The Language Learning Limit
How Much Daily Study Is Too Much?
Image by: Thirdman
By Hanyu Tales (13th March 2025)
If you ask 10 linguists how long a person should spend each day studying their target language, you will get 10 different answers. For example, this article mentions the benefits of just 10 minutes per day, this article bumps it up to one hour, while this article claims that at some point in your learning journey, at least 3 hours of deep work will be necessary to continue progressing. The reality is that research on this topic is not conclusive, but more importantly, it probably never will be, because language learners are all unique. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no universal guidelines to follow; this article will dive into the research on the relationship between hours invested and productive output, to offer some practical advice on how many hours you should spend each day on language learning.
Working Hours and Output
Research on people in the workplace tends to suggest that the longer we work, the less productive our working hours become. This paper on call center agents, revealed: 
“We find that as the number of hours worked increases, the average handling time for a call increases, meaning that agents become less productive.”
Research discussed in The Economic Journal found similar results when observing munition workers, as: “below an hour’s threshold, output is proportional to hours; above a threshold, output rises at a decreasing rate as hours increase”
The idea that later hours become less productive is nothing surprising, but it offers a reminder that unlike an employer who simply wants to keep their employees at work as much as possible, study hours should be kept at a reasonable amount to ensure the hours are worthwhile. As they say: it’s not the hours you put in, but what you put into the hours. A study on business school students in India found that both too much and too little work were detrimental to grades, therefore we need to determine exactly how many hours of productive work we should aim for each day. Image by: Nataliya Vaitkevich
Maximum Daily Productive Hours
So how many productive hours are humans capable of in a day? How many deep focus study sessions should we aim for? This article says 3-4 hours of productive work is realistic, while an often cited study from 2016 says less than 3 hours is more realistic. Let’s say we were lucky enough to be in a position where we could dedicate our 3 most focused hours of the day to language-learning, that would mean that in around 2 years, we would hit the 2200 hours that FSI estimates are required for a native English speaker to become proficient in Chinese. Two years to learn Chinese sounds great, but for most of us, our productive, focused hours will be split between tasks related to other subjects we are studying, or tasks related to our employment.
The Power of Unproductive Work
This is where “unproductive work” comes in. While not an exact term, for the purpose of this article, we will use it to refer to anything that is not laser-focused study. If productive work is studying grammar rules or shadowing, unproductive work could anything from the list below: 
- Passive Listening: Listening to a podcast that you can easily handle while cleaning or exercising can be a great way to get more input without burning yourself out.
- Journaling: Journaling is an excellent way to wind down after a long day—why not do it in your target language?
- Gaming: Next time you boot up your Nintendo Switch, change the language to your target language before you start the game!
- Movies: Watching movies with or without subtitles (depending on your level and the difficulty of the content) can be a great way to unwind, hear more of the language, and even pick up some cultural insights!
- Chatting: Whether using a language-learning social media app like HelloTalk, or chatting with friends in-person, social interactions using your target language in a relaxed setting are a great use of your time.
Image by: Nataliya Vaitkevich
Plan of Action
As mentioned before, if you do no other deep work, then 3-4 hours per day of laser-focused studying is reasonable if it does not make you dread each study session. However, if you are like the rest of us and have other things that demand your undivided attention, then 1-2 hours per day of productive work with 1-2 hours of unproductive work will lead to huge progress in your language learning.
Ultimately, what matters is simply doing as much as you can without feeling burned out and without it affecting other areas of your life. Language learning is a life-long endeavor, you will never be done with it. Forcing yourself to squeeze out an extra hour per day at the expense of enjoying the process and allowing your brain to recover will hurt your progress long-term and/or make you give up completely. Focus on getting your hour of deep study in per day and consider anything else to be extra.
Ultimately, what matters is simply doing as much as you can without feeling burned out and without it affecting other areas of your life. Language learning is a life-long endeavor, you will never be done with it. Forcing yourself to squeeze out an extra hour per day at the expense of enjoying the process and allowing your brain to recover will hurt your progress long-term and/or make you give up completely. Focus on getting your hour of deep study in per day and consider anything else to be extra.