TTT 4: Gut Feeling
Welcome to the 4th edition of the TTT Newsletter where I'll be sharing a thing I did, a tweet I loved, and a thought I had.
A big thank you to all those who replied to "TTT 3" with situations they wish they could speak Spanish (or Tamil in). Situational mastery is a great way to build confidence in a new language. Always love to hear from my newsletter subscribers.
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening - let's get into it!
Thing I did
Last week, I started 1-on-1 training in Mexican Spanish.
This week, I had my 2nd and 3rd class with Idahosa Ness (creator of the Mimic Method!). We worked on the foundations of listening - timing! So often we focus on the words, but words are small part of overall communication.
Rhythm and melody are so key to sounding smooth; and we haven't even yet touched on body language and facial expressions.
I like working with Idahosa as he has a unique perspective. As a classically trained violinist, he generalized the process of learning an instrument by ear to learning a language by ear. Instead of your hands moving, it's your mouth.
The techniques he teaches can be generalized to any language.
I started to (in-parallel) apply these to my Tamil. This handy Chrome extension, Looper for Youtube allows you to define a start/stop time and the number of loops you want to hear. I used my favorite Tamil podcast, "Hello Kekutho", for my Tamil rhythm practice. Super excited to share all the language things I learn!
For the more visually inclined, you can follow along with me as I create Tamil learning vlogs on TikTok or IG (@janahan888)!
Tweet I loved
What I loved about this tweet was the focus on the way your writing makes people feel.
Often times, we focus so much on the word choice, ordering, and grammar of our writing. While those 3 are important, they are a small piece of the larger picture. In reality, people won't remember what exactly you wrote, but they will remember how it made them feel.
Thought I had
Sometimes what we spend our time on makes sense logically but it feels off. Other times it doesn't make sense logically but it feels right. We call this our gut feeling.
Practice listening to your gut.
Your gut is what has kept all previous generations above you alive and was a pre-requisite for you being alive today. The more you ignore your gut feeling, the worse your intuition will become. You'll be at risk for over-analyzing quantitatively a situation that cannot be discretized as such.
When's the last time you listened to your gut and how'd you feel about the outcome?
Thanks,
Janahan
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