How to Succeed in Studying Japanese

Slow and steady wins the race.

I think this is the key to my goal of learning Japanese.

I have an unfortunate pattern emerging in my study habits. I'll get on a roll for a week or so, finish all my flashcard reviews of kanji/kana, then for whatever reason I will stop studying for a few days. Then it gets up to a week or more, until I am way behind.

The way the flashcard software works, I am really hurting my memory by doing this in spurts like I am. It times the next time each card comes back up depending on whether you got it right or wrong the previous time. When I stop doing reviews for a week or more (it's been about 2-3 weeks now!) I'm preventing the system from helping me put the knowledge into my long-term memory. I'll forget and will have to start over from the beginning.

Leave Your Pride At Home
On the Japanese learning forum I'm on, most people seem to learn 20-30 new cards per day. Some hotshots even talk about learning up to 100 new cards per day, and devote up to 8 hours of studying per day! Great for them, but there is no way I can do that.

I've been having a goal of learning 20 cards per day; originally it was 25 and I took it down a bit to be easier on myself. But I think even 20/day may be a bit much for me. It hurts me to say this, but I think that 10 per day is a good pace. I'll be able to knock it down in one session and feel like I've completed something that day.

I haven't done this because I feel that at 10 per day I will take too long to finish my set plan. That's why 20 sounds better, because it's twice as fast. However 20/day is not really that in practice, as is made obvious by my lags in studying.

I have to learn to take my pride out of the equation and figure out a pace that is reasonable for my lifestyle. Even if I can't meet my goal when I originally wanted to, at least I will be studying at a steady pace and not stopping. Ultimately that is more helpful.

Find Your Own Way, Ignore Everyone Else
This lesson has taken a long time to learn. Whatever you are trying to do, for me, studying Japanese or blogging, there are always tons of successful people talking about how they do it. For a lot of them, this pursuit is their career, their #1 focus in life, and basically they have a lot of time to devote to it.

It's easy to read blogs, online forum messages, and to think that the way these people are learning and achieving their goals is what you have to do. I realized much later that I don't have to subscribe to 10 blogs and read all those messages to succeed. I just have to figure out what works for me, through personal trial and error. This leads to my next point.

Reading About Japanese Is Not Studying
When I know I have to study for the day, and it's looming over me, I immediately start internet surfing. Oh, I'm doing something about Japanese. But I'm reading posts and blogs about what other people are doing to learn Japanese, or talking about something Japanese. This is not studying-- my primary goal! This is distraction and procrastination. It's kind of like how the day before a term paper is due, I suddenly get an urge to clean my room. And my room gets messy.

Instead of spending 45 minutes surfing, if I would tell myself to simply sit down and study for 5 minutes, I would be so much better off. It's hard to put off a short term pleasure for a long term gain.

It can be inspirational and quite motivational to read about Japanese stuff, to get that kick in the butt and get going. But in the end achieving goals and success comes down to a lot of not-as-fun stuff, day in and day out. This is the lesson I am slowly learning.