Transcript + vocabulary list + exercise:
[00:00:02.080] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to English and Beyond, an intermediate-level podcast for learners of English as a foreign language. As always, there is a transcript available at www.morethanalanguage.com. For those of you who love to listen to César's dulcet tones, his sweet podcast-y voice, this is a relatively long speech I've got today, it's about 15 minutes, so you're going to have to sit and wait for that, I'm afraid. But let's get on with the episode.
[00:00:41.130] - Oliver (Host)
It's the first week of September. In the UK, for many families, this is amongst the most important times of the year. It's the month of going back to school. It's the end of the long summer holidays. Many children, many kids, loudly declare that they wish that their holidays could go on forever. But many will privately admit that a part of them is glad to go back to school and return to their structured routines. Their parents certainly are very happy that their offspring, their children, are heading back to the classroom. And even many teachers are happy about going back to work as well. I think most people actually like the structure, the organisation, and the routine of a timetable. And we can become bored and directionless without that framework, that plan, even if we think that it sounds like paradise, just having no responsibilities or commitments for months on end.
[00:01:45.730] - Oliver (Host)
Personally, I actually like September, too. My favourite time of year is really the new year, when December turns into January. But September has, for many years of my life as a student and then as a teacher, represented a mini new year for me. It's true for everyone, but especially if you study or teach, September brings a genuine sense of things changing, of one season coming to an end and another beginning. In September, the summer is ending, and it's time to trade sun-drenched beach holidays and the freedom of long empty days for the autumnal working routine, perhaps followed by evening walks in leafy city parks.
[00:02:34.100] - Oliver (Host)
This change, though, generally seems to make many British people very sad. Loads of Britons live for the summer and their holidays abroad. To live for something means that it's a hugely important part of your life, and Britons can't wait for the summer to come around again each year. For my part, I need that contrast between summer and autumn. I need that slightly melancholic transition to the autumnal season, where life seems to always get a little bit smaller and more inward-looking. More introspective, I suppose, than the relatively social summer. A big part of the reason that I love September is because of this opportunity to pause and think a little bit. This is what I meant by September being a mini new year. It's a time where you reflect again on what you've achieved so far this year, and you look ahead to the remaining three months, to think about what you'd like to get done before the beginning of 2025. We can call this process 'taking stock'. This phrase refers to the goods that a shop might sell, the shop's stock. And taking stock means to analyse in detail what your current situation is.
[00:03:49.240] - Oliver (Host)
So, September is a good time to take stock and to think about what you want to achieve in the year to come. For me, this is frequently a really energising time, a time that I find quite refreshing. For the last five years, I've been working as a teacher in a secondary school in England, and the start of the school year has been a great moment for me to return not only to work, but also to my own personal goals with a renewed vigour, with a renewed energy, with a renewed strength of will. But sometimes these strong and positive feelings of motivation don't come. Or if they do arrive, we fall out of the new habits quickly. Our best intentions, our resolutions, don't last very long at all. Instead, a slightly disheartening, discouraging feeling that you've just begun a new grind takes over. This feeling is one that I am familiar with, and I think a lot of people are. There are many words that we could use to describe this feeling, but one that we occasionally use in English is actually a French word for it, ennui. Naturally, I apologise for my very British pronunciation of this word.
[00:05:08.170] - Oliver (Host)
Ennui is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as follows: "a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction, boredom." This feeling of weariness, this feeling of tiredness describes my current mood quite well.
[00:05:25.520] - Oliver (Host)
Ennui, for me, can almost feel a little bit like a light depression.
[00:05:30.010] - Oliver (Host)
It feels like I'm trying to start an old car to turn it on. There are sparks of life as you turn the key in the ignition, and the car's engine sputters. It spits into life. Sputter is a great word, incidentally. I would say that it's almost onomatopoeic, which means that it sounds like its meaning. Other good examples are the word 'bang' or 'sizzle', like bacon sizzling in a pan, because the noise of sizzle sounds like the verb itself.
[00:06:03.800] - Oliver (Host)
So anyway, the engine of motivation sputters into life. It bursts into life for a few moments, and the engine can drive the car forward a few feet. But then the heavy weight of the motor comes to bear. That is, its impact has felt. And the car stops, almost tired itself. That's a bit how I feel right now. I'm still waiting for my usual motivation to return, but it's currently nowhere to be found. There's no particular reason for me feeling this way. It's just a reality of life, no? But one of the major problems, one of the biggest problems with ennui, with this deep and profound boredom and slowness of thinking, is that it can destroy all the hard work that you've put into achieving your long-term goals. If you're learning English, for example, it's probable that you put a serious amount of effort into studying in the run up to summer.
