024 Use these "time" phrases!

In this episode, we talk about six commonly used phrases about time. There will be about 15 minutes of explanation of those phrases, so if you already know those phrases, feel free to skip directly to the next chapter, "Real examples from Chris's life"

Chapter bookmarks:
00:00 Start
03:37 English phrases about time
17:13 Real examples from Chris's life
24:14 Me and Japanese
30:40 Ways to study

Chapters

• 0:00 Start
• 3:37 English Phrases About Time
• 17:13 Real examples from Chris's life
• 24:14 Me and Japanese
• 30:40 Ways to study

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Kuli English Podcast. It's me, your host, Chris. So today is episode 24. 

And this number 24, it's kind of a cool number for a bunch of reasons, but one big reason is that there are 24 hours in a day. And so it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter where you grew up, it doesn't matter what language you speak, everybody knows that there are 24 hours in a day. And this doesn't change for anyone. 

So it doesn't matter how rich you are, it doesn't matter how poor you are, it doesn't matter how young or how old you are, everyone has 24 hours in a day. So even if you get really rich, even if you get really strong, or even if you get really smart, the number of hours in a day, it doesn't change. It's the same for everyone. 

So it's not completely fair, but it's kind of fair, everyone gets the same 24 hours. So today in this episode, we're going to be talking about time. Now again, time is kind of fair. 

And so I say it's like kind of fair, but that also means it's kind of unfair. So time moves at the same speed for everyone. If one day passes for me, then one day passes for you. 

If one week passes for me, well, then also one week passes for you. And it's not just for humans, it's for everything. It's for animals, it's for dogs, for plants, for anything else in the world. 

So in this way, time is fair because it moves at the same speed for everyone. But here's the unfair part. So time also has unfair parts, parts that are not fair.

And the biggest example is just how long people live. So some people will live a very long life, maybe until 100 years old. And a hundred years, well, that's a long time. 

Like they probably have a lot of time to do a lot of things in life and experience a lot of different things. But some people aren't that lucky and they won't live that long. Like some people, maybe they'll pass away when they're 80. 

Some people pass away when they're 60. And some people are really unlucky and pass away when they're really young. And this is just how life is. 

So life is unfair. Some people get more time, some people get less time. And it's not like a video game or like a board game where all the people starting out get the same thing. 

Like in Monopoly, everyone gets the same amount of money to start with. But in real life, everyone starts out with different amounts of money, different talents and different cards that they can play. So anyways, I didn't mean to make this sound sad or anything, but in this episode, we're going to be talking about time. 

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be talking about a bunch of different English phrases that have to do with time. In this next section here, I'm going to be introducing a bunch of English phrases. Maybe you've heard of them before, maybe you haven't, but for each one, I'll be explaining what it really means. 

And I'll be trying to give like an example of each one, how to use it and when not to use it. So if you're a listener who's already a native English speaker and you're listening to this podcast just for fun or for stories or something, number one, thank you. But number two, feel free to skip this next section here.

So this next section is going to be named. There's like a chapter bookmark feature and it's going to be named English Phrases About Time. And you can skip that to the next chapter and the next chapter, which is going to be real examples from Chris's life. 

Anyways, let's take a short little music break here. 

All right, so let's go ahead and continue. So today we're going to be talking about time. 

And I've got six little phrases here that have something to do with time. And all of these are probably phrases that you'll hear in typical conversations or maybe in movies. And you might have already heard them before, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to explain the phrase and then I'm going to explain what it means. 

And then I'm going to try to give an example of how to use it. And sometimes I'll give an example of how to not use it. In this whole section here, it's going to be very educational. 

Like I'm not going to be talking about like my life. I'm not going to be talking about funny stories. So if you want that stuff, you can also skip this and go to the next section, which is called real examples from Chris's life.

So anyways, let's go ahead and get started. So the first phrase that I want to talk about is better late than never. So better late than never means it's better to do something late than to never do it at all. 

So let me give you an example of that. For example, apologizing or saying sorry. So let's say that you and your friend had an argument and then you guys didn't talk for the whole day and it was a pretty bad fight. 

So you guys didn't talk for the rest of the week either. So this is pretty bad. And then here, it depends on your personality.

But some people have a hard time apologizing. Some people have a hard time saying sorry. But for me, I usually think it's good to apologize regardless of whose fault it was.

