours, showing the leaders, adding everything automatically, if you know something like that that's free,

At least I'm willing to pay for it a little bit. Effortless English can pay a little bit. But it's got to be free for the users because you guys don't want to pay money just for this.

But if you know something, please, on Gab, you should send me a message with the link and I'll check it out. I'll look at it. But for now, this is it.

And here's our leaderboard just quickly. No, this is not totally fair because I started probably first. Because I started at midnight. I'm awake all night with babies.

Most of you are sleeping at midnight. I am awake from midnight to 6 a.m. So a lot of my hours were last. It was my night, but still today. It's still August 1st for me.

So I'm showing, like I said, for me it's actually 6.5 hours. But we've got Ahmed here has 6 hours. Jose Ramos has 6 hours. Our own Rafiko Islam here, five hours.

Steve Wynn, five hours. I'm sorry about your name. I always have trouble pronouncing it. Zbignoy, four hours. Kira Lusatef, four hours. Julia, four hours.

Elisa, four hours. Mehranush, sorry, four hours. And Ryusuke, four hours. Nice. Nice. Nice. Very nice. And then down here on the reading challenge, look at that.

We've got Anis is the top one with three hours. We've got Fukdin, one of our regulars, two and a half hours. Elisa, one of our regulars, two and a half. Cecilia, Jennifer, Hai, all with two hours.

Excellent. Nice. Very nice. All right, let's go to our live comments and questions, shall we? All right. Oh, hey, this is cool. Yongchao Zhao says, I've passed my driver's license.

I'm guessing in English. Thank you for the impact your English lessons on my exam. That's really cool. So you took it in English, I guess. So nice. That's very practical.

Congratulations. Very good. It's actually, you know, honestly, it's one of my goals in Japanese is to do the driver's license test in Japan. But I'll need some time.

Yeah, see, Dalal, I don't know what this code is, and I apologize. I don't know. I have an admin account, and I'm checking everything. There's no code.

There's no code. I don't know what it is. I'll try to send a message to their support. and see if I can figure it out. Just save your hours like on an app or just write it down, you know, and we can enter your hours, you know, in a few days if necessary.

So I will check support on the website, see if I can find out what is this code they're asking for. I don't know what's wrong with it. Oh, we got an 11 hours person. Says refresh.

Someone just entered 11 hours. Well, rock and roll. Let's check it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This will be admin mode, but same thing. Yeah, look at that.

We have a new top spot in the listening. It's I am Perumal. 11 hours. See, now see, I like this. That inspires me. Can I do 11 hours in a day? Probably not, but it makes me think...

Maybe I can do one more hour. Maybe I can do 30 more minutes, right? Try to push myself a little more. Very nice. Very nice. Let me show the screen, sorry.

If you're watching. There you go. 11. Nice. We got some big numbers. I knew we'd have some big numbers from some people. But hey, if your number's not big, just...

Remember, improve, right? It's just like if you're a runner, okay? Some people run ultra marathons. You know, they run 50K. Some people run 100K races.

100K, 100 kilometers, 60 miles. Okay? It's amazing. But if you are just beginning, don't feel bad. Maybe you can only run 5K or 2K. Do not compare yourself to the person running 100K.

That's crazy. Of course you're going to feel bad because it seems impossible. But it doesn't matter. Start with 2K and then next week 3K and then next month 5K and then in six months 10K, 20K.

You will get better and better and better. Compare yourself to your past self. That's how you... help yourself in these challenges. Yeah, like this very famous Chinese saying, Yi Swan Lai says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Indeed, you have to take the step. You can't think about it, right? You have a thousand mile journey. Just thinking about it, just imagining walking it does nothing.

Let's say you want to walk the Camino de Santiago. Well, and you sit in France and you just dream about it. Oh, yeah, I'm going to walk over the mountains. I'll walk about it.

I'm going to, you know, and you just train and train. Training's fine. But you never start. So if you'll never make it to Santiago, what do you do? Oh, yeah, you should probably train some so you're not...

You're in good shape, but eventually you have to take the step, put on the backpack, and start walking. Yeah, Cardo says, like, the gym is far from my house. I did exercise for about four months, then I cut it off for more than a year. Now I regret I must start exercise again.

Yeah, man, so you just find another way. Maybe, you know, if it's far from your house, do exercise at home. Homemade muscle, right? I interviewed Anthony.

Follow one of his programs. All you need is a pull-up bar in your door. In your house and push-ups and there's all, you know, you can do it all in your home and get very strong.

