Welcome to the SwedishPod101 Inner Circle.

Welcome to the Inner Circle.

This is the final Inner Circle of the year.

Back in January, I promised 30 minutes of Hindi conversation, which I then scaled down to 15 minutes. I used small, measurable, and actionable goals every month to build up to the final yearly goal.

So, if you’ve been following along, I’ve introduced many language learning tactics that I’m still using to this day. I hope you’ve used them, too.

Some of you may remember that my 15 minute goal was reached in November. I thought about stretching to 20 but wound up settling on 18, which I hit this month.

So, how’s my Hindi? Well, I can’t get into politics or economics, but I can hold basic conversations about what I did, my family, and my interests. There are still words and idioms I don’t know, but I can always ask “What does that mean?” or “What does that word mean?” I’m now using the language to learn more of the language.

Hindi was very tough — as you can tell by the adjusted yearly goal. But learning to adjust a goal so that you can progress is one of the key things to pushing forward and making it a part of your routine. But in hindsight, most goals you set are very reachable or very doable.

When I first started, I was only hitting a minute or 2 minutes of conversation. They were very basic small talk phrases, like “How are you today?” and “What are your plans?”

Longer conversations seemed very far off. But once I started consistently hitting goals towards the middle of 2022, I wasn’t too worried about my yearly goal. I started focusing on reaching the next monthly goal. I was making progress, so I wanted to learn more. The only next step for me was to focus on the next monthly goal. Not the long term goal.

Once I started hitting 8 minutes, 10 minutes, and 12 minutes… the 15-minute goal seemed a lot more realistic.

And there’s one technique I haven’t spoken about yet. Rewards.