Tip #4 - set bite-size goals

Set acheivable and small goals

It's not a good idea to start your language learning by saying you want to be fluent in 1 week. This is highly unlikely unless you've worked out a way to import a language's vocabulary and grammar into your brain ;) Instead start by saying where you are now and then work out how much time you realistically can spend on learning a language each day or week. How much time can you spend on learning a language and doing what? In other words, how much time you can spend doing a number of simple activities, such as reading an article or 5 words, over one week. You can call this your personal activity goals to learn this language.
Ok, now think where you might be in 3 months if you put that much time into learning your language. Maybe you can make a list of your activities and then tot up the benefits you think you'll get. This total you get is your learning objective. If you want you can also start with your learning objective and then work out how much language learning activities and time you need to put in to reach them. The order is not really important, different people like to do it different ways. As long as what you set at the end is acheivable and measurable then you can reap the motivational rewards of actually succeeding in doing each small step. And this will help you keep going when, and this will definitely happen, you think "Oh my God! I'll never learn this damned language!".