You can want to do something for years and then struggle to do it even for a week.

We wish we could be as dedicated to our projects, exercise, or musical instrument practice as some other people are. Or something happens in our life, often through no fault of our own, and we stop doing what we’re so passionate about – for months or even years – and then cannot start again.

How can we consistently do what we want to do, and keep doing it for a long time? Motivation comes and goes, and we don’t want to rely on effort and willpower every time. We want the activity to be something we simply do, as integral to our life as waking up in the morning.

The framework

I propose a framework with two conditions and two phases that describes long-term commitment and can help us change our behaviour.

• Condition one: we are willing to do the chosen activity.
• Condition two: we know a process we have good reason to believe can produce the result we want.
• Phase one: we earnestly engage with the process, giving it a fair chance.
• Phase two: when we get results, our own experience supports our commitment.

Let’s look at each in detail using learning a foreign language as an example. Many people successfully learn foreign languages while others try for years. There are many ways to learn a language, and many ways to succeed. Of course, one is never finished. Me, my native language is Russian and I studied English, French, Japanese and German with different goals and varying degrees of success. Let’s begin.

Condition one: general willingness

The first condition is very simple: we must be willing to do what we set out to do. Potentially we will spend a large amount of time doing it over multiple years. At a minimum, we should not be unwilling. If I dislike something and cannot imagine myself doing it, I start with a problem that’s hard to overcome. However, I can dislike something in the moment, be uncomfortable, but still want to do it in general. We are talking about general willingness.

With a foreign language, this means we need to be willing to spend time learning and using it, because it’s impossible to do without practice. We don’t have to enjoy every exercise, but we need to accept involvement in the activity itself, not only wish for the result.

Writers know a phrase that highlights this tension. They “don’t like to write, but like having written”. It is the same with runners and other athletes, musicians and adult learners like you and me. We know that we’ll have to work hard, but the result will be worth it.

Condition two: a process that can work

Let’s make an important distinction. This framework is most useful when we are doing something for a result we can recognise. It doesn’t have to be strictly objective, but we need some way to judge whether our approach is helping. Otherwise, we have less to go on when deciding whether to continue or change it. We can also do something simply because we like it, and that’s all right. Not everything has to be a cost-benefit analysis.

Now, the second condition is to have a process that can produce a result we want. It doesn’t have to be a process we’ve worked out ourselves, but we need good reasons to expect it can work for us. How do we judge that before spending weeks or months on it?

This is, perhaps, the most difficult step because we are not experts. We are only learning. What we can do is to get help from experts, people who have walked the path and have taught other people to do it, because they know what is reasonable for a beginner. We can look at what the process asks us to do, whether people with similar goals and circumstances have made progress with it. Social media is often flooded with impressive success stories but we should aim to ask people directly what time, help, and resources they required.

Suppose we want to hold a conversation in another language. A process that involves practising understanding and responding to someone gives us a reason to expect progress towards that goal. Spending all our time reading about language learning is not the same – we will be doing something associated with the result without doing what produces it.

We may conclude, looking at a process beforehand, that we will not be able to spend enough time to achieve a certain result in reasonable time. After all, most of us have many commitments and we cannot fit everything we want to do into a day. This is good news. We can now adjust our expectations and reconsider why we want to do the activity in the first place: is it only to achieve a certain result, or would the activity itself or a more modest goal be a sufficient reward?

Finally, to avoid the search for the perfect process itself becoming a barrier: we need only enough confidence to try an approach, not exhaustive research to remove all uncertainty. We can change the process if it is not working because we see if it doesn’t get us results.

Phase one: trusting the process

The first of the two phases when we commit to an activity long-term is belief. We have to trust that the process we engage in can produce results before we have evidence of our own. This is also where we evaluate whether the chosen process fits us and whether we can do it. A process needs to be something we can actually repeat in the life we have. Part of this phase is deciding when it will happen, what amount is manageable, and what help we need.

For example, if we spend half an hour once a week practising a language and keep forgetting what we did between sessions, we might try spending a smaller amount of time more frequently. If we give the process a fair trial and see no useful progress, we can change the approach, revise the goal, or decide not to continue. Trusting the process doesn’t mean ignoring what happens. Committing to an activity doesn’t mean committing to one way of doing it forever.

I think of this phase as liberating because, for a while, we can concentrate on doing the activity rather than deciding after every difficult session whether it is worth continuing. Last year I learned to drive and the first five lessons were terrible, I couldn’t do anything right. I expected it to take time before I felt more at ease, and by my tenth lesson I did. That belief in the process kept me going when I sat down, scared, at the wheel of my instructor’s car. Part of choosing a process is learning what difficulties to expect.

Even then, we can make reasonable choices, engage seriously, and not get the result we want. We might attend language classes, do the homework, and still be unable to hold the conversations we hoped for. This is where the framework helps. We are not getting the result we expected. Now we need to look more closely at what is happening. It is a time to re-evaluate and again seek help from experts. Perhaps a different approach would help. Maybe we are improving, but not enough to reach our goal within the time we have.

That doesn’t automatically mean we lacked willingness or didn’t try hard enough. A process that has worked for other people gives us a reason to try it, not a guarantee. When choosing a process, we should also ask what early progress might look like, and when it would be reasonable to look for it.

Phase two: working with results

When we start getting the results we’re after, we reach the second phase. We don’t need to rely only on belief anymore – we have our own evidence that the process is working. This can give us confidence in our ability and something to draw on when motivation is low. The simple realisation feels empowering when it comes from our direct experience: “Wait, if I keep doing it, I keep getting better?”

With language learning, I have a few examples when it clicked. When I was first in Paris, I found I could make small talk in French at the hotel reception and when ordering food. Understanding jokes in another language puts a big smile on your face. With English, a bigger success: one day in high school I started reading “The Lord of the Rings” and found I understood more words than I had to look up. That moment opened up an infinite number of books for me to read. From then on, if the book I wanted to read was originally in English, I read it in English.

The initial result isn’t everything we hoped to achieve, but it’s something we couldn’t do before. We feel a shift in our attitude: “It’s working!” Getting that result lets us lean more into the activity because it stops being a dream and becomes reality. We are no longer only hoping that the process will work. We have experienced it working.

Keeping up

Slowly, doing something can become part of our identity. It is no longer something we’ve been trying to do, it is something we do.

Later we are likely to re-evaluate what we are doing, especially if we are looking for the next step. However, changing a process once we’ve seen it work can be easier than following it in the beginning. We have it down, we know how it works for us. We can tweak it with the confidence of experience.

None of this makes our commitment unwavering. There will still be interruptions, and we may still struggle to find time. But after a break, we have something to return to: a process we have experience with, rather than only hope that it might work. Returning may mean changing the process to fit the life we have now, rather than expecting to resume exactly where we stopped.

Long-term commitment means that even if we have to stop, we have something worth returning to – and we find a way to return.