So of course, the best thing to do is if you apologize sooner, then that would be the best. But in this case, someone could say, well, it's better late than never. It's better to apologize late than to never apologize at all. 

But you need to be careful here. So if someone is apologizing to me, so they're like saying like, hey, Chris, I know this is late, but about that fight from last time, I wanted to say sorry. Then I can't say, oh, better late than never. 

It's not wrong, but it's a little bit condescending. It's a little bit arrogant because they're already saying sorry. And I'm kind of saying like, oh, it's late. 

It's not good enough. So probably a good response to when someone responds to you is to just apologize back. And I'm sure there's something you can apologize for. 

So anyways, let's go ahead and move on to number two. So the next phrase is time heals all wounds. So we don't know what wounds are. 

Wounds are injuries. So like if you accidentally fell outside and then you scraped your knee, that's a wound. And so this one, time heals all wounds. 

It doesn't actually mean physical wounds like scrapes or cuts. It means emotional wounds like pain in your heart. So time heals all wounds.

What it really means is time heals all emotional wounds. So for example, maybe you dated somebody for two years and you're so in love, you're so happy, and then they dumped you. So they broke up with you. 

And that's really sad. And you have this pain in your heart probably. But if you come talk to your friend and let's say you're talking to me and you say, oh, dude, Chris, I got dumped last week. 

I'm kind of sad. Then maybe I could say something like, oh, it's okay, man. Don't worry about it. 

Time heals all wounds. And what that means is kind of like you'll feel better later on. Like just let time pass and then you're going to get better. 

But you want to be a little bit careful here because you know, like what I said, I didn't just say time heals all wounds. And then that's it. I added a little bit of like some friend, friendly feeling to it. 

I was like, oh, it's okay, man. Don't worry about it. Like there's a little bit of like love, I guess, because you need to put that human feeling. 

You need to put that friend feeling. If I just said time heals all wounds, it's going to sound kind of cold. Like I don't really care.

It's not a mistake. It's nothing wrong with English, but you might be missing a chance to be nice to your friend and you want to be nice to your friends. And also this is for only for emotional wounds. 

Okay. So if you scraped your knee and you say, ah, Chris, I scraped my knee and it hurts. I can't say like, oh, time heals all wounds. 

I mean like time heals all wounds is more for like deeper stuff like emotional pain. I could still say it, but it might sound like a joke. It's kind of like if someone said, um, I went to McDonald's and I ordered a burger and I asked for extra cheese, but they forgot it. 

So I only got like one slice of cheese. I wanted two, but I only got one and you know, that makes me upset. And then, and then that's like me saying like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. 

That must have been so terrible to not get your second slice of cheese. That that's like, it's too much. It's too much. 

I'm not actually that sorry. I don't feel that bad for you. So if I say it too much, if I say too deep, then it becomes kind of like a joke. 

You can joke about it. It's fine. Anyways, let's go ahead and move on.

So the next one that I've got is killing time. So you probably already know what killing is like killing a fly, killing a fish or, uh, but the time is like special, right? The time is not like a bug. It's not like an animal. 

So what does killing time mean? Killing time means to do something unimportant to pass time while you're waiting. So in Japanese, it'd be something like hima tsubushi. So you're killing time. 

You're going to kill some time. You can say it either way. For example, let's say you arrived at the train station, but you arrived 30 minutes early. 

So you have 30 minutes to wait anyways. Like it doesn't matter what you do. You still have to wait 30 minutes. 

Then what do you do? Well, maybe you can kill some time by going to a coffee shop or maybe you can sit on a bench and kill some time by playing a game on your phone. So you can also do something productive too. It doesn't have to be something that's like wasting time. 

So you can also kill some time by doing a tiny bit of work on your laptop. That's okay too. It's, it's not a mistake, but the main nuance is you're doing something while you're waiting for something. 

So, uh, yeah, maybe should we do a break here? No, it's probably okay, but let me go ahead and repeat those three phrases again and then we'll move on. So number one, better late than never. So it's better to do something late than to never do it at all. 

For example, apologizing. Time heals all wounds. This means time heals all emotional wounds like pain in your heart and then killing time. 

Killing time means to do something while waiting for something. Okay. So let's move right on. 

No break. We'll take a break a little bit later. So the next one is time is money. 

So this one, I feel like you heard a lot on TV and stuff, but I've got like two explanations for this. Number one is like the simple one. Let's not waste time. 