[00:07:06.170] - Oliver (Host)
You knew that you'd need English to travel, and the benefits were clear.
[00:07:10.640] - Oliver (Host)
They were obvious and they were imminent. That is, they were just about to present themselves. You then probably reaped the benefits of that hard work during the summer, wowing everyone you talk to with your high-quality speaking skills. But then, if ennui strikes, when September comes around, then your language skills will slowly begin to decline. They'll get rusty, we could say, just like that old car.
[00:07:40.420] - Oliver (Host)
In one recent episode of the Spanish podcast that I do with César, Spanish for False Beginners, we discussed my strong belief in the importance of routine in building towards long term goals. I think it's truly vital to realise that motivation comes and goes. It took me a long time to realise that motivation will never get you to accomplish what you want to do in life. As I said in a recent episode, what goes up must come down, and a loss of motivation is as inevitable as gravity. Periods of high motivation will give way to periods of ennui.
[00:08:20.190] - Oliver (Host)
It's my opinion, my belief, that we need to rely on good habits rather than plentiful motivation to achieve what we want.
[00:08:29.250] - Oliver (Host)
In that Spanish podcast, I called this my Mejor Que Nada, my Better than Nothing. I can give an example. I have three main long-term goals currently. One is to learn French. The second, perhaps shamefully and vainly, is to continue to improve my body's physical appearance by going to the gym. And the third is to make this podcast a success like César's podcast and the one that we do together.
[00:09:00.890] - Oliver (Host)
For each of these goals, I sometimes have amazing motivation, where I can't wait to get on with the task. For example, sometimes I practically run to the gym. Sometimes I can spend two or three hours on the trot, that is, consecutively, with my head buried in French grammar books. Sometimes I can draft episode after episode of this podcast and be really pleased with my work. But that, unfortunately, is not usually the case. So if you can't rely on consistent motivation, what do we do about these goals that can't be accomplished in one afternoon of hard work?
[00:09:41.350] - Oliver (Host)
What I found helpful is to find what we could call the bare minimum, what I called in the Spanish podcast, Mejor Que Nada. This means something that you can force yourself to do every day or every week, but you also know that it's not what you would be doing in an ideal world if you had plentiful motivation. I'll take learning French as an example. I frequently don't have a lot of motivation with French, but César is always telling me that I seem to be hugely dedicated to it.
[00:10:15.480] - Oliver (Host)
This is because he sees me doing my bare minimum.
[00:10:18.910] - Oliver (Host)
In French, there are two things that count for me as the bare minimum, things that I can force myself to do even when I feel unwell or unmotivated. The first is that every time I collapse onto the sofa with a meal or a snack and turn on Netflix almost like a zombie, I watch something dubbed into French instead of watching it in English. The reality is, during the 15 minutes that I might be there on the sofa eating a snack, I'm not going to watch something incredible or life-changing or even really that entertaining, even if I choose something in English. Most of the time, I will watch something that my dad would describe brain-rotting or drivel, which is a really great word, and very much of my dad, for nonsense. So in that case, why not watch it in French? Since it's been dubbed, the sound production is pretty good, the language is neutral and it's much easier to watch in a relaxed way than original language content. The second thing I do as part of my bare minimum is that when I'm travelling around the city, I will almost always use a French learning app which I find genuinely useful.
[00:11:32.760] - Oliver (Host)
The app is built around a sentence builder function which explains grammar to a level of detail that I find really useful and informative. Is this app alone going to make me fluent in French? Absolutely not. I need to dedicate other time in my schedule to practising all the necessary skills. But using this app, together with my very easy Netflix adjustment, allows me to maintain my level of French even when my motivation is low. These things wouldn't work for someone else necessarily. They might view using a grammar app on the tube as something so incredibly boring that they need to feel highly motivated to do it. But it works for me. I can do both these things even if I'm tired or fed up or hungover. I think it's really helpful if you can find something that you genuinely don't resent doing even when you're at your worst. You may also find that this easy habit is sometimes enough to trick your brain into feeling more committed and more motivated to your goal. For example, when I sat down to write this episode, I felt a little low, a little flat emotionally. But now, having finished reading it out, I feel much better.
