The Talk Test
A good way of knowing how hard to work is to try and say a sentence, for example, my name is …... and my favourite sport is ………………
If you can sing the whole sentence slowly without stopping, then you are not working hard enough. If you can’t speak at all, or say more than one word at a time then you’re working too hard. If you’re able to say the sentence slowly with a few stops then that’s just right.