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Bonjour, amais amis. Je m'appelle Eddy. And I'm so excited to be here with you today. Yes, that was an introduction in French. Why did I do that? It's because I'm learning to speak French. Why? Well, I'll get into that in just a minute. I know I'm crazy and that I already have a lot going on, so why on earth would I want to learn a second language? Several reasons. But today we're not talking about that. We're talking about how I'm using books to help me learn a second language, which I think might be an interesting conversation for this community. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Readable podcast. This is Eddie Hood, and I am so glad that here I have recently made the commitment, made the real commitment, you guys, to actually learn the French language. Now, I have tried to learn other languages in the past, but I have just completely done a poor job of doing this. I have sort of tried to take the easy road. Now, here's what I mean by this. I've tried to learn Spanish in the past, and I've also tried to learn French. And I took the same tact. I downloaded Duolingo. Duolingo is a fine app if you've ever used it, but it's usually the choice for new language learners because it's free and it's gamified and it's cute and all the other things. Well, I've done this for a few months now on the French language, and I know a couple words and I can say hello, but if you ask me anything outside of that, I start to sweat and panic and freak out. And I realized this last week after reading a wonderful book called Deep Work by Cal Newport, which secret foreshadowing here. That is the book I'm recommending this week. And yes, big announcement. This is the book that's being added to edgewaterbookstore.com for January. I always add one book every month, along with my detailed notes and a custom notebook and a video lecture and so on. I love Deep Work by Cal Newport, and I'll tell you why and how it's helping me to learn to speak French. Okay, before we get into this whole French thing, I want to talk about what Deep Work actually is. When I read this book, it was a few years ago, and here's the main concept that Cal is trying to get across to us. If you're going to do work that matters and you're going to make significant progress in that work, you need to set up your life and your environment to foster deep concentration for extended periods of time. Again, what he's saying is that if we're going to do something that matters and we're going to do it well, we need to have enough time to focus deeply on that thing. So when I started this podcast and this YouTube channel and so on, I was kind of doing it randomly. I was doing it out of my basement when I had time, and it was completely failing in every aspect. I was really struggling to get this done. And then I read Deep Work, and I realized, you know what, if I'm going to do this seriously, if I'm going to be a podcaster, I need to create an environment for podcasting. I need a room with soundproofing. I need the best layout, I need a decent microphone and so on. And so what I did is I went out and started looking for commercial space in my area next to my home. And I found a really great little location for a really good price each month. And now I have that set up to record my YouTube videos, the podcast, and do my thinking and reading every day. And I love it. It is my think headquarters. It's really good. But this podcast and the community would not be here without this book. Deep Work, it definitely forced me into taking this work seriously while I was starting to think about what book I wanted to add to Edgewater Bookstore in January. And I thought, you know, it's a new year. We like to set New Year's goals. We're all starting to think about projects that are important to us. Deep Work is a really good book to start the new year out with. So that's what I did. I chose this book. But in redoing the notes that I had to get ready for it, I started to realize, oh, my gosh, I have fallen away from Deep Work again. I'm already doing shallow work, which he defines in here as well, especially when it comes to doing language learning, because I was trying to learn French again, I'll tell you why, in a minute. But I had downloaded Duolingo, and I was just putting 10 minutes in a day. And it's interesting because even just putting in 10 minutes a day was very easy at first. And I thought, oh, this is great. I'm learning a couple words. I'm having fun on the app. But after about a week of 10 minutes a day, one, I got bored with Duolingo, and two, I just felt guilty that I wasn't doing. I didn't want to do it anymore. It was just I wasn't making progress. So as I thought about deep Work, I realized that if I was going to learn French, I was going to have to do more than 10 minutes of game playing every day. I was going to have to get serious. Well, here's what I did. I have just finished up my semester in university again. I'm getting a degree in philosophy, and I don't go back to school until January 6th. And so that gives me roughly 20 days from the day that I'm recording this. And I'm going to put myself into a deep work mode for the next 20 days or so. Now, what does that mean? It means that I'm