[00:12:48.580] - Oliver (Host)
I do really feel a little bit reinvigorated. Perhaps, in fact, as I noted at the beginning of the episode, it's the return to routine, a return to working harder again, a return to finding my bare minimum that has begun to spark my motivation. Now, of course, if my motivation does return fully, that's fantastic. But I know that it may not, and I'm not worried because I also know that I will be able to at least maintain the progress I've made on my important goals so far because of having found my bare minimum that works for me.
[00:13:28.050] - Oliver (Host)
César. I've known you for eight - Oh, hello. Hi.
[00:13:31.440] - César (Guest)
Hi. I've been here for 25 minutes.
[00:13:35.530] - Oliver (Host)
No, it's not that bad. But 25 minutes is nothing in the context of eight years. So, César, I've known you for eight years. You've been doing Spanish Language Coach for most of that time. It's hard to remember a time when you didn't do it. Partly, that's because it's become such a big part of your life and identity. I have marvelled at, I've wondered at, I've been amazed by, your commitment to that project for so many years.
[00:14:04.920] - Oliver (Host)
And I've teased you for being a workaholic, someone addicted to work many, many times. But you are, despite my jokes, not in fact a robot, and despite appearances, you must, I assume, suffer from ennui occasionally?
[00:14:22.230] - César (Guest)
Of course I do. Many, many times. And this is one of the things I wanted to ask you about. If you think this feeling of lack of motivation, lack of willpower, is normally related to external factors. Like, for example, in my case, over the last two months, I had back pain. Then last week, one of my tooth...
[00:14:52.190] - Oliver (Host)
One of your teeth.
[00:14:53.320] - César (Guest)
One of my teeth broke and fell off. Well, part of it. Today, I went to the gym.
[00:14:58.930] - Oliver (Host)
To the gym? I was going to say you might be struggling from the effects of the anaesthetic.
[00:15:04.620] - César (Guest)
Yeah, well, firstly, I have to say sorry because I went to the dentist this morning and I got three fillings in my teeth. So I got a lot of anaesthesia. So I might be, I don't know, talking silly or something. But yeah, of course, I feel this feeling many, many times. And what you call your better than nothing is what I call taking action. I always talk about the cycle of motivation and how motivation doesn't really... Many times it's not showing up, right?
[00:15:47.430] - Oliver (Host)
I find this funny because both of them perhaps, like better than nothing or bare minimum and taking action, all three of them sound a little bit like that corporate speak that people hate. But yours is so much more corporate and positive than mine. Mine is like, "This is the best I can do. This is the absolute minimum I'm going to do." And yours is, "Let's take action. Let's pull it together, guys. Let's push through."
[00:16:15.390] - César (Guest)
But it's not like that because I'm actually against toxic productivity. Reading a book about waking up at 3:00 AM and having a super efficient life, it just doesn't work. It works for three days and then I have a breakdown and I end up having ice cream at 2:00 AM. So I think it's better to take action, be realistic as well, because sometimes we're not realistic with the goals and challenges that we set up for ourselves?
[00:16:48.980] - Oliver (Host)
I think that that is a very important part of getting to know yourself and growing up. I mentioned in a previous episode my experiences of studying at Oxford, and I found what you have just described to absolutely be the case constantly for me. I would have a day, not even a couple of days, but a day of genuine productivity. But then I just couldn't keep it up because the expectations I had of what productive meant was so unrealistic. Exactly. So I basically felt that if I wasn't maximising every hour that I was awake, that I was in some way failing. And at Oxford, you did really feel like there were lots of people who really could be that productive. But then I think correspondingly, as I also mentioned in the podcast, you saw a lot of people suffering from the effects of constantly pushing themselves that hard. I feel like I may have ended up with the worst of both worlds because I didn't push myself as hard as I should have done and I also had all the mental breakdowns anyway!
[00:17:55.150] - César (Guest)
You ended up in the worst situation possible.
[00:17:58.560] - Oliver (Host)
Well, now I feel happy because I do my bare minimum, but that bare minimum is better than I would have thought it was. What I mean by that is that I don't compete with an imaginary and totally unrealistic version of myself. I actually now see myself and other people more realistically than I used to. I used to assume that everyone else was just much better than me at putting themselves to work. And some people are, but most people aren't.
[00:18:32.770] - César (Guest)
And that's okay. Everyone has their own capabilities. But yeah, with what you call your bare minimum or better than nothing, still makes you progress, right?
