Some notes for Indonesian professionals in their 30s who are thinking about improving their English while working full-time and raising a family
I teach English, and I also have a full-time job’s worth of history, a spouse, and two kids at home. I used to work in IT before I moved into teaching. I have this article about learning English around a job and a family, because I want you to have an idea what it’s like to learn English as an actual person in their 30s.
I get a lot of the same questions from students in similar situations, “How long will this actually take me?”, “How much should I spend?”, “Is this even realistic with a kid and a full-time job?” For all of that I happen to have patterns from years of teaching and from my own experience.
So here’s what I know.
What People Usually Want This For
There’s usually a specific reason underneath learning English, you need to clarify what you want as a goal:
- Communicating better at work, especially with international colleagues or clients
- Feeling less nervous in conversations or networking situations
- Opening doors to opportunities that require English
- A business idea or side project that needs English
If you don’t have a reason like this yet, it’s worth figuring one out before you start. The people who stick with it tend to have something concrete pulling them forward, not just a vague sense that English “would be good to have.”
How Long Does It Actually Take?
I’ll be careful, because some English courses throw around timelines like they’re guarantees. Everyone starts from a different place, has a different amount of time, and learns at a different pace. What I can give you are estimates based on what I’ve seen with students who put in consistent effort, please take them as a general sense of direction, not a promise.
If you’re starting from an intermediate level where you can handle emails and simple conversations but freeze up on anything more complex, here’s what tends to happen with steady effort:
Around 3 months of learning, most people notice small improvements. Podcasts gets easier to follow. You stop needing to replay the same sentence over and over again.
Around 6 months, you’re translating less in your head before you speak. Conversations will no longer feel like as much of a scramble.
Around a year, a lot of learners can hold a real, unscripted conversation without much mental effort. Grammar mistakes still happen, but they stop being the main obstacle.
Somewhere between 18 and 24 months, most people I’ve worked with reach a comfortable, functional fluency, not flawless English, but enough to handle professional and social situations without much anxiety.
These numbers indicate you’re showing up consistently. If you skip a couple of weeks here and there, or only study when you feel like it, you should make it noticeably longer. I’ve seen students stretch a 12 month plan into 2 years simply because life got in the way and they didn’t adjust their expectations.
If you’re starting from a more basic level, or if your goal is business level English, negotiations, presentations, formal writing, well then you need to add extra time on top of these estimates.
What It Actually Costs You: Time, Energy, and Money
Time
There’s a commonly cited figure that reaching high fluency takes around 10,000 hours of exposure and practice. That number is more useful as a reminder that this is a long game than as something to plan around literally, because… well… you’re not going to log 10,000 hours in a spreadsheet.
What matters more is what you can realistically fit into an ordinary week. For most working parents I know, that looks something like:
- Listening during your commute or while doing chores
- A bit of reading or video during lunch
- A focused study block in the evening, after the kids are asleep
- A longer session or speaking practice on the weekend
That adds up to somewhere around 8-12 hours a week for a lot of people, though your number might be different depending on your job and your household. The honest trade off is that something else usually gets less, less TV, less scrolling, sometimes less sleep if you’re not careful. I’d caution against sacrificing sleep for this; studying while tired isn’t very effective anyway.
Energy
This one doesn’t get talked about enough. If your job is mentally demanding, and IT work certainly was for me, well you might come home with less mental bandwidth than you think. Some evenings, sitting down to actively study feels impossible, and that’s normal. On those days, passive listening or a lighter activity is a reasonable substitute. Building some flexibility into your plan from the start will save you a lot of guilt later.
Money
Costs vary a lot depending on how you approach it. Here’s a sense of three common paths, based on what students have actually spent:
Mostly self study: apps, occasional online courses, some books tends to run somewhere around IDR 1.000,000 to 1,500,000 a year. It’s the cheapest route, but it usually takes longer and requires more self discipline, since there’s no one checking in on you.