Okay. So it means like, come on, let's not waste time. And then number two is, um, so time is money, meaning time is the same thing as money.

And if you save time, then you can use that time to go make money. And then, so they're both valuable. You want both and you shouldn't waste time because if you waste time, then you're wasting a chance to make money.

Uh, and that's like the longer explanation, but let's not waste time is also a pretty good explanation. I think let me give an example. So imagine that you and I are coworkers and we're working at this company. 

I don't know what the company name is. And we are in a meeting and in this meeting, we've been talking for a long time. We've been talking for three hours and we still can't reach a decision. 

So we keep talking and then other people keep talking and then I talk and then you talk. And then eventually someone might say like, oh, come on, let's hurry up. It's been three hours. 

Time is money. So in this case, it just means like, let's not waste time. And it's also kind of true that, you know, if we waste time, then, you know, we're wasting a chance to make money. 

So, I mean, you can say it if you want, it's, it's a little bit cold, but it's all right. 

Anyways, let's move on to the next one, which is time will tell. Uh, so tell, meaning like, you know, the past tense of told, like I tell someone a secret. 

Uh, so what this one means is the results will be revealed eventually. Now let me give you an example. So imagine that you and I are investors. 

So investors are people who invest money. So like we're like rich people and our job is to loan people money. It's like investing.

And so these people that we loan money to, um, we give them money and then they take that money and they try to make more money and then they pay us back our money plus a little bit of extra, maybe interest is what you call it. Um, but suppose that we're in this situation, you and I are investors and a suppose that we have a friend and the friend says he wants to open a bakery. So bakery is like a Panya San. 

It's like a bread store and he wants to borrow money from us so that he can open up this bakery shop and then he can sell bread and make money. And then you and I, we, you know, we're talking about it. We're like, can we trust this guy? Is, is he smart? Is he good at cooking stuff? And then I, and then eventually we're like, okay, sure. 

Let's go ahead and loan him money. So then we loan him money. I don't know how much money it costs to start a bakery, but we gave him a bunch of money, not like a small amount, but not like a super large amount, but it's part of our job. 

You know, we want to invest money in people that we think are going to make more money. And then we make money too. And then after that, then we're talking about it, you and me, we're talking about like, oh, was it a good decision to do it? Do you think he's going to be successful? Is his bread actually good? Like maybe we shouldn't have done it.

What if he fails? If he fails, then we lose our money, right? But what if he does really well, then we get our money back and more. And the truth is at this point, no one knows if he's going to be successful. Uh, so I don't know. 

You don't know that friend doesn't know. Everybody wants him to succeed, but we don't know. Right? So the only way that we can know is after time passes. 

So in this case, you can say only time will tell. So after time passes, we will know if it was a good decision to give that guy money or not. So another thing about this is it's like, it's a little bit fancy. 

So like it should only be used for probably deeper things. Um, so in this case, you know, we invested, we thought a lot about it and we're like, Oh, should we give this guy money? Maybe we shouldn't give this guy money. But you can't really use it for simple everyday things. 

For example, let me give you a different example. So suppose that you and I are waiting in line at a restaurant and you know, we wrote our name down and we're supposed to be next. We've got a party of two and then we've already been waiting for like 10 minutes. 

And then I say, Oh man, we've already been waiting 10 minutes. Like when are we finally going to get in? And then you say time will tell. And it's not wrong.

It's not wrong, but it's kind of weird because it's like too deep. We're just waiting in line at a restaurant. It's a very everyday thing. 

Time will tell is usually for something bigger or something more important, like a big life decision or like a really big business decision or something like that. Okay. So let's do one last one here. 

So last one here is take your time and you've probably already heard this one before. It just means no need to rush, go at a comfortable pace. So as a short little example, imagine that your friend is supposed to meet you, let's say at 12 o'clock for lunch. 

So you guys had plans, you know, you had this promise, let's meet here, have this nice lunch at 12 o'clock and then you get there at 12 and your friend's not there yet. You're like, Hmm, where's my friend? Where is he? And then at 12:10, you get a message from your friend. All right. 

Maybe I'll messenger line, whatever, WhatsApp. And then your friend says, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I slipped and I fell on a puddle. 

So then I got all wet and then I went home and I had to change my clothes and I'll try to be there soon. I'm so sorry. So, so in this message, you can see that this guy, you know, he was late accidentally and he's rushing to come meet us. 