[00:18:46.560] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. And I think that's another thing that's really important for me, that I think I now have found the things that I actually want to progress in. I've found the things that I actually enjoy doing. And it's so much easier to work hard when it's something you actually care about, which sounds so stupid. But there are so many things that I did as a teenager, did as a young adult, that I felt like I was doing because it would have made my parents happy or because it was expected of me by my teachers and I had no actual interest in doing that hobby or developing that skill. And so I never committed myself to it as much as I should have done. In hindsight, it It was actually remarkable how much effort I did put in some things, considering I really didn't enjoy them. But now I actually just pretty much do the things I actually want to be good at.
[00:19:40.310] - César (Guest)
I mean, really, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do and you're not interested in, but you have to do them. I think this cycle that I'm talking about is quite interesting. So basically, you take action because let's say there's no motivation whatsoever. There's no external or no internal motivation. So you take action, which could be translated as your bare minimum. Then you may see some results. Sometimes you have to wait. While you're waiting, hopefully, you will be enjoying the journey. And then you start seeing results. And you can actually see results in listening to this podcast. After 25, 30 minutes, you will be able to understand or you will be able to use a couple of words that you didn't know or an expression. I learned a couple of things from your monologue, for example.
[00:20:38.670] - Oliver (Host)
What did you learn?
[00:20:39.790] - César (Guest)
I learned... Shit, I forgot now. I will read it later. I will read the transcript and I will tell you.
[00:20:47.360] - Oliver (Host)
And you'll relisten and...
[00:20:50.050] - César (Guest)
Anyway, I was saying, so you take action. That's the first part of the cycle. Then you hopefully see some results, short-term, mid-term, long-term, and that will motivate you to keep taking action. As I said, hopefully, apart from the desired goal or objective, you will be able to enjoy the journey because obviously, if your goal is to speak a very high level of English, that's going to take time if you're just a beginner. But you will be able to enjoy the process of learning with some people, learning with a teacher, listening to us, or watching stuff in English.
[00:21:36.340] - Oliver (Host)
And if you don't enjoy the journey, you're very unlikely to get to the destination anyway.
[00:21:41.350] - Oliver (Host)
I guess that's actually what you're saying, really, isn't it? What I was saying as well. It's important to try to enjoy the journey and the best way to do that is to find those things that you can always tolerate. So the bare minimum, as you were saying, and that differs for everybody. So there will I understand that there will be some people who think," Are you crazy? That you think the bare minimum is routinely using a grammar app." But for me, I enjoy it. Whereas if I had to do, like, I don't know, listen to a podcast, I would struggle.
[00:22:18.640] - César (Guest)
There are many unexpected gifts that you might encounter throughout the journey. For example, in my case, learning English is like a lifetime experience and during that process, for example, I met you, and you're a really big gift I encountered during this process because I just match you on Tinder because I thought I could practise my English with you.
[00:22:42.870] - Oliver (Host)
This person is tolerable-looking, and err -
[00:22:45.570] - César (Guest)
He speaks English.
[00:22:46.570] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Very low bar.
[00:22:48.500] - César (Guest)
I want to practise.
[00:22:49.970] - Oliver (Host)
That's true. I thought you were going to say, and this is true too, that a really big gift of learning another language is access to another culture. One of the things that I have gotten from learning Spanish and from being with you is access to so much Spanish humour, so many Spanish memes, so many things like that. Everyone loves to laugh and learning Spanish has basically doubled the amount of material that I can draw on.
[00:23:19.340] - César (Guest)
That's true.
[00:23:19.900] - Oliver (Host)
To have a good joke. I have one final question. You, as I say, have, I think, been a much more motivated person than me over the years, even though now I think that I have managed to find that bare minimum that keeps me going on towards my goals. How do you feel when you spend time with someone who maybe isn't as motivated as you? So someone who has tried to drag you down like I might have done in the past with your business by being like, "Well, let's go and do something else instead of spending time working." That kind of thing. How do you deal with someone who might not actually think your goals are that worthwhile?
[00:24:01.620] - Oliver (Host)
I'm not saying that I didn't think your goals were worthwhile. I've always thought they were very worthwhile. But for example, I had someone saying to me, talking to me about languages, and they were like, "Why bother? No one cares. No one's impressed by speaking other languages. It's not that interesting. No one cares." So how do you deal with other people in your life that might try to stop you doing those things that are required to progress? Does that make sense?
