When job hunting in Sweden, learning Swedish will increase your probability of finding a job dramatically. Yes, there are some industries in Sweden where English is the language most commonly used, like Pharmaceuticals and IT. However, in most jobs knowing Swedish will either be a necessity or highly beneficial for you.

The question then becomes, how to learn Swedish faster?

I want to share two things. One principle and then how you can use that principle in your own life to add 1077 HOURS of additional language training this year.

The Principle

Think about the day you had yesterday. Chances are that a lot of the things you did yesterday, you also did the day and the day before. For instance, you brushed your teeth, had breakfast and much more. Many of the things that we do during a day are habits. In fact, 40-45 % of our daily activities are habits. This is great because if we manage to change some habits, we will basically be changing our whole lives quite effortlessly.

A habit consists of three parts: a cue, a routine, and a reward.

We will use this to learn language faster. But, let’s start with a simple example, brushing your teeth.

Most people have some kind of cue for brushing their teeth. For instance, they brush their teeth AFTER having their breakfast. In this case, breakfast is the CUE for the ROUTINE brushing your teeth. Then there is a reward. The REWARD, in this case, would be feeling fresh.

Another example is lunch. Let’s say that the office lunch time is at 12.00. In this case, the CUE would be the clock turning 12.00 and the routine is having lunch. Finally, the reward is feeling full. If you are instead not having a specific meal time, your cue might be being hungry.

How To Hack Language Learning

The key is to make language learning a part of your habits. When I was in high school, I was barely passing my English exams. It was not until I later in life started to use English in my everyday life that I actually started to feel comfortable writing and speaking English. In my case, the big turning point was studying in Canada. Because, when studying there I had cues for using my English everywhere. Everyone around me spoke English, my professor taught classes in English, all the signs were in English and so on. Basically, everything around me acted as cues to do what I wanted to do – learn English.

You can use the power of habits to learn Swedish faster. But you need to think about the cues around you. For instance, many people say that they will learn Swedish when they are in a working environment, and I believe them. However, if you are not working at the moment you need to find some other cue that will trigger you to use Swedish routinely.

The best cue I have heard people use is a very simple trick. All you need to do is change the language on your phone and computer to Swedish. By changing the language settings on your devices, you will basically have hundreds of cues every day to practice Swedish. According to statistics, the average phone user checks their smartphone 150 times a day and use the phone for 177 minutes.

If you are having your phone in a language that you know, then you are basically wasting 1077 HOURS of language learning every year. What would it mean to you if you would add those extra 1077 hours to learning Swedish?

The only thing you need to do is to change the language setting on your phone from whatever language you are having to Swedish. The benefit is that you will understand the meaning of many words either by reference to the fact that you know what they were before or because you understand from the context they appear in. Doing this will create 54 750 cues for Swedish training within a year. That is super powerful.

Whenever you change your language setting from your current language to Swedish you are setting yourself up for learning these 1077 hours of extra language training every year. Of course, it will take a couple of minutes extra to understand in the beginning but as soon as you have done this for some days, you will start to understand.

So, try this out. Change the language settings on your phone to Swedish and learn an additional 1077 hours this year.

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