Like he wants to come and he feels sorry for making us wait. So one thing we can say here in this case is we can text back and we say, okay, no problem. Take your time. 

And this means like, you know, no need to rush and it's nice. And it shows that we're not mad. And if you're actually mad and you want them to feel bad, you can say something else. 

You can say like, hurry up, you loser. You can say like, I've been waiting here for over 10 minutes. You can say something like that because take your time is always a nice thing to say. 

So I highly recommend take your time and you can use that for anything. It doesn't have to be deep. It doesn't have to be not deep. 

It can be anything. So if your friend is slow at eating and you're like done eating and you can just say, you know, take your time, it's fine. If your friend is deciding on like a really big decision, like whether to move countries or to change jobs and this is a big thing, right? You can also just say, oh, take your time, take your time. 

Or you can also say, hey, take your time, sleep on it. And sleep on it means to like to go sleep. And then maybe the next morning you'll know how you feel, but basically like take the whole night to like go to bed and then when you wake up, maybe, maybe you'll know how you feel. 

Okay. So that was it. And again, let's do a short little review of all six of these. 

So number one, better late than never. So it's better to do something late than to never do it at all. 

And number two, time heals all wounds, which means time heals all emotional wounds. 

And number three, killing time to do something while waiting for something. 

Number four, time is money. It just means don't waste time. 

Number five, time will tell. It means we'll see the results will come in time. It's a little bit deep. You can't use it for like casual stuff. 

And number six, take your time, which means no rush. And you can use this one anywhere. It can be for deep stuff. It can be for non deep stuff, not deep stuff. You can use it for anything. 

So now let's take a short little music break and then I'll come back and I'll talk about a few stories for my life related to these kinds of things.

Okay, so let's go ahead and continue. So now, I want to talk about a couple of examples from my own life. And they're going to be very everyday kind of things, nothing too special.

And they're all going to be somehow related to some of the phrases that we just talked about in this last section here. So for most of my life growing up, I've always been kind of like a frugal person. So frugal meaning like you try to save money when you can. 

Frugal is like the nice way to say cheap. Cheap is like sometimes a little bit negative. But I mean, you can call me cheap. 

I call myself cheap too. But the frugal is like the maybe nicer way to say it. And then so now as an adult, like sometimes I freely spend money on stuff.

But like really like deep down in my heart, I still have some of that like cheap college student attitude. Because like in college, like people usually don't have much money because they don't really work a job. And you're always trying to save money. 

And like a really big example of this like cheap thing is Amazon. So Amazon is amazing. Okay, so number one, I'm not getting sponsored for anything.

But number two, Amazon is truly amazing. So I used to buy tons of stuff on Amazon back when I lived in California. About like phone chargers, vacuum cleaners and other stuff from Amazon.

I bought like underwear. I bought socks. And sometimes I would buy like snacks, groceries, milk and ice cream.

Like they deliver it to your door and it's like the same price as like actually going there. So it's kind of a good deal. But then after moving to Japan, I don't use Amazon dot com.

I still use Amazon. It's just Amazon dot JP. And so, you know, as with all things, Amazon is not perfect.

So sometimes you buy something and it's not what you want. Maybe the size is wrong or sometimes like the thing sucks and then you can return it. And in the US, like to return it, what I would do is I would take the thing and then on the Amazon app, I like go in there and I say, I want to return this.

And they're like, why? And then I make up some reason. It's like it's not good or there is a problem or something like that. And then I get a QR code which I can use to like I go to the place to return it.

And then I show the staff the QR code and then I return it. And it was usually really easy. But then like now in Japan, like the process is a little bit different.

And let me tell you about this. I have a little story. So it's a little hard to explain.

But like if you want to cook rice at home, you usually have to wash the rice. If you're not washing the rice, you should wash the rice. It's like a good thing to do.

It depends. Depends on like white rice, brown rice. Anyways, so it's good to wash rice.

And the easiest way to wash the rice is if you have like this little bowl to wash the rice. And the bowl is like there's like tiny holes on the bottom so that when you wash the rice, the water drains through the hole. But the holes like really small. 

So the rice doesn't fall through the hole, just the water. And then you can keep adding water and you can keep like rinsing the rice. And then, you know, the water comes out and it's a little bit like funny colored.

