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Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
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Do you not have enough time in the day to study English?
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Let's talk about it.
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You're busy.
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I'm busy.
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Let's get right to the point.
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How can you be more productive and find time to study English?
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This is one of the most common excuses I hear from English students.
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I want to be fluent in English, but I just don't have enough time.
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Don't worry.
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Me too.
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I have a two and a half year old son, a two month old son.
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I run an online English business including making these lessons for you, and I still
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try to find time to spend time with my husband and relax a little bit for myself.
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It's tough to be productive and find time in a busy day.
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Time is a valuable resource, but I have some tough love for you.
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If you really want to do something, you will find time to do it, but how?
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Well today, I want to give you my top three tips to help you find time to study English.
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This lesson is short and sweet because I imagine if you clicked on it, you don't have that
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much time.
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So let's get started with tip number one.
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Tip number one, track your daily schedule.
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You might know that I had my second son a couple months ago in March, and because I
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work for myself as an online English teacher, I wasn't given a maternity leave by a company.
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I had to create my own maternity leave and that means that I needed to create materials
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in advance, YouTube videos in advance, course lessons in advance and have it prepared so
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that I could take a little break after my son was born.
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With my first son, it was no problem to create material in advance because I had all the
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time in the world, but when you have another kid, it's really difficult to find time to
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create two months, three months, four months, five, six months of material in advance.
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How did I do this?
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Well, the only way to be successful is to create a plan.
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So each month I decided what I wanted to accomplish during that entire month and then each week
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I decided what I wanted to do each week, and then each day I decided what I wanted to do
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each day.
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When I broke it down into those small sections, scheduling every part of the day, tracking
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what I was going to do.
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Also scheduling free time, scheduling time to be with my two-year-old, the things that
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I enjoy, I was pretty surprised.
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When I looked at my daily schedule, I had enough time.
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I was surprised that I actually had enough time because I was working two or three times
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the normal amount that I usually do, but I had time in my schedule to do all of the things
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I wanted when I specifically tracked my time.
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I tell you this personal story because maybe you felt like I did.
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There's just too much going on.
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It's difficult to balance a work and a home life, but when you track your day and try
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to figure out what works best for you in a schedule, you'll realize that you probably
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have enough time to study English.
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For me, I broke my day into some main sections and these main sections are going to be different
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for you.
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For me, they were nine to 12, one to three when my son is resting or taking a nap, three
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to five and then nighttime after he was asleep.
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By realistically looking at each day, I realized how much time I actually had.
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For some of those periods of time, I was just playing with my son or going to the gym.
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These were things that I wanted to do, but when I tracked my day, I realized I had enough
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time for what I needed to do and also what I wanted to do.
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You can use a Google calendar and block off your day.
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This is what mine looked like, but of course yours is going to look different.
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Yours might be get ready, commute, work, lunch, work, commute, see family, eat dinner, evening,
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sleep.
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It's probably not possible or a good idea to study English while you're at work, but
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now you can visually see your day, which leads us to tip number two.
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Tip number two is to integrate English into your daily habits.
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Now that you know what your daily schedule looks like, how can you fit English into those
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different sections?
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Let's take a look at the Google calendar again.
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If you're like me, when you're getting ready for the day, you're kind of like a zombie
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and your brain is not ready for something new like English.
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But maybe while you're in the car or on the train commuting to work, this could be a great
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time to listen to an English podcast or maybe make a playlist of some English songs that
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you like and listen to those songs or listen to a short clip from an audio book in English.
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If you're part of an English course like my course, the Fearless Fluency Club, which you
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can learn more about up here.
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You could download the MP3 version of all of the lessons and listen to it while you're
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in the car, or maybe you could talk with another member in the evenings when your home is quiet.
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Spend 15 minutes just chatting together in English.
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Here's some other ways that you can just easily integrate English into your daily habits,
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the things that you're already doing in life.
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You could make a grocery list or a to do list in English.
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Change your phone's language to English.
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You could talk about your daily actions as you're doing them.
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I'm putting the sweater over my dress shirt.
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These types of daily explanations are great for using English.
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If you need to expand your vocabulary to have the words to talk about your daily life, you
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can check out this video that I made up here.
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It might seem like you're only spending 15 to 20 minutes with English in a sitting.
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In a sitting means at one time, but when you have a busy life, you got to do what you got
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to do.
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This is a common saying that means it's not ideal, but it's the only thing that's going
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to work for you.
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You've got to do what you got to do, so try to fit English into daily habits instead of
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trying to find new time for English.
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And this leads us to tip number three, study English in bite sized chunks.
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You might be tempted to think, isn't it better if I study for two hours at one time?
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Yes, two hours is better for giving your brain a chance to focus, but we have to be realistic,
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right?
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If you don't have two hours, then you got to use the time that you have.
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Bite sized chunks means short, easily finished sections of time.
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So if you have a 15 minute commute to your work, well, you can download a 15 minute English
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podcast and complete that full podcast during your commute.
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Don't feel discouraged if you can't find two solid hours to study English every day.
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There's going to probably be a time in your life when you do have two hours, but if it's
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not today, that's all right.
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Just use what you have.
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YouTube videos are a great way to learn English in bite sized chunks because most videos are
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less than 20 minutes.
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Or you could have a conversation with a speaking partner for just 10 to 15 minutes at a time.
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You don't need to spend 30 minutes or one hour talking together.
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You could plan to just talk for 10 to 15 minutes before your day gets started, have a quick
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chat and then go on with the rest of your day.
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You've already accomplished something in a bite sized chunk.
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Some of us want to be productive 24/7 but it's not realistic to be productive 24 hours
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in a day.
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So when you start seeing the time that you have in your day and you can track your time,
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you integrate English into your daily habits and you study English in bite sized chunks,
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you'll really start to make progress and you'll feel better that you are actually being productive
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in this short time that you have.
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And now I have a question for you.
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When do you study English?
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When are you watching this video?
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Is it early in the morning and before all of your household wakes up?
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Is it during your commute?
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Is it during your lunch break?
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Or maybe after everyone's fallen asleep and your house is quiet?
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Let me know in the comments and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on
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my YouTube channel.
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Bye.
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The next step is to download my free e-book, Five steps to becoming a confident English
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speaker.
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You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.
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Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.
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Thanks so much.
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Bye.