That's why I do it now. I got tired of wasting time going to the gym, waiting at the gym, coming home from the gym. It was a lot of wasted time and I just realized, well, at home I can do a whole workout in 20 minutes.

Right, doing something is better than nothing, says Umar. Exactly right. Well, said very simply. Yeah, like Kik Manson says, I think passion beats perfection.

Also a nice way to say it. Passion makes you care about your work. Perfection can make you unhealthily obsessed about your work. Yeah, that's right, it can.

And it can paralyze you. It can stop you from taking action. It creates fear because perfection is impossible. And therefore, you just become afraid because you start thinking, I can never do it.

I can never do it. Because you can't. Okay. Yeah, right. Vladislav says, I used to walk 7.5 kilometers to my work, but the most difficult part was to get up and leave the house.

If I did that, I would definitely walk the way to work. Yes. I think if you are any runners out there, well, I think anyone who works out, you know this experience. But I can remember, you know, running,

or even training, even at home sometimes, where you feel kind of tired, you're not motivated. The hardest part is to start, right? And you're kind of, I don't want to do it. I'm tired.

This is going to be terrible. I feel bad. But somehow you put on the clothes, you put on your shoes, and you go out the door, you start jogging, you start running.

And not always, but many times what happens, after about 20 minutes, something changes and you start feeling much better. Like you get energized by the run, you know, the oxygen moving your body. And by the end of the run, by the end, you're feeling great.

You feel fantastic. I've had some of my best runs this way where the start I thought was terrible. The start I didn't even really want to do it. But by the end, I felt fantastic and I had a really good run.

And this happens too sometimes with a workout, doing workouts at home. Like, I don't want to do push-ups today. I don't want to, no pull-ups. And then I make myself do it and then by the time I'm finished, I'm feeling great.

So it happens sometimes, you know, just start, just start. And this is again the idea that you don't need perfection. You don't need to feel good about it, okay? You don't need to be motivated always.

You don't always need to be energized, okay? Like sometimes you run and you start the run and you feel tired and you don't want to do it and you just do it anyway.

It doesn't matter. But by doing it, it changes how you feel. And this is also true with English. Sometimes you're like, I don't want to, I'm tired. I don't want to listen to English today.

I don't want to, well, I'll do it. And just turn it on. Just turn it on. Turn on the audio. And then sometimes, you know, after 30 minutes, like you might have a really good listening time.

Maybe your brain is understanding better than normal. You're enjoying it. And you could end up having a really good experience just by starting. And maybe the start.

So the start, sometimes the start is the hardest part. All right, so next. What else do we got? Start easily, but follow-up is difficult. Okay, and this is the opposite problem.

This is the other side of it. One second. Just a second. Just a second. Part. Okay, one second, guys. I just got to take care of something very quickly.

All right, so next. One second, one second, one second, one second. What else we got? Start easily, but follow-up is difficult. Okay, and this is the opposite problem.

Just taking care of something there. Okay, really quick. Is your wife named Miyuki? No. Okay, see, Saraswati says, I started very easily, but follow-up is difficult to me.

How can I do continuously? Well, and then there is that sometimes. Sometimes some people are good at starting and not good at finishing. So we also need this kind of, what do we call it, perseverance, you know, persistence.

And how do you do it? You just do a little bit every day. You do it by, again, perfection, and you don't worry about being perfect. You just make yourself do something every day, even if it's not great.

You know, like some days, again, like, again, using fitness as an example, or listening, either one. But some days, you know, let's say I'm doing a workout. I'm doing some, you know, just lifting weights or something. And I'm just tired and the workout sucks.

It's not good. I have to drop my weight. I have to actually use less weight than normal. I do fewer push-ups. I do fewer pull-ups than normal. Like just the energy's not there.

I'm tired. I don't know why, but sometimes it's a bad workout. But I still did something. So I still did something, which is good, right? And the same is going to happen with your listening.

If you're listening lots of hours every day to English, some days, you know, you're just distracted. Your mind, you're just, it's kind of frustrating. You're listening and your mind is thinking about something else and you try to focus again on the English and then you get distracted again and it just kind of feels like a fight the whole time. But you're still doing something.

You're still getting some benefit. And the good news is every day is not that way. Maybe tomorrow you have the opposite. Concentration is fantastic. You're understanding everything better.

So there will be good days and there will be difficult days. The key point is just do something anyway. It doesn't have to be perfect. Every day, every workout, every listening time does not need to be perfect.

