I'm just not sure if the trade-off is worth it for me to aggressively pursue it or if i should put it on hold for another year so i can learn more practical skill that has an immediate impact to those around me
That being said, focus on just one new language. Three at once is extremely hard to balance without committing a very serious amount of time and having a high level of natural language learning talent. The easiest languages to learn with English as your native language take around 500 hours to reach conversational proficiency [1] which is an hour or two a day, try to learn 3 languages at once and that's nearly a full time job. If you dedicate yourself to spending an hour every day it's realistic to reach conversational fluency in a year and a half or so, if you go more casually it might take 3-5 years or longer.
[1] https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ (this is for full professional proficiency, you can probably converse smoothly with less than that)
Thanks for the advice
What languages are you looking at, and which do you speak already?
You might find this forum helpful:
Is this ridiculously unrealistic or are you actually disciplind enough to pull this off?
Why do you even want to learn 3? There's not that much point learning 3 at once, try learning one.
I can see that someone who wants to be a professional historian of Scandinavia might want to learn Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish; and a historian of Spain might learn Catalan, Spanish, and Galician at the same time.
At least, those makes a bit more sense to learn together than, say, learning Quechua, Xhosa, and Tamil.
I don't think it will be hard to talk the OP out of this challenging task.
EDIT: I just remembered a friend of mine got a Master's in Classics, which included learning to read (not converse in!) a half-dozen or so languages over a couple of years, including French, German, ancient Greek, Latin, and Sumerian. She spent almost all her time studying, surrounded by dictionaries.
I dont think im disciplined at all, its mostly what im interested in. I know most people spend leetcode 4 hours a day after work and all day on the weekend. I used to do that, but i stopped doing that as that's not for me. Now i have too much time
My favorite quote from his article:
> Musicians get better by practice and tackling harder and harder pieces, not by switching instruments or genres, nor by learning more and varied easy pieces. Ditto almost every other specialty inhabited by experts or masters.
I have reached b2-c1 level myself in only 2 languages, plus b2 in a few more, and a2-b1 in a few more. Some languages I just want to be able to have basic interactions with to speak with a neighbor or a person I always see at a restaurant. Others, I have a personal connection to and want to get to a really high level. It all depends on what your goals are.
If you intend to study 3 languages at once, make sure you're very organized. You should track everything and have a plan for exactly what you intend to do in each language before your day starts. Also, realize that each language will move no more than 1/3 the speed that focusing on a single language would.
Final comment: if you've never learned another language before, I highly recommend to just take 3-6 months and dive into whichever one interests you the most.
There are so many subtleties and history in a language, it's worth diving into one culture at a time.
OP is asking if he should try learning 3 new languages over the next year. If he has the problems with focus that his post and submission history indicates, then he has a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding without medication. But properly medicated he probably could.
So OP: if you want to learn 3 new languages in 2021, consider seeking psychiatric help. Not a dig, just advice from a fellow ADHDer.