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Improving Fast in English: Done, not Perfect

April 11, 2018 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Just done with a rather intense workout.

And damn.

I feel good.

It wasn’t always like this though.

Go back a year or so ago and I got pretty fat.

So I hired a PT (lovingly known as Phil the Cunt, ‘cos, well, that’s what he is) and over three months he beat me into shape. Then I kept at it by myself. All was good… until I made the decision to move to Ireland, and we started selling off all our stuff.

Suddenly I had no equipment… and I stopped working out.

Watch this video that talks about the mistake I made, and one simple change to my own mindset that fixed it (you probably do this in English, too).




In This Video

  • Why I started Getting Fat and Unhealthy Again.
  • The Change I made to my own thinking that solved the problem
  • Why you probably do the same thing in English…
  • … and how to stop doing it.

How to Get Results – DONE, not Perfect

But here’s the thing… yes, the routine that Phil put together for me used a bench and weights. But actually about half the exercises didn’t need either of those things (like push-ups). And of the ones that did… most could be done without (weighted dips -> just dips).

Now, I’m a perfectionist.

And this is a big problem… because no matter how you look at it, just doing half the routine is much better than doing NONE of it. But because I’m a perfectionist it became all or nothing.

Because I couldn’t do it all… I did nothing.

Stupid, stupid mistake.

Do You Do the Same Thing When Learning English?

The point of all this is that you’re probably the same with English. In fact, I KNOW you are. Because EES members email me quite regularly to say they don’t have time to do every lesson perfectly… and end up missing week’s worth of lessons and don’t know what to do. There is a really, really simple solution.

Don’t try to do every lesson perfectly — be OK with doing a half-assed job.

Something done is better than nothing done perfectly.

Anyway…

Tomorrow I’ll give you an example English-study routine that uses minimal time and resources (you can do it anywhere while doing other things).

That’s tomorrow.

Best,
Julian

P.S. There are 7 Reasons people fail to Improve their English, and I talk about them in Chapter 1 of my book, Master English FAST – which you can read for free here.

 

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