Yeah, like Delonge. And I'm sorry, I'm guessing your last name is Cayo. Is it Delonge or Delonge? Anyway, in everything we do, the first step is most difficult, like learning English.

You'll never become better without practicing. You must start doing something. Excellent. Well said. Yes. You're just starting. There's a famous, I think it's Woody Allen, but...

The saying is 80% of success is showing up. 80% of success is just showing up. What does that mean? Just showing up basically means just taking action, just doing it.

That a lot of success in life and different things in life is just you keep doing it. You keep doing it and you don't quit. It's the people who stop taking action or who never take action. Those are the ones who fail and that

It's not 100% of success. You have to learn. You have to do other things. But a large part of success is just don't quit. That's why I say commit, don't quit.

Just keep doing something. And you kind of will get better. Not automatically every single day, but over time you will get better. Yeah, like Sam85 says, I can do something for four hours...

Oh, I can't do something for four hours. It's impossible. Even in my job, I get bored. 30 minutes max. 30 minutes is better than zero minutes. Yes. The other thing you can do, Sam, is that you do 30 minutes, but you do it a few different times.

So you do 30 minutes in the morning. You do 30 minutes in the afternoon. You do 30 minutes at night. That's an hour and a half total for the whole day.

But each time is only 30 minutes. so that's another way you can get more total hours of English or whatever but each time is not too long oh asking about content Vanu says what do I need to make do I just put how long I've listened or read some books yes

Where's the content? It's in the Everless English site. I've listened three hours yesterday. Any content you want. Yes, you can listen to my courses. Those are on my Everless English site.

If you're a VIP member, use those lessons. If you have Power English, use that. If you have the pronunciation course, if you get the business course, all of those, yes. But you can also listen to other things.

Anything you want. Podcasts, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, you know, anything in English. Same with reading. You can read any book you want. So, it's your choice.

It's your choice. You're the boss. Fuchten says, others are waiting for the perfect moment to take action. Stay focused. That's how we improve, like learning English.

Now I can speak fluently while my friends still are waiting. It was seven years ago until now. Yes, good point, good point. I was guilty of this myself in Spanish.

Quite guilty of it. And now the Japanese have a very different attitude. Okay. Okay. Yeah, movies collection. This is nice. This is what I'm doing too.

I'm not saying eight hours, but I want to put six hours because sometimes when I listen, I get distracted. Is it fair or what? I think it's fair. That's exactly what I'm doing also.

I'm not demanding 100% meditative super focus, but if I get really distracted, like I actually had, there was Japanese audio playing longer than six and a half hours today.

But some of those minutes were not, I was not really listening. It was kind of in the background, but I was not focused at all. So I didn't, I don't count it, not counting that.

So yeah, I think that's fair. You know, it's your choice because again, really, this is, you're comparing yourself to yourself. So make, you know, follow consistent rules for yourself.

And that's my rule for myself is that if I'm distracted if I'm not really listening to it. It's listening. It's not playing. I can play audio while I'm sleeping.

I can play audio all day, 24 hours, but I'm not really listening to it. I'm not counting 24 hours. Okay. Yeah, now, see, I think I agree with Li Yujin.

I think motivation is not always important. It's just another way to move. It comes and goes. It's not always good. Well, I think, yeah, the meaning that...

It's not important to always feel excited and passionate. Passion is great and it helps a lot. But what's important is you just do something. Even when you are not feeling very motivated.

As I said with the exercise example, that sometimes when I exercise, I don't feel motivated at all. I feel tired. I don't really want to do this, but I'll do it. And maybe it's not the best, and I'm not using the best energy, and I'm not using the best concentration, but I'm still doing something, and this benefits me.

It just keeps me going. That's a kind of motivation, I think. Yeah, and I agree with Ibrahim. This is kind of a technical point, but I have the same experience.

Shadowing makes me focus while listening. I found the same thing. Now, sometimes I don't do shadowing because I'm tired. Honestly, my brain gets a little tired after a while doing it because it requires a lot of concentration.

But that's the good thing about shadowing. It forces you to listen. It really helps concentration a lot. And... Other benefits, supposedly it helps with some other things too, but I think that's the best benefit is it just really focuses listening quite a lot.

I listen better. I notice more words and phrases and things when I'm shadowing. But I can't always do it. Sometimes my brain is just a little too tired, especially late at night.

N says, I'm glad you're talking about beating perfection. I thought if I want to have an English institution, I should speak like a native speaker first. Nah, man, jump in. As long as you're fluent and pretty good, just do it.

