Getting Into End Of Summer/Start Of New School Year Mode
We all look for moments when we can make major changes. Most people focus on New Year’s as a point to turn around your studying. Many fail. Some succeed. Everyone at least tries. Now I’ve given advice in those posts that you don’t need a special day to make change. You can set new goals, new targets, and finally do something you’ve wanted to any time you set your mind to it.
This is easy to say. But when you are sitting on your superbly comfortable couch, you can think “okay from tomorrow, I’m going to add 30 new Anki cards a day, read 20 novel pages, and watch 3 hours of J-TV.” But when tomorrow comes, it is just like any other day, so there is always another tomorrow after that to start. There is no commitment. The tomorrow that you fail is no different than the day after that which you feel you may succeed.
However, change allows other change to go with it. The major events and schedule changes throughout your typical year give a good point to try to alter your Japanese studying habits. And what major adjustment in your life is coming up? Well if you are in your early 20s or under, the end of summer and the start of the new school year.
Whatever you wish you did/should have done over the summer leave in the past. But your schedule is about to make a major change. Use this to set new goals, giving those goals a little extra weight than normal. Start a new textbook. Start a new program. Start a new series. Get yourself into a new study mode. Yeah, you may fail, like you did with your New Year’s goals. But you may also succeed.
Your schedule is changing anyway, so might as well make it change in as best a way possible.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
That’s what I really like about Tadoku. It gives me a scheduled opportunity to really focus on my reading. Off tadoku season, I focus on other skills and do reading at my leisure. There are definitely rounds where I just didn’t reach my goal but could’ve, but there are tons of rounds and moments where I absolutely succeeded.
Likewise, I also use seasonal shifts as times for opportunity. The summer and winter schedules are just different than my school semester schedule, so the transition in between them makes a good time to set goals. Sometimes it’s hard to set a goal in the middle of everything when you’re just trying to finish what’s on your plate, so it’s nice to set them when everything’s fresh and you can introduce it in and work it into your schedule.
Tadoku definitely seems to be a great event that gets everyone focused on new goals.
And I think those schedule shifts that can be taken advantage of occur all throughout the year (end of summer, start of fall semester, end of fall semester, new year, start of spring semester, end of spring semester, start of summer)