In my previous essay, I argued that much of success boils down to a simple maxim: do the real thing and stop doing fake alternatives. Always start by asking yourself: “How would I do this, if doing it well were all that mattered?” Now, you might object: You don’t have enough time. You have a […]

Nearly a month ago, I decided to embark on a project to learn my wife’s native language, Macedonian. To do this, we’re not speaking English to each other at home. This is a brief update on how that project is going in the third week. Last week I had mentioned some hiccups. I found juggling […]

Success largely boils down to a simple distinction. It’s glaringly obvious once you see it, but also easy to find ingenious ways of ignoring it: do the real thing and stop doing fake alternatives. Consider one person who wrote to me saying she turned down a job working in French. She didn’t feel her French […]

Two weeks ago I began a new project to learn my wife’s native language, Macedonian. To do that, we’ve been avoiding speaking English at home, to mimic the approach I used previously with my language learning trip. So far the project has been going quite well. I’m already pretty comfortable with the functional day-to-day communication […]