How Long Does It Really Take To Learn a Language? (Patreon)

As long as it takes. 

That is the real answer. It takes as long as it takes.

Everybody is different. Some babies learn to walk in 6 months, others in 12, others in 18. The same goes for talking. But in the end, years later, it doesn't matter. 

Jangmi, my most articulate, erudite and hilariously funny friend (she makes swearing sound SO beautiful; she's a Chicana Chris Rock), could barely talk until she was a teenager because of a speech impediment (years of speech therapy). Now, she teaches English around the world, and her speech and diction are TV-perfect.

How long did it take her to get good? As long as it took. And like enlightenment or boiling water, the less you worry about how long it's gonna take, the quicker you get there. This is one of life's great ironies, one that still trips me up in many contexts. It's not just subjective, by the way, it's objective too. It's almost as though worrying makes us dumber (given that chronic hyper-secretion of cortisol kills neurons, this crosses from speculation into fact) and slower.

Yesterday, I needed to prepare some special documents; I thought it would take me eight hours. I shut everything out and hit one sub-target at a time -- force concentration. I was done in less than 90 minutes.

It takes as long as it takes. If you've decided to do it, just do it until it's done (it's true that you're never "done" done, but you know what I mean). If it's important enough to you, if you've decided that it's worth it to you, then lavish your attention on it shamelessly. Give zero effs what anyone else says or thinks -- save your f-bombs for this and drop them on it.