How I Speak Spanish Now Thanks to YouTube Addiction
By: Till Nordbruch
Tags: Self Improvement, Productivity, Technology, Language Learning, Habits

You spend quite a while on the internet, don’t you? I bet you usually frequent the same handful of pages. Can you name them right now? If you are no internet addict, good for you. But I definitely am. It’s the fastest and biggest stream of constant novel information. If you are using and not abusing it, that is.

You can just as well read up on a weird species called the asparagus beetle as you can indulge in binge watching YouTube or Netflix entertainment. And like browsing the internet, we can engage in most activities in two ways: The improvement-oriented way or the indulgence-optimized way.

Let me tell you, I used to watch hours of YouTube regularly, and none of the educational channels either. Because of the diversity of content on the site, I couldn’t possibly run out of fail compilations and weird prank videos. In hindsight, I consider 100% of the time I spent there absolutely wasted.

I made not only the decision to watch. I also didn’t make the decision to watch with intent. My behaviour was driven 100% by a quest for joy. This was the indulgence-optimized way.

Yet, we can do seemingly unproductive things we love and improve ourselves at the same time. This might not seem like a grave statement to you, but think about it. If you implement the following approach in every hobby or every sin you commit regularly, you will not be the same person you are today in a year from now — not even close.

Out of necessity, one day I discovered an unexpected way to improve.

Learn Languages for Free with Zero Time Effort

Since last year, I was lucky to spend significant time in Spain. There only was that minor issue of not speaking the language as I’m originally from Germany. So how was I supposed to communicate with people?

We could speak English, but I realized I should also learn to speak Spanish. So I started using Babbel and Duolingo. But I wasn’t exactly making quick progress and lacked some discipline.

Enter YouTube subtitles. By now I had already turned to more informative channels and thought provoking videos. While still enjoying the platform, I shifted towards a more improvement-oriented use without realizing or putting a label on it. A muffled conversation urged me to activate YouTube’s automatically transcribed English subtitles.

I was impressed.

Sure, Siri can understand you loud and clear by now, but YouTube algorithms even perfectly understood unintelligible whispering! I left the subtitles activated and went on with my day.

Then it struck me.

Frustrated with my lack of progress in speaking Spanish once again, I suddenly wondered: »Wait a minute. Didn’t the YouTube settings say something about translated subtitles?« And sure as hell, they did!

Suddenly I was watching informative videos on the news, philosophy and Medium in English with automatically transcribed and then automatically translated subtitles in Spanish. And the grammar was decent.

This way I could not help but at least take away some vocabulary, already optimized to my interests, because I got to choose the videos. And I would have watched it anyway, so I also had zero additional time cost. I was learning the language on the fly!

I knew there was a working principle behind this discovery, a trick that could be abstracted to help in other areas of life. It’s not rocket science, but it might help with approaching life more efficiently without losing the fun parts. Here is my take-away.

The Improvement-Oriented Approach

This is the advantage I have over 18-year-old me who was watching dumb fail compilations on YouTube without taking a single lesson away other than maybe that when you are drunk, you are usually wrong in thinking »I can jump that far«. 24-year-old me still watches YouTube videos a lot. But as much as possible I traded senseless entertainment for life-improving information flow, while still enjoying it.

The improvement-oriented approach leverages your indulgence and uses all available tools to extract value out of the experience. While the indulgence-optimized way only aims for instant gratification, this way you can profit long-term and still enjoy the process. If you think about it, this is the same principle as working in your dream job.

You can activate subtitles on Netflix and YouTube and start learning a new language. You can also put the link to this article into Google Translate and read my story in another language. You can also just watch a documentary and write a note for every word you didn’t know and expand your vocabulary.

The same principle allows to combine actions: You could listen to podcasts while doing sports (who would have known!) and do sports while listening to podcasts. You could do stretching exercises while reading. If you want to look into lucid dreaming, you could even practice playing the piano in your sleep!

You could also link a small habit to every regular activity: Every time you eat junk food, you direct the same amount into your savings. Whenever you plan to sit down on the couch, you first drink a glass of water. Healthy habits linked to indulgences are nothing but implementing the improvement-oriented approach into everyday life.

Don’t ruin the fun things, though.

Don’t rush to do a hundred push-up for every piece of chocolate you eat. Don’t fill your free time by piling up vocabulary cards next to the couch while you are missing the movie plot. Don’t end up hating what you used to love.

Test out how much improvement you can pack into a fun activity before it’s ruined and you hate your life. Only the right balance between indulgence and improvement lets you leverage your weaknesses. Improvement is an incremental process. Play it slow, save your powers to go the long distance.

Get creative if you want to switch to the improvement-oriented approach. But once you look for tools to leverage your indulgence, you will find plenty of them. Just know, it’s okay to have weaknesses, and you might turn them into your greatest assets.