It's not like clear because it's washing the rice. And I used to have one of these like bowls in the US. I don't actually even know what it's called.

It's just like a rice washing bowl or something. But of course, when I moved to Japan, I didn't bring it with me because I was like, oh, that's fine. I can just get one in Japan.

So how do I buy one in Japan? Well, we got Amazon, right? Not Amazon dot com, Amazon dot JP, which is like Amazon in Japan. And then so I found this like really nice looking metal bowl. And it was like I think it was like one thousand five hundred yen.

I can also say fifteen hundred yen. So it's like ten dollars or so. And then when I got it, I realized, oh, wait, this is this is like damaged.

So there's like this massive dent on it like someone like hit it or something. And remember, this thing is made out of like stainless steel. So it's made out of metal.

It's really, really strong. And like if I stood on top of it and I weigh like sixty five sixty five kilograms and like if I stood on top of it, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't bend. So like for it to have this dent, it must have been through like a lot of some super damage or something.

It's like as strong as a helmet is what I thought. I don't know what happened, but it must have been really heavy. And then that's not the only problem.

OK, so this thing like there's a dent, but also like it looks kind of different from the Amazon pictures because on Amazon, I saw the picture. And then, you know, there's like this picture of somebody washing their rice and then like the water is draining through the bottom. And it's like it's really nice.

And there's holes on the bottom so that the water can drain through. And then like for the real thing that I had in my hand, there were no holes on the bottom. They just had like these tiny little bumps where there were supposed to be holes, but there were no holes.

So basically, this thing was like completely different than what I actually ordered. It looks different from the Amazon pictures. So then I was like, no.

So then I went to Amazon and I think this was my very first like Amazon return in Japan. So it's my first like Japanese return. And I wasn't really sure how to do it.

But basically, like they told me, I need to contact the seller. So I have to message the seller. And so I messaged the seller and I explained everything else.

Like I wanted something to wash rice, but this thing is dented and there's no holes. And like the picture has holes and I don't have holes and I want a refund. So like I like put in all this effort.

And then Amazon told me, OK, I need to ship it back to them. But I didn't know like what the address was to ship it back because like the seller was a Chinese company and they wouldn't respond to my message. And I also didn't know how to ship it even if I had the Chinese address.

But anyways, I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to return this one thing. And it's actually not even worth that much money, right? So this thing again, I said was fifteen hundred yen, which is one thousand five hundred yen is about ten dollars. And if I ship it, I still have to pay for some international shipping.

That's like, I don't know, it's probably going to be at least like six hundred, seven hundred yen. It's a big metal bowl, so it's kind of heavy. So, you know, I don't really know.

Is it really worth it? So here you can say one of those things that I said before. So I'm spending all this effort and I'm wasting time, right? So you can say time is money. And yes, like, you know, if I do a good job, I can get some of the money back.

I don't get all of it back, but I get some of it back. And then I also have to spend a bunch of time to do it. So it's like I'm losing money and time.

And so I have so many of these Amazon like return stories and some of them I'm able, like, able to return and get the money back. Some of them I return it and I only get some of the money back. And then sometimes I just say, you know, time is money and then I don't return it.

And it's like for really small stuff that's like two hundred to three hundred yen. It's like, OK, whatever, it's not worth it. Time is money. 

So let's not waste time. I want to talk about like my crooked like hat rack. Like I have this thing that holds jackets and racks.

That was also from Amazon, but it's OK. Let's go ahead and it's going to move on. I'm going to talk about the next thing. 

OK, so the next little story here is about me and Japanese. So for me, I studied most of my Japanese like after moving to Japan. But also, also, I took two years of Japanese in high school.

And in my high school, like it's required for everyone to take a foreign language. So everyone has to take a foreign language. What does foreign language mean? It just means any language that's not English.

So it can be Spanish or it can be Chinese. I think there was also French. So anyways, I took Japanese.

And at my high school, Japanese was considered like the easiest foreign language. It was actually like the easiest class in the whole school because the teacher was like super, super nice. And like he doesn't really give people much homework.

And then all the other teachers are like really, really strict. So I still remember that teacher Reed Sensei, Rick Reed. He's not actually a Japanese guy.

But man, he was just so nice. Like he always was smiling. And even when he was like not happy, he would do his best to try to smile.

And he was really nice guys. Actually, there's some stuff that I learned from him that ended up being wrong. But he was such a nice guy.

