The Passionate
For some people, learning a language is a passion. It is an activity that they could happily do for hours a day for the rest of their lives. I admire those people, but I am not one of them. Like many of you, I like the idea of learning a language in the same way that I like the idea of always eating healthy and exercising every day. I do an okay job of doing those things, but I won’t be running a marathon any time soon or writing a nutritional blog.
Diminishing Returns
If you’ve made it past the honeymoon phase of learning a language (ie, you’ve been working at it semi-consistently for over a year) then you know it can be harder to find the motivation to put the time in every day. It’s not your fault, it’s in large part due to the fact that learning a language is a long tail process. It can be relatively easy to make a lot of progress in the beginning because a large percentage of the words people use every day are made up of a relatively small number of words. As you continue learning a language there is diminishing marginal utility associated with every new word you learn. You may have only seen the word for “spatula” once, but if you suddenly find yourself helping out your friend’s abuelita in the kitchen, it might be a handy word to know. It’s a word that doesn’t have much value until it does.