Alex Senoner Recently I’ve been really struggling to find the time to learn languages, because I have a full-time job, I was invited to weddings in various countries, so I had to travel a lot, I’m working on Kameleon, …. but I really want to study Chinese every day. So, how do I make time for that? I’ll break it down into three approaches I actually use. There was also a mindset shift that really helped me a lot. More on that in a moment.
1) Finding unused time in the day
Let’s look at home much time we have available each day. A day has 24 hours, so let’s say we sleep 8 and work or study 8, that leaves another 8. Out of that we might spend around 1 hour commuting, 2 hours eating, 2 hours relaxing or socialising, and 1 hour doing sports or going for a walk. That still leaves about 2 hours. Two hours is actually quite a lot. I even made a video where I talked about how with 30 minutes a day you can already get pretty far in an “easier” language over a year. If we look honestly at how we spend time, we can usually find 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and it adds up.
Small windows I use:
- After meals (10 minutes of flashcards before I get up from the table).
- Before shower/bed (one short page of reading).
- Post-work decompression (five sentences to shadow instead of scrolling).
- Tiny waiting moments (kettle, elevator, “joining meeting”… a couple of cards is still something).
The key for me is to give each window one small, concrete task. If it’s vague like simply “study more”, it disappears.
2) Making use of “dead time”
By “dead time” I mean time where I’m doing something, but I can safely do two things at the same time. The big example is commuting. If I’m on public transport, it’s very easy to read a chapter or do flashcards. If I’m driving, I obviously can’t read, but I can listen to a podcast episode. Same for walking or cycling, audio works great. Flying is another one; it’s boring, and that’s exactly why it’s perfect for watching a film in the target language or reading. And there’s that small buffer right after waking up or before sleep: those 10–15 minutes when I’d normally just grab the phone and scroll can become light review.
How I stack language onto life:
- Commute (public transport): short reading or a flashcard set.
- Commute (driving): podcasts/audiobook in the target language.
- Walking, cycling, gym: turn it into audio time.
- Flights: films or longer reading, so boredom becomes immersion.
- Wake-up/bedtime buffer: 10–15 minutes of very light study instead of scrolling.
Morning + evening contact also gives me a built-in spaced-repetition feel: same material twice in a day, with almost no extra effort.
3) Tackling psychological time
Everything above is “clock time”, which are the actual minutes. But very often the problem isn’t minutes; it’s psychological time: how much time I feel I have. When there are too many things happening, I keep telling myself, “I never have time to study languages.” And then, because I think that all day, I end up not studying at all, even though I actually did have small pockets. Two things helped me a lot.
A) Create external structure
I signed up for lessons with a tutor. Having one weekly class (or two) puts structure in my week from the outside. Someone expects me to show up, so I make time for it. Around that, little routines appear almost automatically: maybe 15–30 minutes of preparation before the lesson and a short review afterwards. This breaks the “I don’t have time” loop and lowers the mental barrier to starting. The important part is to pick a cadence I can keep, one lesson a week is already good, and treat it like any other appointment on my calendar.
B) The Daily Highlight
This idea comes from the book Make Time, I really great book I recommend! The idea is simple: choose one small thing that will be today’s highlight for language learning, and once you do it, you’ve won the day. It should be very easy: watch one short episode, do 10 flashcards, read one page, listen to one podcast segment. Why so easy? Because when I’m stressed I set goals that are too big (e.g. tonight I’ll do five chapters) and then I get overwhelmed and don’t even start. With a tiny highlight I actually start, I get a small win, and that creates a positive feedback loop, because I did what I said I’d do, which often makes me do a bit more without pressure. I also try to put the highlight in the same slot each day and keep a simple streak, so it becomes automatic.
So, the shift for me was to stop only looking for empty slots and to become intentional with the time I already have. You really can make time. I have a friend who goes to the gym every day for one and a half hours. That sounded crazy to me, but he’s just being intentional, he decides to make time. Language learning can be the same. Find the unused minutes, stack language onto “dead time,” and fix psychological time with a simple structure and a small daily highlight.
If you’re interested in the topic of time and language learning, I wrote this article on how long it takes to reach fluency in various languages from Spanish to Japanese by studying for 30 minutes a day, 60 minutes, etc.
Thanks for reading this post and have a great day!