I think everybody liked him. So I remember we all studied in like the Japanese class together. And then for two years, I think all I really learned was the hiragana and katakana, which is like the basic Japanese alphabets.

There's two alphabets in Japanese. In English, there's only one alphabet. In Japanese, there's two alphabets.

And so we also did a little bit of kanji, but I don't really remember. So kanji meaning like the Chinese characters, I guess. And so we didn't have much homework, like almost no homework at all.

And it's because like our teacher Reed Sensei, he didn't want us to feel like stressed out. So it was usually really easy. And all the tests in the homework were also really easy.

But then as a result, what happens if you take a really easy class? Well, you don't really learn that much. So like then when I came to Japan, like what, two years ago, two and a half years ago, I kind of forgot how to read hiragana and katakana. And it's even harder to write, you know, like sometimes if you can read it, like sure, that's fine.

But then if you have to write it, you also need to remember that. And it's like it's harder. But looking at this whole situation, I could imagine someone saying, oh, Chris, you should have worked harder in high school to study Japanese.

It would have been useful if you studied harder back then, you'd be at a higher level now. And we all know in Japan, like, you know, Japanese skills are very useful. But my response to this is, again, it's going to be something related to time, better late than never.

So yes, you're right. You know, I maybe should have studied harder in high school and it would have been better. But it's okay because now I just did it late.

So I'm late to studying Japanese, but at least I still studied. But, you know, like, imagine if I moved here and I said, oh, it's too late. I missed the perfect timing.

I should have studied hard in high school because I missed it. Now I'm just going to give up. And then that would be like if I never studied.

So if I never studied, then my life in Japan would probably be much harder than it is right now. So I mean, another thing you could say here, different phrases. Maybe someone could say, take your time.

So take your time to go to college, take your time to get a job, take your time to go find out what you want to do in life. And then after you find out what you want to do in life, if it turns out to be something different than what you've been doing, well, it's kind of late. But it's still better late than never.

So this thing you can probably use for like a lot of different things in life. So, you know, like, for me, I became a software engineer, has nothing to do with Japanese. And then later on, I become like an English teacher in Japan.

But, you know, better late than never. Like I wanted to do this thing and I didn't do it from the beginning, but better late than ever. All right. 

So let me go ahead and talk about one more little short story before we take a break. So this one yet again, it's about my life, but it's more about this podcast. So this podcast, again, the goal of this podcast is to give people a fun way to practice listening to English.

And I made it because in my process of studying Japanese, like listening to a Japanese podcast and being able to understand most of it, it's actually really fun and it's satisfying. And it's an easy way to study. And the best part is it doesn't really cost much energy to listen to.

So like you kind of listen and then you don't really have to pay attention and it's fine. If you listen and you don't understand, who cares? It's fine. It's different from like YouTube where you have to like actually watch the screen.

And then you can't really do much while you're watching it because like, you know, your eyes are focusing on the video and your ears are listening to the audio. But for a podcast, it's just audio. So, you know, it can be something that you have in the background while you like clean stuff, maybe while you fold laundry, whatever, do dishes.

So then my goal for this podcast is like the background listening. I want to be background listening for people that I don't know. That's my goal.

Okay. I want them to be listening while they're on their commute to work or while they're like folding laundry or something. And sometimes I wonder to myself, I'm like, are people actually benefiting from this podcast? Like I spend all this effort, but are people actually listening to it? And the real answer is like a tiny bit. 

Okay. So I have some like metrics. I have some measurements of how much people listen to it.

The podcast has 1000 downloads, which might sound like a lot, but it's not actually that much. And I don't really know if it's going to grow a lot or, you know, maybe it'll grow just a little bit. I have no idea.

And sometimes I think, oh, maybe I should just go back to being a software engineer or maybe I should like open English teaching school and teach people in person instead of like doing this kind of podcast thing. Or maybe I should be doing more private lessons or I don't know, but deep down, like I'm always thinking, is this podcast going to be useful to the world? And my best answer here is time will tell. 

So is the podcast going to be popular? I don't know. Time will tell. 

Is it going to be useful? Time will tell. 

Am I going to go back to being a software engineer? Time will tell.

When is Chris going to die? Time will tell. 

No one knows the answer. And I can control some of it, right? Like I can just decide, okay, tomorrow, I'm going to go back to being a software engineer.