Help other people. You know, you can always help people who are lower than you. Even if you are intermediate level, you can help beginners. You can help children.

You can help them a lot. So you don't have to be perfect. Yeah, like Nourius says, keeping discipline is more important. Indeed, I think discipline is a better word than motivation.

Discipline is a virtue. Motivation, I don't think so. Because discipline means you do something, if you feel motivated, if you don't feel motivated, it doesn't matter, you still do it.

Discipline is stronger. Self-discipline, of course, we're talking about. All right, a couple more, and I've got to go take care of babies as usual. Okay, Ripsime says, Dear AJ, how can you...

Briefly describe perfection in terms of being impossible. Human beings are imperfect, but I wonder why do they want to reach it? Well, I think we do have some kind of, I don't know, is it intuition? Is it human nature?

I can't say. I know why. But we have a desire to improve, right? But we have to realize that we can never be perfect. Because we're not all powerful, right?

We are limited. But on the other hand, we want excellence. We want to be the best we can, the best we can be. And I think it feels good to get better.

It feels good to improve. It feels good to be excellent. Why is that? I don't know. That's a pretty deep question. Preeti's asking job questions. Preeti says, what do you think, which is a better government job or business?

Is government job business? Because most people believe government job is. Do they? I don't know. Do most people really believe that? I don't. Because the government employee is given a lot of facilities from the government.

Example, a medic. Yeah, but government jobs are boring. Um... I don't know. It depends on the business, right? Some big business jobs are also boring.

You have to judge jobs individually. It's too general to say government or business. I mean, I don't know which business, which government job. For me, government job sounds like hell.

It sounds like hell. It's just bureaucracy and paperwork and boring and bleh. No thank you. But I don't like big business jobs for the same reason. Big companies, same idea.

Bureaucracy, paperwork, bleh. So, you know, it depends on who you are. Each individual decides this. You have to decide for yourself. I can't say for you.

I don't know. You just have to look at individual jobs. I think that's too big a category to government business it's you got to focus on specific jobs you might find a really good government job i don't know in your area you might find a good business job you might do your own business you might like small businesses better you might prefer big businesses you know like i'm i always say bad stuff about big business but my dad worked for big business and had a pretty good experience he liked it but different personalities he and i

Yeah, Merrick with another interesting point. Completely perfect people are boring. Their lives are boring. Life must be varied. It contains successes and failures.

Moments that are joyful and sad. Only then does a person feel he is alive. Well, indeed, because when we say perfect people, they're not really perfect.

I think usually people who pretend to be perfect, they're just afraid of failure. they're not really excellent, right? They're not showing excellence. They're just showing caution, being very, very careful.

They're just trying to do everything possible to avoid failure. But when you totally avoid failure like that, you also avoid big success. You cannot have big success. You cannot have big improvement without failure.

They go together. You can't do it. You will never become a multimillionaire by... being perfect in business and never failing and never making mistakes is not going to happen.

Because to learn business at a high enough level to make that kind of money, you have to have failures. Look at all the big successes of famous entrepreneurs. If you look at their life stories, they had a lot of failures at different times.

It makes them stronger. People who don't fail... They're avoiding failure all the time. They're also weak. They're weak because they're full of fear. And they're never tested.

Failure tests you. It makes you tougher. So, yeah, it's really... I think people who say, oh, they seem like they have perfect lives. But I think often if you look...

Either, number one, they don't have perfect lives. If you look at their story, you find out actually, oh, actually, they had a lot of failure. They had a lot of tough situations in life. They've had a lot of challenges.

Or the other situation, you find that they're actually afraid and they avoid all difficulty, which is boring. Okay, a couple more, a couple more. Didar says, I've got so many advantages from you. Is it appropriate to listen to your lessons and watching movies and any podcast?

I mean, listening to English more times but different objects. Yes, that's totally fine. Do all of that. If you have time, listen to anything you like that you enjoy, that's interesting to you, that you can understand mostly.

All of these things. Yeah, Ali, I kind of agree with you. That's poor dad mentality, government jobs. I agree. You're not going to be financially free in a government job.

You're kind of a slave. It's not my choice, but some people might like it. Yeah, like Al says, if you can't participate in the challenge because of some code...

Just write your hours yourself in notes or on paper or use an app. And at the end of the challenge, summarize and we can just share it on Gab or something. So yeah, that's right. Just count anyway.

Count your hours anyway. Right, like Luciano, must I worry about mistakes when I chat with native speakers? No! No! Don't worry about it. Make mistakes.