A mixed approach: some group classes, apps, occasional one-on-one speaking practice usually lands somewhere between IDR 4,000,000 and 6,000,000 a year. This is what most of the working professionals I’ve taught end up choosing. It balances cost with enough structure to keep you accountable.
More intensive support: regular private tutoring, immersion-style courses can run IDR 10,000,000 or more a year. This is for you to move faster, but it’s a real financial commitment, and I’d only recommend it if there’s a specific reason the speed matters to you (a job opportunity with a deadline, or you’re having an IELTS test next year for example).
None of these numbers are fixed. They’re just a reference point so you’re not going in blind.
Your Social Life
Something will probably give a little. Fewer spontaneous hangouts on weeknights, maybe skipping a few things you’d normally say yes to. It’s a real cost, and I won’t pretend otherwise. On the other hand, some of my students have made genuine friends through conversation groups or online communities, people going through the same slow, sometimes frustrating process. Whether that balances out is really up to what you value.
A Rough Shape for the First Year
I’ll lay this out in phases rather than a strict month-by-month checklist, because life doesn’t respect calendars very well. Think of these as loose stages, not deadlines.
Early on, the focus is just building a routine you can actually sustain, picking one or two things (an app, a podcast, a class) and doing them regularly, rather than trying everything at once. Most people can feel small improvements in listening during this stretch.
A bit later, once listening feels a little more natural, it helps to start speaking, even for ten minutes at a time. This is usually the most uncomfortable phase, and also where I see the most people give up. If you can push through a few months of feeling awkward, it gets easier.
As things progress, you can shift toward content you’d actually enjoy in English anyway, such as shows, articles, communities related to your interests instead of “study material.” Learning stops feeling like an assignment around here for a lot of people.
Later still, some learners start actually using English for something real; a work project, reaching out to someone internationally, writing publicly. This is where the language starts to feel useful rather than theoretical.
By the end of a year or so, if you’ve been reasonably consistent, you likely have a workable, functional level of English for most everyday and professional situations. Whether you keep going from there depends entirely on what you’re using it for.
I want to be clear: this isn’t a guaranteed sequence. Some people move faster, some slower, and some skip around depending on what they need. Use it as a map, not a schedule to feel bad about missing.
Apps and Tools Worth Considering
I’ll be honest: no app on its own will get you fluent. They’re tools that support your plan, not a replacement for one. That said, some are genuinely useful.
For listening, podcasts and YouTube are hard to beat, mostly because they’re free and you can fit them into time you’re already spending commuting or doing chores.
For vocabulary, something like Anki (a flashcard app) is unglamorous but effective, especially if you build your own cards from words you actually encounter, rather than a generic list.
For writing and explanations, tools like ChatGPT can be useful for checking your writing or getting a grammar point explained in a different way. It’s not a substitute for a real conversation partner, but it’s a reasonable supplement.
For speaking practice, this is the part that’s hardest to automate. Apps like HelloTalk connect you with other learners, which is useful for casual practice. If your budget allows, one-on-one lessons through something like Italki or Preply, or a local conversation group, tend to move things along faster because you get real feedback.
I’d be cautious about apps that promise fluency “in minutes a day.” They’re not necessarily useless, but they tend to teach shallow patterns rather than the kind of flexible understanding that actually holds up in a real conversation.
If I had to suggest a simple starting stack: daily listening during downtime, a short vocabulary habit before bed, and some form of speaking practice a few times a week even just 20-30 minutes at a time. That’s enough to make steady progress without burning out.
Fitting This Around Your Family
This part matters more than any app or method, in my experience.
With a spouse, it helps to say clearly, early on, what you’re doing and why, not as a grand announcement, but just so they’re not confused when you disappear for an hour after the kids are asleep. Some couples study together sometimes, which can help, though it’s not necessary. What matters more is protecting some untouched family time too, maybe one evening a week with no studying, so this doesn’t quietly take over everything.
