I Got A Job as a Delivery Driver to Learn a Language

Girl Reading by Charles Edward Perugini

Learning a language takes a long time. It’s common for people to spend several years learning a language and even then not reach a high level of fluency. According to Dreaming Spanish for speakers of European languages, it takes about 1,500 hours to reach native like fluency in Spanish. That’s obviously a long time. Even if you were totally consistent with getting one hour of comprehensible input a day it would still take over four years to reach. That’s not that bad though considering that so many people never reach native like fluency in their target languages.

All this to say, I got a job where I can wear a Bluetooth earbud and listen to audiobooks and podcasts in my target language while I work. I as an Amazon delivery driver four days a week. Each shift is 10 hours long. I obviously can’t listen the entire time I’m working, but I’ve been getting at least seven hours of listening per shift. That’s over 100 hours a month if I continue at this pace, which I intend to! I only have been working here for two weeks, so let’s see where this goes. I’m feeling really great about the new amount of listening I have been getting. The way I see it, I am getting paid to learn a language.