[00:24:28.890] - César (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've never thought about it because I've never felt anyone is trying to drag me down and, or putting "obstables" on my way.
[00:24:45.250] - Oliver (Host)
Obstacles.
[00:24:46.180] - César (Guest)
Obstacles.
[00:24:47.110] - Oliver (Host)
Did I mispronounce it? I don't know. I'm not sure, which is why I had a little pause. It just, kind of, hung in the air there for me and I thought, "Say the word again."
[00:25:00.290] - César (Guest)
Yeah. I mean, everyone has good influences and bad influences, right?
[00:25:07.950] - Oliver (Host)
Let me rephrase the question then, because it was quite dramatic. Like, who's pulling you down? No. So maybe I ask instead, do you find it helpful to surround yourself with other people who are highly motivated or are very good at finding their bare minimum that keeps them going?
[00:25:29.410] - César (Guest)
I think it's good to hang around with people who aim to achieve the same things you're trying to get, right? And that's why people get gym buddies because they go with them. We go to the gym together sometimes. That's why people go to language schools or they join even online communities where they can hang around in the online world with other people learning languages. So I think it's important, of course. I'm someone who only aspires to make friends with people who are highly motivated. That, for me, is toxic productivity because some people want to have...I mean, I - it, it depends. It's like, I'm not always trying to achieve something. There are periods in your life for whatever reason you just want to, you know, get by. I don't look down on someone who's not as motivated as I am right now because I've been in the past someone who's been a bit depressed with that French feeling you mentioned.
[00:26:35.820] - Oliver (Host)
Ennui.
[00:26:36.430] - César (Guest)
Ennui.
[00:26:37.250] - Oliver (Host)
It's in the new Inside Out film. Yeah.
[00:26:39.610] - César (Guest)
Really good film.
[00:26:42.280] - Oliver (Host)
My question actually did sound, again, kind of oddly ugly elitist, didn't it? It sounds like something that I think an American motivational speaker would say, like "Surround yourself with winners".
[00:26:54.070] - César (Guest)
No, I've been told that. Someone told me very recently, "César, you know what's your problem? Your problem is that you don't have enough rich friends. You should surround by rich people." And I was like-
[00:27:07.020] - César (Guest)
You should surround yourself with rich people. You should make sure you're surrounded by rich people.
[00:27:12.340] - César (Guest)
You should make sure you surround yourself with rich people.
[00:27:15.940] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:27:17.040] - César (Guest)
And I was really surprised by that. But I don't like the principle at all, you know?
[00:27:23.100] - Oliver (Host)
I suppose also you ultimately need to... You are responsible for yourself, aren't you? Because I was thinking about the gym when you said that, you know, people have gym buddies. I think there's a problem with that because I think that I don't have the same goals in the gym as you. I think that as a result of that, I dedicate a lot more time and effort to the gym than you do. For what you want to achieve, you don't need to spend as much time in the gym, right? Because you're more interested in cardiovascular fitness and feeling good in yourself and flexibility, that kind of thing, right? But if I were using you as my gym buddy, I think it would be a dangerous thing if I relied on you because I think you are less likely to go as many times a week as I need to go. So if your motivation is dependent on someone else saying, "Oh, yeah, let's go to the gym" as your gym buddy, then I think that that means that you can quite quickly fall into the situation where you think, Oh, well, César doesn't actually want to go to the gym.
[00:28:32.220] - Oliver (Host)
I can't be bothered to go today. I think that you need to find a balance between not being an American motivational speaker who discards people who are not exactly what they want to become, but you need to find a middle ground between that and being totally reliant on other people for pushing you along at the same time. Does that make sense? Maybe those two things are not on a spectrum anyway, but hopefully you understand.
[00:29:00.890] - César (Guest)
I know what you mean. I agree.
[00:29:04.080] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I think that has already taken us over - considerably - our usual allotted time. I'm going to have to do some heavy editing.
[00:29:14.480] - César (Guest)
All my speech.
[00:29:17.150] - Oliver (Host)
I'll just cut out everything you say. Thank you so much, César, for your time as always. And thank you, listener, for listening. I hope that you found something useful for your language. I hope that this podcast is becoming part of your bare minimum, or as César would say, taking action. So thank you very much.
[00:29:36.410] - César (Guest)
Thank you.
[00:29:37.660] - Oliver (Host)
Bye-bye.
コメント