With kids, something I’ve noticed with my own and with students’ families: kids notice when a parent is learning something hard. It doesn’t need to be a lesson for them, but it quietly models that learning doesn’t stop after school. Some parents find their kids enjoy “teaching” them a word or correcting their pronunciation, which can be a nice, low-pressure way to practice.
None of this needs to be dramatic. Small, steady adjustments tend to work better than a big overhaul that’s hard to sustain.
What Tends to Open Up
I don’t want to oversell this part, because outcomes vary a lot depending on what you actually do with the English once you have it.
Connections. A number of my students have met people through conversation clubs, online communities, or work that they wouldn’t have connected with otherwise. This tends to happen gradually, not as a single breakthrough moment.
Work opportunities. Being able to communicate confidently in English sometimes opens doors at a current job, being trusted with international communication for instance, and sometimes leads to freelance or consulting work on the side. Rates for this kind of work vary widely, so I won’t quote specific numbers as if they’re typical; it really depends on your field and experience.
Side projects or small businesses. A few students have started tutoring, writing, or offering services to clients abroad. This isn’t the norm for everyone who learns English, but it’s a realistic possibility if you’re already inclined toward that kind of thing.
Whether any of this applies to you depends on what you’re actually aiming for. English on its own doesn’t create opportunities, it removes a barrier that was in the way of ones you might already be capable of pursuing.
When Progress Feels Slow (Because It Will, Sometimes)
Plateaus are normal, not a sign you’re doing something wrong. A few months in, it’s common to feel like nothing is improving, even though something usually is happening under the surface. This tends to pass in a few weeks if you keep going.
Later on, it’s common to understand a lot more than you can say. That gap between listening comprehension and speaking ability is one of the more frustrating parts of learning a language, and the fix is usually just more speaking practice, even though it feels less comfortable than passive listening.
If you’re stuck, a few things that tend to help: changing your method (switching from an app to a class, or vice versa), changing your material (if the news bores you, try something else), or just setting a smaller, more specific goal for a week instead of the vague target of “getting better.”
A Rough Sense of Where You Might Start
It’s worth being honest with yourself about your current level, since it changes the timeline quite a bit.
If you can handle simple conversations but struggle with anything more complex, you’re probably looking at somewhere around 18-24 months to reach comfortable fluency, with a budget in the range of IDR 8-12 million a year if you’re doing a mix of classes and self-study.
If you can already handle work conversations but hesitate on more complex topics, the timeline shortens to roughly 12-18 months, often with more focus on speaking practice specifically.
If you’re already conversational and mainly want to sound more professional or precise, you might be looking at 6-12 months of more targeted work.
If you’re not sure where you land, a trial lesson with a tutor is a reasonably cheap way to get an honest read on your level, this can be more useful than guessing on your own.
A Few Things That Seem to Matter Most
After teaching this for a while, a handful of patterns keep showing up:
Having a specific reason for learning, not just “English is useful,” but something concrete tends to correlate with people actually sticking with it.
Somewhere around 8-12 hours a week seems to be a sustainable range for most working parents. Much less than that and progress crawls; much more than that and it’s hard to keep up for long.
Speaking practice matters more than most people expect, and it’s usually the thing people avoid because it’s uncomfortable. If you only do one thing differently after reading this, I’d push you toward more speaking, even in small amounts.
Plateaus are part of the process, not evidence that something’s wrong.
Consistency beats intensity. A steady 30 minutes most days will get you further than an occasional 4-hour weekend binge.
If You’re Weighing This
Some questions worth sitting with before you commit to anything:
What specifically do you want the English for? How much time can you honestly commit most weeks? And it’s not in an ideal week I’m talking about, but a normal one? Do you learn better with structure (classes, a tutor) or on your own with apps and content? What can you comfortably spend, without it becoming a source of stress?
I don’t think there’s one right answer to any of these. This guide is meant to give you a realistic sense of what’s involved, so that whatever you decide, you’re deciding with clear information rather than guesswork.
