Lindsay McMahon
"The English Adventurer"
learn English strategies

Do you want to be able to learn English faster? Do you feel that your progress is slow?

Do you feel as if you struggle with focus in your life?

Are there things that you want to accomplish but you feel unsure of how to do that?

We all struggle with focus sometimes and this can negatively impact many areas of our lives.

We’re going to look at how to use a system called “OKR’s” to help you with your focus, and to ensure that you do what it takes to effectively reach your goal.

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Working On Better Focus In Your Own Life

You might have something in your life you want to accomplish, but you feel as if you are lacking focus.

Do you want to get better at English conversations, or do you have other goals in this area?

So how do you get there and make this work in your life?

You want to be able to focus when you are trying to learn something such as English.

If you are online in particular, then there are so many possible distractions.

You want to use the right strategy, and one that you can consider using is OKRs.

You probably approach multiple tasks by digging shallow holes, which is to say that you do a little bit for one goal and a little for another–and you don’t end up actually having any progress.

The reality is that doing a little bit of this and that won’t get you very far.

It’s all about having focus and figuring out how to best approach the big picture.

Breaking This Down

So what is this system that helps you with focus?

How can you apply this system to your life?

You can use this for not only English, but to so many different aspects of your life.

This is a system that was developed by Intel, and it’s broadly used by people for productivity and focus. Go here to read more about it.

O is objective, which is to say your big goal.

KR is for key results, which are measurable actions you can take to accomplish your bigger goal.

The key results are like the tasks that you can take on to reach your goal in a given time period.

So you are looking at what your bigger goal is, and then what steps you will take to accomplish it.

You can have several sets of OKR’s, but it may be best to start off smaller.

You may find that you have one big goal and then several things you have to do to get there.

You can use these personally and professionally, and they will work well for you in both areas.

You can use this to really work on your conversational English.

Looking At This In Practice

You might find it useful to look at this in a real life example.

Let’s look at something that may affect you directly, and therefore be a good starting point of how to make the OKR system work for you.

Perhaps you set an objective of being able to keep up in a meeting, and speak up.

Conversational fluency objective is a common one, and you want to add tasks to help you to get there.

This is about planning and transparency and pushing yourself to accomplish more.

If you measure it and plan it out, then you can get to where you want to be.

You might have a goal to speak out loud every day if you are trying to become more active in meetings.

You might set this on a week by week basis, because this can work really well.

You want to set your timing and targets bigger like weekly, but not too big that you will get discouraged.

Your set of time can be flexible but you do need to attach something measurable to the goals to make them work.

You need to be accountable and have something to reflect on, so here’s a good example of how this can work for improving conversational English.

  1. Speaking out loud every day: You have to make it your mission to speak out loud and saying every single day challenges you. Rather than just sitting by and listening, you are actually a part of the conversation. You may have to get outside of your comfort zone, but when you say something to others then it pushes you to practice your English.
  2. Start conversations with three people this week (in English): This may seem like a big goal, but it really allows for conversation to happen. You have to find and talk to three people in English and this helps you to make connections. This helps you to be more present and to really practice your English in a true conversational manner.
  3. Add some passive listening: You’re not trying to understand every single little thing, but you are being flooded with English. This podcast is a perfect example of immersing yourself in English more often and in an effective way. You need to be in an English environment to take it all in, and this is a perfect example of that passive listening. If you’re interested in something then you are going to be engaged and want to keep doing better.
  4. Add in some active listening: If we contrast passive listening with another skill, then this brings us to active listening. So a good example of this is to watch an Oscar winning movie actively. Put on the subtitles in English so you can read along and understand more. Then follow that with another action and post a review somewhere online. This combines the passive listening with the active listening. You have to catch the conversations in the movie and be in the moment. But then you are posting a review which allows you to take it to another level.

These are all perfect examples of how it can all work.

You want to consider what it is going to take to reach your bigger goal, and how you can enjoy this progress along the way.

This could also be an effective way to prepare for IELTS. You could set an objective for each week and key results under that objective.

Go here to learn more about our 3 Keys IELTS Success System with a daily study plan.

It’s All About Reflection

Looking at your progress to decide what is working and what isn’t is a really important part of this.

You want to make these all measurable so that you can figure out how it’s working for you, and what you might need to change up if necessary.

If you don’t reach that measurable goal then you may need to change it up next week.

You can ask yourself “was that a good goal?”

“Was it a good key result or did it not work for you?”

This is all about reflection, but also learning to improve in the areas that you need to.

This can help you if you have anxiety because you can have a personal objective and it gives you something to focus on each week.

You can have a theme each week which gives you something very specific to focus on and to work towards.

Takeaway

Take inventory of what is working for you in terms of focus and productivity.

Using OKR’s can help you to determine what your goals are and what you will do to reach them.

This approach helps you to refocus your efforts and really concentrate on focus in an effective way.

When you are focused, you can accomplish great things–and this approach will help you to get organized and to get to where you want to be.

If you have any questions, please leave them below in the comments section.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

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