But, you know, that's still tomorrow and I'm probably not going to do that tomorrow. So I don't really know the only the only people who know, or I don't know, people who can see the future. So anyways, the best answer I've got here is just time will tell.

Okay, so that was a lot. Let's go and take a short little music break here and then we'll come back. 

Okay, welcome back.

So let's go ahead and get started and we'll get right into our last section here. So in this podcast, I always talk about language learning stuff and I always talk about how people should be constantly trying new things, trying out new ways to study. And that's my own personal advice that I give to people who are trying to learn English.

But for everything that you do, there's kind of two main parts to it. Number one, quality and number two, quantity. 

So number one is quality, which means like how good something is.

So for example, if you're going to an English class and there's like 20 students and you're one of those 20 students, that's fine. But if you go to a different English class and there's only five students or if it's a private lesson, then that quality will be much higher. Why? Because, well, you just get more attention with the teacher and it's going to be better.

It's higher quality, but it'll probably cost more. And number two, quantity. Quantity is how much something is.

So for example, if you watch English TV for 30 minutes, that's fine. But if you watch English TV for 60 minutes, that's better. That's like double the amount of time.

So, you know, more time spent doing English stuff is always better. So of course, the best is if you have both and they're really high. So high quality things like private lessons and then you do a lot of it.

So the quantity is really high. So like, I don't know, like every day or something, but it's not that easy because like if you do a lot of one, you kind of have to sacrifice some of the other. And what I mean by that is like, for example, if you watch English TV, that counts as English practice.

Some people are going to say that doesn't count, but I definitely say it counts. OK, I promise you, it counts. But what you do while you watch TV also affects the quality of your learning.

So if you're watching and then sometimes you don't understand and you don't do anything and you just move on, that's OK. That's fine. But imagine if sometimes you hear a word that you don't really know and then you pause the TV and then you look up the word on your phone, maybe on your dictionary, and then you go back on the TV and you rewind it maybe five seconds and you watch that part again.

You rewatch that part. This is like hard work, but it will increase the quality of your learning. Like it makes it better.

But there's a downside to this. So what if instead of doing it every now and then, you did it for every single word you didn't know? Then it might be too much. Then, you know, like every 10, 15 seconds, you're going to pause the TV and you're going to be spending a lot of time looking stuff up.

It's going to be too much. You're going to get tired. And then if you get tired, then you get bored.

And then if you get bored, that's really dangerous because if you get tired, then you're going to quit. And remember, quit means zero. So zero is the worst.

If you do absolutely nothing, that's the worst thing you can do. No quality, no quantity, it's just zero. So then what do you do? What's the best thing to do? You need to pick a balance.

So sometimes you work really hard. So you look things up, you take private lessons, or you ask your native friends. Sometimes you're putting in effort.

You actually should feel like, oh yeah, I'm putting in effort.

And then sometimes you take breaks and you do nothing. And that's totally fine too.

It's important that you have both of those.

And then most of the time, you're putting in a tiny bit of effort and you're making a little bit of progress. Okay, so let me say this again.

And I'm going to make up some numbers so that it's easier to understand. But suppose that every day you study English for 45 minutes. It doesn't have to be 45 minutes. I'm not saying you should. I'm not saying that's too much or too little. But just imagine that you study 45 minutes.

How do you spend those 45 minutes? So here's my suggestion here. 

25 minutes, you're just watching English TV or you're listening to English podcasts and you don't look up anything. So if something comes up and you don't know what it means, you just say, eh, I don't know.

So in this podcast episode, you know, usually I explain like hard words and stuff. But let's just, let's say like, oh, I'm talking about homework and procrastination and procrastination. You don't know what that means.

Well, in these 25 minutes, if it's during those 25 minutes, you're not going to care. Procrastination means, it means atomawashi like to postpone something, to put something off. But it's in 25 minutes, you do this thing where like you don't really put in effort.

It's just very, very low effort. And then, so that's 25 minutes. But five minutes, about five minutes, you spend looking stuff up.

So maybe you heard something from TV or YouTube, or maybe because I said the word procrastination, like you go and you spend five minutes, like looking up random stuff. Maybe you look up, oh, what does procrastination mean? How do you use it? That, like in those five minutes, you're working very hard. You're like looking at things, you're thinking about English, you're thinking about, oh, do I know this or do I not know this? And then let me go ahead and throw in some other things here, just because it's good to have a variety of things.