You're going to make mistakes. Make a lot of them. It doesn't matter. Native speakers don't really care. You have to understand, this is a school mentality.

The average normal native speaker, let's just say American, the average American talking to you, they don't care about your English. They care if they can understand you, of course, because You're trying to communicate. But they don't care if you use the wrong verb tense.

They're not English teachers, these people. They're not English teachers. They don't care. They're not grading you. They're not noticing every mistake you make.

They don't care if you make the wrong grammar choice. They don't care. They only care can they understand you, in general, what you're trying to say. That's all.

That's all. So, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. There are plenty of native speakers who really do not care. CKC of Vladislav. Yes, indeed.

Cleepy says, what a great feeling to be part of this challenge. Get in the game. Nice sentence. Yes, get in the game. Just get in there and play. You don't need to be the best player.

Just get in there and play. Join. Participate. Viet is asking about one of my many stories. In the Bubba's food lesson, I don't think there's such a huge cat like that in the world.

Would you say something more about that? Yes, these stories are exaggerated. They're supposed to be funny. They're not real situations, obviously. You'll notice when you read other stories that a lot of them are very exaggerated.

I think it's more like a cartoon, okay? Because you'll remember it more. Yeah, now here's an app recommendation from Ibrahim Ali. It's one that I'm using on my phone.

There's an app called 10,000 Plus. It's just the number 10,000. So 1-0-0-0-0. And then the plus sign. It's an Android app. And you can use it to count hours.

That's what I use during the day. You know, like if I do 30 minutes, then I'll enter 30 minutes on the app. And then at the end of the day, then I'll put it on our website for our challenge.

But it's a nice way because... The challenge one is just kind of a web one. I find it easier to use this app. And I'm using the app anyway. I have kind of a total hour goal for four months and for longer.

So it's also using it for my personal use. Yeah, like Maya says... I'm always afraid to make mistakes and look silly. That's why I cannot open my mouth in the presence of a native speaker.

That's a real problem for me. Yes, indeed, I know the feeling, and we have to get over that. Because really, we have to remember that native speakers don't care. They don't really care, most of them.

If they're a language teacher, maybe they might notice mistakes or... But that's why I recommend just talk to normal people. Normal people don't care at all. Like if you talk to my mom in English, she's not going to notice your grammar mistakes or care.

She's not going to care. She's just going to try to understand you and enjoy talking to you. She's not going to be grading your English somehow, you know?

Or my sister, or my dad, or anyone I know, my friends. None of them care. They're not professional language teachers. They don't care. All right, let's do one more.

Let's see. Okay. Yeah, like, enjoy the challenge. This is Ripsomegan. Enjoy the challenge like a yummy dish. When we eat, we don't compare ourselves with another person at the moment.

Right. That's right. Enjoy it yourself. Just enjoy getting more out of it. You know, the enjoyment comes from the whole point of the challenge. And this is also for all things in life.

That it comes from doing, from the doing. And the idea is that in four months, you do a lot. And you make big improvements because of that. And that is enjoyable.

That feeling of improvement, the feeling of doing something difficult. succeeding, the feeling of learning, the feeling of getting better. It feels good.

It feels good. Just that feels good. It doesn't matter what others are doing. I very much think of this like running. I never compared myself to other runners when I was running.

I just compared myself to myself. And I always liked the feeling of going longer and longer and longer distance, or longer and longer and longer time. I could feel I was getting better.

And this four-month period, it's a nice time where you really can make a nice, big improvement in your English during this time. It's enough time that if you make a big effort, that at the end of November, you will be much better.

And this is my mindset about Japanese. My Japanese right now is basically beginner, like low beginner, just beginning, just starting. But I know that it'll be better. Will I be fluent in four months?

No. I don't even know how much I'll speak then, but I know I'll be better. I know I'll be a lot better if I continue doing this number of hours every day.

I should make a nice improvement in four months, and that will feel good to me. And you will do the same with your English. Just make an effort. Just do more than you did before.

That's all. That's the key thing. Do better than last month. Do better than you normally do. Do a little more. Get in the game. You don't need to be perfect.

You don't need to be the top person. You don't even need to be near the top. Just do something. Do something. Do something every day and keep improving.

All right, guys. And that's all. That's for everything. That's for money. That's for your fitness. That's for English. That's for life. Thank you very much.

Great talking to you. I'll see you again tomorrow. Lots of love to you. Bye for now. EffortlessEnglishClub.com Commit. Don't quit. Thank you.