Here is my step-by-step workflow to make sure I can maximize my time spent consuming a language throughout the day.

Read and translate in depth (ideally with audio playing simultaneously)

This part takes a bit more time, and should be done when you have 15-20 minutes to focus a bit deeper. This is the “work” part, but once you do this you can unlock some more time later in the day and reap the rewards. More on that in a bit.

If you don’t understand what you are listening to, then you are wasting your time. You should at least be getting the gist of what is going on. To ensure this, you should spend some time actively reading and listening to the content (episode, video, etc). This means going through the text systematically while listening, translating words and phrases you don’t know, rewinding, re-listening, re-translating, rewinding, and on and on until you have gone through the whole thing.

Listen a couple times after that, pausing and rewinding

Once you have made a pass through the entire content, you should actively re-listen to it once or twice, pausing and rewinding like you did before when you had the text, except this time without it. This primes your brain to pick up on various oral cues and sets the stage for the next part.

Take it on the go and re-listen

This is the real secret to how I can learn languages for hours without it feeling like I am spending hours. It is essentially just re-listening to those episodes or videos that I have already actively consumed! If I spent the morning actively going through a podcast episode from one of my favorites, Podcast Italiano, then on a walk I will re-listen to that episode, sometimes even mirroring and repeating things that I hear. I will do this throughout the day with different episodes that I have already primed myself with earlier. This time seriously builds up, and it is not redundantly spent. Re-listening and mirroring actually solidifies all that active learning you did, and makes you a more competent listener.

What if the content is too long?

Let’s say a video you like (with subtitles of course) is 40 minutes long, and you are too much of a beginner to go through the whole thing in 20 minutes. That’s fine, just go through as much of it as you can, then treat that section you actively learned as the whole thing. On your walks and drives, listen to that section. It works the same way.

Building your listening comprehension

Over time, you will realize that the “prep work” that we discussed earlier becomes easier and easier. This is the real acceleration that makes this technique so powerful. As your listening comprehension improves, you actually need to do less and less work to improve your level. It becomes more about time spent listening to and reading things that you enjoy.