going to be for four hours a day. This sounds crazy, I know, but for four hours a day, I'm going to be immersing myself in the French language. I've created a program for myself in the notebook that I use to track my goals. And every day I have an hour of speaking online with a native French person. I'm doing this through an online course. It's pretty great, actually. It's a company called Lingoda. They don't sponsor me or anything, but I'm taking a Lingo, a Lingoda course, and you talk to this French person and they only speak French, which is so frustrating and embarrassing. I've done eight of these classes now, and it has moved me forward so much faster than playing a few games on Duolingo. But I also have an hour every day of reading in the French language. And so I went out and I bought several books. And that's what today's post is about. Today I bought and am holding, holding in my hand Harry Potter. And it's written in the French language, which is so great because I know the story and I have no idea what I'm reading. These words are completely beyond my grasp. But as I learn, I keep reading the same pages and more and more words are starting to make sense. So by sitting down with this book for an hour and slowly going over those words, and when I don't understand something, I'm typing that word into an online flashcard system and it's helping me to pick up the language faster. So I am applying the deep work principles to the art of learning the French Language. Now, here's my goal. In roughly 20 days, my I don't pretend that I'm going to be fluent. Right now I am at what you would call an A1 level French speaker, which is beginning of the beginning. Right. Eventually I'd like to get to B2, which is conversational and can I go to France and really just enjoy myself? But in 20 days, my goal is to at least be able to have my online courses with the French speaker and not panic. At least, least be able to understand the direction of the conversation and respond, even if it's choppy. I would be so pleased with that. In 20 days, I know I can get there if I do it in a deep work fashion. If you're interested, that's only two hours of my day. Every day, again, live, speaking with a native person, an hour of reading. What else am I doing? Well, I have an hour of preparing flashcards from my lessons and also reviewing those flashcards. And then the fourth hour is spent doing storytelling. So I'm actually actually recording myself using my computer camera. I'm recording myself telling a story about my day for five minutes. And if I don't know a word or a phrase, I say that in English. And then after the five minutes is up, I go back to the beginning of the video and I write out or I look up all of those words in French, I add them to my note cards, and then I try and retell the story again and again until I can tell the whole thing in French. So this is the process of deep work. And it probably sounds very overwhelming, but here's the great thing. It's not. It's actually liberating because for years I've wanted to add a second language to my arsenal and it causes me anxiety that I can't get a grip on the words. But by committing for a, you know, a 20 day period of time in this deep work exercise, I'm already starting to see and break through barriers and make progress. And I no longer feel that stress and I'm very excited about it. So for you, what are, are you wanting to do this year that you're very passionate about? Do you want to become a better reader? Do you want to learn a second language? Do you want to maybe start a new business? The concept here is to begin your deep work, to go in and design your environment and your schedule so that you can give yourself long periods of time to focus on this thing and really process what's happening. I hate to say it, but 10 minutes a day, although, yeah, that is progress. And yeah, it does move the needle forward. It's really, really not moving the needle forward. How much better would it be if in 30 days you really made a big difference? Okay. Deep Work is the book recommendation this week. And if you want to pick that up, you can get it@edgewaterbookstore.com It's a book by Cal Newport, and again, it has changed my life. And now reading it a second time, I'm applying it again. And the first time around, I created a reading and thinking headquarters. The second time around, with this book, I'm learning the French language. This is one of the books that has actually made a difference in the way I live now. For those of you who are still around, you might be asking, why on earth are you learning French? I promised you I would tell you that. So this is. Now we're sidestepping the podcast conversation just to have a little fun with each other. You know, I. I went to Paris with my wife a couple years ago and it just changed me. I know it's sort of cliche to say I fell in love with Paris, but I did. I absolutely fell in love with the cafes and the people mind and the art and the museums and the food and la boulangerie, the bakeries. So many great things that are there. We got bikes and we rode to Marseille and we rented a car and we went down south to Lyon and several other places. It was just life changing for me. To the point now that one of my goals in life