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This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 56: Wisdom Wednesday, “English Immersion Overload: How to Keep Your Energy Up.”

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real, native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,’ coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

In this episode, you’ll learn five awesome strategies for when you experience burnout or to avoid burnout altogether in the first place. But before we get into it, we just want to thank six awesome listeners who have left us reviews. Thank you to Ranchpiglet, Mark Blago, faridfat, Levbohdan, Mambolito, and Daria Z.

So if you haven’t left a review yet in iTunes, please go ahead right now and leave a review so we can keep All Ears English going in iTunes. Thank you.

Hey Lindsay. What’s up?

Hey. Not much.

Cool, cool. Well today we’re talking about a pretty cool topic about burnout. (Um), just for you guys to make sure you know what we’re talking about, burnout is, (you know), when you kind of reach (um), a, a wall, right, where you, you just can’t go anymore.

Exactly.

(Um), and (um), yeah, maybe we can give you an example. (Um) Lindsay you had an example that you wanted to share with our listeners. What, what’s a time when you had burnout?

Yeah. my burnout situation is really common for (um) a lot of – so I used to play tennis when I was a kid and when I was, (you know), I guess I was 15 or 16, I had been playing in tournaments for years and I was (like), I can’t do it anymore. I started to feel bored when I picked up a tennis racket. I started – I was physically tired, mentally tired. Tennis is a very taxing game mentally.

Yeah.

Right. And I was, I just felt dull all around when it came to tennis and I actually just had to take some time off and kind of shift the focus of things a bit.

Wow. That’s a really good example with, (you know), a sport. Very cool. Well we know that you guys, you might feel burned out with English language learning too, so we wanted to share some strategies with you about how to, first of all, (you know), avoid burnout, but also if you think you are experiencing burnout, (you know), what can you do about that? So, yeah, we have several tips.

Let’s just get right into it. (Um), what’s the first tip Lindsay?

Yeah so we would just say, (you know), when you’re getting, you’re becoming burned out, it means that you’re, you’ve been working really hard. And first of all, just to say- if that’s you, then that’s awesome, that means you’re working hard.

Yeah, right.

Which is great, but there’s gotta (got to) be a limit.

Right.

So how do you regulate this? Measure your improvement. You need to be able to reward yourself in some sense and recognize what you’ve done well.

Totally.

So if you’ve been working hard, you’ve probably been improving.

Yeah.

And you need to see that, measure it, and, (you know), look at that and say “Wow, this is what I’ve done.”

I think it helps if you, in the beginning, or as soon as possible, like right now, write down some very specific goals with the language that you want to achieve.

(Like) for example, I want to learn how to end an email appropriately and, (you know), you could go back to (uh) a couple of weeks ago, we had an episode about how to do that. You could listen to that episode and there you go. Then you can check it off your list, and you can congratulate yourself that you actually did that.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. So another tip that we have for you guys about, about burnout is, it’s related to making a list of goals. Once you know what it is exactly that you want to learn, (um) just set your focus on that, like the specific vocabulary or the specific reason (why) you want to learn English.

Maybe it’s to get a good score on the TOEFL test, or maybe it’s to get a promotion at work and you need to know how to lead a meeting or, (you know), give a report in great English.

(Um) set your focus on exactly what you need to do and then put blinders on. Blinders keep you from looking at other things.

They keep you focused. They keep your, your sight set on your specific goals, so, (you know), if you wanna become a translator for English in a medical setting, you need to focus on learning all the names of the internal organs of the body, but you don’t need to learn legal English, okay?

So forget about learning legal terms, you need to learn words for illnesses and organs of the body. So you don’t need to learn everything.

(I mean) not even native English speakers know all the words, for, (you know), the, the internal organs of the body. (I mean) Lindsay, you could quiz me right now, I wouldn’t be able to tell you all the organs.

Yeah. And I also just want to say I think it’s really important what you’re saying here, this idea of putting blinders on because especially now with the internet, we are binging on information. That’s what we do because we haven’t gotten used to how to actually use the internet.

Yeah.

We’re like children when it comes to the internet.

Give me more, give me more.

We don’t know what to do. Everything’s free and everything’s everywhere. Oh my god. I wanna learn, learn, learn. But you really need to focus, right?

Yeah.

What do I wanna (want to) do? So if you want to become a medical translator, focus on those sites or those podcasts or whatever they are, they can help you do that.

Totally.

Yeah.

Cool. What’s another tip for avoiding burnout?

Yeah, well, I really like the idea of taking a day off.

Cool. Yeah.

Just hang out, put your feet up…

Yeah, forget about those goals for a day and kind of push reset on your brain.

Exactly. So you need to decide what that means for you. Does that mean just hanging out with people from your home country and not practicing for a day?

Yeah.

Fine. Does that mean going to the beach? Okay.

Playing video games.

Okay.

Whatever.

Whatever it is. Just do it.

Take your mind off of learning English for a day. (Um) the last tip we have for you is to set realistic expectations. So of course we want you to challenge yourselves, but set realistic expectations. You know what you’re capable of and push yourself. Yeah, but make sure it’s realistic.

(You know), (I mean) who’s gonna (going to) sit down and read a whole novel in one hour. (I mean), it’s, it’s a bit tough. So if you set those unrealistic goals and then you can’t achieve them, you’re gonna feel burned out.

Now on the other hand, if you set really easy expectations, (like) I’m going to read one book this year and you don’t do that, that’s not burnout, that’s being lazy.

That’s the other side of things.

Yeah, yeah. So like Lindsay said, (you know), burnout happens when you’re trying too hard. All right. So keep that in mind. We’re not advocating for you to just (like) be lazy about your English learning. We just want you to have a good balance so that you avoid burnout.

Absolutely. So great. Good luck guys.

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