Sizing Your Mission

If your goal is simply to ‘climb a mountain’, you could manage it on a sunny day in shorts and a jumper – about 2–3 hours each way. It’s steep in parts, but anyone with a reasonable level of fitness can give it a go.

Everest, on the other hand, is over ten times taller at 8,848 metres. Most climbers take around two months to complete the ascent – including the trek to base camp, acclimatisation, and the final climb itself. Kit-wise, you’ll rarely get change from £10-20,000.

When defining our learning missions, we need to be just as specific. Once we know what we’re aiming for, we can begin to size up the challenge in front of us.

“I want to learn Japanese” is not specific. It might mean learning basic greetings in an hour – or dedicating decades to mastering complex elements like keishō, the system of honourific speech.

Your chances of success rise dramatically when you define the start and finish lines of your mission.

Instead of aiming for “fluency”, you could say: “I want to pass the JLPT N5 practice exam within the next 90 days.”

Suddenly, it’s like rubbing Aladdin’s lamp.

You’ve set the scope. You’ve defined the timeline. With the help of online syllabi, you can now map out exactly what needs to be learned – and break it down into weekly ‘micro-missions’.

Success becomes tangible.

As the weeks go by, you’ll get a clearer sense of what’s done and what still lies ahead. You can then adjust your study time or move the deadline accordingly.

An unsized mission is a mission impossible.