But maybe 10 minutes, you're messaging in English. Maybe it's Discord for some game that you like, or maybe it's a friend that you speak English with, or maybe you're practicing writing like a little diary in English. I think that's a pretty good thing to do.

And then also, I'm going to throw in another one here. Five minutes, five minutes, you spend that doing something completely new. So it's something that you don't normally do, but it's somehow related to English.

So maybe it's like downloading some game and you're going to play in English, or like maybe it's, you're looking at your TV settings in English or something like that. But you can see here, this is just an example. I'm not saying that this is what you should do, but for most people, you know how much energy you have.

You know that if you do too much of this thing, you're going to get tired. And some people are like, you know, crazy strong machines, and no matter how much they do, they don't really get tired. But most people are somewhere in between.

So if you do too much like looking stuff up, too much hardworking stuff, too much studying, you're going to get tired. So you want to avoid that. You don't want to get so tired.

You want to do a little bit. And you need to make it easier, and you can exchange some of that time for something like, oh, easy stuff, easy something, like easy watching TV or easy listening to some podcast. And then during those times, you don't really look things up.

You're just putting it on you, and then you're going to try to take it for free without spending energy. And if you don't understand, I don't care. It's fine.

And then if you spend all your time doing easy things, so if all you do is you watch TV and you never look anything up, you never think about like what the English means, then depending on how much energy you have in your life, maybe you should be trying something new. So you should be spending some time trying out some English activities or try to put some more time into other, like higher quality learning. And you can always change something.

So you can always change something really small. Like sometimes people say like, oh, I have no time for anything. I have no time for English.

I'm too busy. But you can always change something really small. So this is the great thing about time.

The way that you spend your time, you can change it at any point, usually. But for example, if you're watching TV and you're like, I don't have the energy, I don't have the time to learn anything, well, you could also do some kind of shadowing thing. So whenever you hear English on the TV, you also repeat that.

So if it's a native English speaker saying some stuff, then you also repeat it. You just say it out loud at home. Nobody else is at home, so nobody's going to laugh at you or anything.

And a little bit is better than nothing. What you want to do is you want to stay away from zero. If you're too close to zero because you're tired, then take your break if you want, but try to stay away from zero.

You got to do something. If you're too close to zero, try to do just a small little something, something that doesn't really cost you that much, something that you can do and you won't feel too tired. And then once you get into the habit of trying new things, you'll have tried a bunch of stuff, and then you'll know what works best for you.

You'll know, like, oh, I really like talking to people in English. Like, this gives me a lot of energy. It's fun, and it motivates me.

But if you have never tried it, then you can imagine, well, I don't know what to do, so I guess I'll just stay at home and watch TV. That's the best you've got. You got to spend a little bit, spend a little bit of effort into trying new stuff because it's really going to be good.

So in the beginning of this episode, I said time is fair. And then I said time is unfair, but the best part is, for the most of us, time is power. So if you only have 45 minutes for learning English, depending on how you spend those 45 minutes, you can have a huge impact.

And remember, like, the best answer is not to spend all 45 minutes working super hard. Yes, that will give you a lot of results, but you're going to get so tired that after you spend 45 minutes, the next day, you're not going to spend 45 minutes. You're going to be done.

So sometimes, instead of working hard for 45 minutes, what you want to do is you want to be doing something really, really easy for 90 minutes. And then if that's what's going to keep you, like, full of energy and able to do it the next day, that's better. So everyone has different motivations and different energy levels.

So, you know, try to keep trying new things so that you can try to make good use of your time so you can understand, you know, what makes you tired, what makes you not tired, what's fun for you. And, you know, make good use of your energy and just try to turn yourself into someone that you'll be really proud of. So, you know, everyday people are changing and the things that you today, they're going to change you.

And tomorrow, maybe you'll be a little bit more proud of who you are that day. It's going to take a long time. So, you know, take your time, protect your energy, and then protect yourself, take care of yourself, and then believe in yourself every step of the way.

Okay, so this is maybe a good point to end the episode. So thank you so much for listening until the end. If you like this episode or the podcast, then, you know, feel free to follow or subscribe.

And if you already have, thank you, and I'll be doing my best to make sure that you keep getting high-quality episodes. So thanks again, and I hope to see you next time in Kuli English Podcast.