Temporary Power-ups: Inspiration, Motivation, and Guidance
To persevere through your continuous adventures in Japanese, you are going to need help. You start off with very little, but like in every video game, you are going to need power-ups. The main arsenal you will encounter will consist of three items: Inspiration, Motivation, and Guidance. These are your IMG power-ups.
I know you are quite familiar with using IMGs. You should be getting them from this website. You’ve gotten them before from many other websites, self-help books, TV shows, friends/family, anime, manga, and movies. IMGs are vital in giving you that extra boost, pushing you towards success in Japanese, and there is no shortage of them wherever you look. Without them, you wouldn’t make it past level 1.
You’ve used them this long, but are you using them correctly? Have you forgotten the principal rule behind them?
IMG powerups are temporary.
Like any good power-up, they don’t last long. How long? Sometimes a few hours. After your power-up is acquired, it disappears at incredible speed. This means that anytime you activate one, you have very little time to make beneficial use of it before it vanishes.
Does this sound familiar? You read an IMG article, you are all pumped up, and ready to rock however it relates to Japanese. You wait until tomorrow to begin. However, tomorrow you don’t feel like doing anything. You just wasted a precious IMG.
Even worse than waiting too long after you’ve used a power-up is devouring too many at once. Ever read a bunch of IMGs in a row (ex. reading an entire self-help book in one sitting)? How much of the book did you implement into your life? In oldschool MMORPG language, this is like buffing up your character with too many spells that have short duration. By the time you get towards the end of a full set off buffs, the original ones you used begin to wear off.
How do you make the most efficient use of IMGs?
3 simple steps:
1. Don’t wait
2. Don’t overuse
3. Don’t overlap
This should result in a more powered up version of yourself, and an overall smoother Japanese journey.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Man this is such a good way of looking at it…. It’s just a game XD
So, if I find one of these power-ups late at night, and my brain is already screaming 「寝たい!寝たい!」 at me, I should just… bookmark it, close the page and leave it for tomorrow when I’m actually awake enough to use it?
Yes! Always try to avoid using power-ups right before you go to bed. Save it for the next day and make full use of it.
My entire history of learning Japanese has been riddled with many stops and starts, all due to myself burning out, or getting way too frustrated to even remember the positives for why I started this Journey. This one post clarified so much for me. Such a treasure piece!