eventually is to own a little home somewhere in France and go there for a couple months out of the year each year and live and do my work and just enjoy the life that's there. I gotta just tell you a quick story. My wife and I, one of the most enjoyable things we did is we went and bought a baguette, a sandwich on the baguette roll. And we went and we sat down on the bank of the Seine river, which is this major river that flows through Paris, and we just watched boats go by. And this is something that many Parisians do. They just sit on the side of the Seine river and talk. And it was so strange for me because nobody in my home state, where I live, which is Utah, nobody does that. We're all so busy working and then sleeping and then working and sleeping and working and sleeping. You rarely just see people sitting down and talking, especially entire cultures of people. To drive the point home, we actually rented some space on one of those boats. They had like a dinner cruise and we went down The sand river and had a dinner. And we're watching people on the side of the river from inside a boat as well. And as we were sort of floating down the river, there was this huge group of people. They were playing French music, and they were just ballroom dancing on the side of the river. This was a Wednesday afternoon. There were tons of people ballroom dancing on the side of the river. Who does that? I don't know, but I want more of that in my life. So, yeah. Is Paris a romantic city? Yes. Am I being hyperbolic? Probably. Do I care? Absolutely not. I loved it, and I want more of that in my life. So when I came home, I started thinking, you know what one of my favorite things about Paris was? How they say bonjour or hello. Right? They don't say bonjour. They almost sing it to you. Bonjour. Or the women. Bonjour. Right. That's the best impression I have. But they just sort of exude so much joy in saying hello to you that it just made me happy. When I came home, I started playing with the language and thought, I really want to learn this language. And then to make things more interesting, as I've been getting my degree in philosophy, I'm about halfway through that degree now, I really started to fall in love with certain philosophers, and many of them are French. So I really like the ideas of many of the existentialists. So we've got Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, several people. And how great would it be to be able to read their ideas in the native French language? You always lose a little something in translation. I would love to actually be able to read Jean Paul Sartre in French. I got a chance to go to several bookstores when I was in Paris. Like, it sort of broke my heart because I couldn't read any of the books. They were all in French. There was one bookstore, it's a very famous bookstore. Shakespeare and Company, I think is what it's called, that sells English books. And all of the tourists go to this bookshop because it's the one place where the books are in English. I went to that. But I also went to several French bookstores. And I would just. I would have loved to have bought French books and actually been able to enjoy them. So, yeah, I'm learning French and I'm absolutely loving it. And buying books has helped me. Now, I forgot to tell you, I also. I bought the Harry Potter books in French, but I also bought some Roald Dahl books in French. I've got Matilda. I've got James and the Giant Peach and I've got Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. So every night as I'm lying in bed, I'm actually reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in French and I'm getting more and more of it. It's great because it's written for young kids and it's much closer to my sort of knowledge level of the language. But I'm thoroughly enjoying reading about Charlie Bucket and his adventures with the great Willy Wonka. You know, I hope this conversation helped you today to realize that books are tools for learning and we use them on purpose to sort of get further along in our lives with whatever our goals might be. It's not just about reading stories to escape. A book is a way and an opportunity to change our lives. I know maybe this is because I grew up as an only child. I didn't have brothers or sisters to wrestle with and fight with. And I lived a block and a half away, about a five minute walk from the city library. So I spent almost every day at the city library. And for me, books were my friend. And I found that any question I had in life, there was at least one great book out there to try and answer that question. And so I've always been curious and I've always turned to books for answers. And for that I'm truly grateful. Hey everyone. I want to thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Readwill podcast. I. I hope you have a beautiful 2025 year. I hope it's filled with all of the joy and all of the opportunity that you're hoping for yourself. And as you sort of set your goals and your sights on what you're going to do for the coming 12 months, my hope is that you will make the decision to do it well. Consider doing deep work. Consider reading solely taking notes and applying the ideas. I'll see you next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.