On the benefits of structure, deadlines, and a little pressure.

Goodbye dear listeners!

TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone, and welcome to Elsewhere with G. My name is Guyomar, and today I’d like to take you Elsewhere with me one last time. Yes, that’s right, this is the last episode of Elsewhere with G. Today, what I’d like to talk about is the places that structure can take us, that deadlines, that a little bit of pressure can take us. I don’t think this is a new idea. I’ve heard many people talk about the fact that when they have a whole day free, they tend to waste, or the longer they give themselves to complete something, the longer they tend to take, and for that reason, they tend to schedule important things and also limit the time for certain tasks because you’re more likely to be productive. And I have really seen the effects of structure, of scheduling, of having deadlines in the first half of this year.

Now, before this year, I didn’t really have that much structure and I had certain nebulous goals, for example, improve my Russian to the point where I can hold conversations on literary themes, or be in better shape…what else? Not let my Spanish and Italian become horrible. Create helpful, useful and interesting content for my students. I did a bit of all of this. You know, I was working a bit, I was learning a bit of Russian, I was fairly active, you know, I enjoyed hiking for example, but I wasn’t really that consistent for quite a while, and there was no structure in place. There was no pressure.

Then, this year, I changed a few things. Partly, things changed because of external forces. For example, I had more students requesting story listening, storytelling courses, so having these lessons booked, and knowing that I had to tell these students a story, that they counting to provide this service that they were paying for, has helped me be more productive in my writing than I’ve ever been, including at that time when I was a graduate student. I’ve regularly written stories, sometimes three or four a week, some better than others, but I’ve been writing, and now I have quite a collection of stories intended for language learners. That’s the first thing.

Also, now I have a schedule for when I eat. I know, I know, some of you think I’m crazy, but I fast regularly. I’ve been doing this for about, let’s see, about…it’s been two months. It’s the two-month anniversary of fasting. So, I do an easy intermittent fast most days, 16:8, and some days, I go up to 24 hours. Right now, I’m doing a 72-hour fast. That’s been very helpful as well, in terms of feeling healthy and more energetic. Knowing when I’m eating, scheduling meals, and also thinking in advance about what exactly is going into the meal. And I no longer cave to familial or social pressure, to just eat whatever, whatever’s there. For example, you know that I no longer eat pasta or bread, all that kind of stuff, so there’s a lot of structure in food as well, in eating.

With language learning, I’ve been taking a few lessons again. I’ve spoken to a few teachers, and I’ve decided that if I’m ever going to finish One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish, well, I need to have someone to whom I’m accountable. Someone who knows about Latin American literature, someone who can discuss these topics intelligently. So I’ll have classes once a week in Spanish, for now, and perhaps Russian as well. And I think that helps, you know…I don’t want to embarrass myself going into a class unprepared, with nothing to say, so there, the structure is useful to me, as well, even though I prefer spending most of my time reading, listening quietly, absorbing the language…

On structure, deadlines and pressure (final episode) (click here for the transcript)

Do you already speak English but want to improve your comprehension of the spoken language and fluency? Have you always loved good books, compelling narratives, and deep conversations? Then, you're in the right place. Here, I'll tell you stories, real stories from my own life, from those of friends, and even from the world of fiction, in clear, slightly simplified English. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad or strange, the stories will always be memorable. My goal is to help you acquire English and enjoy the process, by providing you with compelling "comprehensible input." Ideally, you'll want to spend more time with the language because listening to these stories will bring you pleasure.

For those who study and love Russian. It doesn’t matter if you just learned the words “привет” and “водка” or you already read Dostoevsky in the original, you will find here something interesting, useful, funny or lyrical.

From a fan of the Russian language and culture