The Minimal Effective Dose (MED) I have a confession to make.. like many in our society today, I was once a workaholic. As an entrepreneur, I had a tendency to obsess over whatever idea I was working on. I would work for hours upon hours, sometimes more than 16 hours a day. I would sacrifice family time, relationships, my health and my overall wellbeing all in the name of a 'more is better' mentality. In the end though, this approach ended up being highly inefficient and even self destructive. Enter The Minimal Effective Dose (MED). The Minimal Effective Dose is simply the smallest amount of input that will produce the desired result and anything beyond that is wasteful. For example, water boils at 100 degrees celsius. If you add more heat the water doesn't become 'more boiled' , it is rather a waste of energy. MED is also highly applicable to language learning. The grammar of any language can easily be perceived as complex and intimidating. Parkinson's Law dictates that work expands to fill the time that you allow it. By studying grammar at too great a length it's complexity only increases. This is wasteful. By having a native speaker translate the following 12 sentences into the language I'm learning, I can quickly deconstruct that language's grammar in an afternoon. These 12 sentences give me the critical few structures I need for constructing sentences when speaking, (direct object, indirect object, noun cases, possessives etc.) The MED of grammar study: The apple is red. It is John's apple. I give John the apple. We give him the apple. He gives it to John. She gives it to him. Is the apple red? The apples are red. I must give it to him. I want to give it to her. I'm going to know tomorrow. I can't eat the apple. What if one wants to become fluent in any language? The MED of fluency in any language: Deconstruct the language's grammar using the 12 sentences listed above. Then memorize the 1200 highest frequency words and learn all the conjugations for auxiliary verbs, (to have, to want, to need, to be, to be able to, to make, I am going to) . Learn to speak starting with an auxiliary verb and then slap the infinitive of any other verb that isn't auxiliary at the end of the sentence. ie. I am going (to swim) tomorrow.