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Maintain Total Control Over Your Study Time — 7 Comments

  1. This semester, my schedule is really busy because I took on too many things at once. So, I’m playing with a method called timeboxing. I still don’t really understand how to apply it. But I’m trying my best.

    However, the timeboxing is really just to motivate my college studies. For Japanese, it doesn’t really take the effort of putting aside time. It’s a part of my everyday life. This is really great advice. It’s easy to take Japanese with you to do during idle time.

    The problem with me is I’m also learning Japanese Sign Language, which requires internet. I can’t exactly listen to sign language in the car or read a sign language book between classes. It would help if I had a portable i-phone, but I just have my laptop, which is clunky and requires internet access. But I try my best. This semester, I don’t have much idle time with internet access, so it’s harder to get JSL input. But last semester, I had to go to school really early to beat traffic, so I ended up watching a lot of sign language youtube videos.

    • Timeboxing didn’t work after all. So, I just stuck with using the most of the time that I have and putting in my best effort as usual. My semester is over and it went fine.

  2. This is why I haaaaate not being employable due to a complete absence of job experience in anything (not even food service >_<). I need to get an iPod since my laptop is a very bulky substitute (on a side note, I need to find a way to access an iPod as a USB drive since I do NOT trust iTunes with my existing music collection!), but since even the smallest-capacity model is too expensive for me…

  3. I hope this comes across as encouraging towards the previous commentors instead of crabby. Back in the day before iPhones and iPods, people made actual physical flashcards to study with out of index cards. You can do it too! Don’t let lack of funding hold you back. People have been learning Japanese like pros since before computers existed, let alone fun little mobile devices. The time and effort it takes to make each little card by hand sounds like a hassle, but from personal experience I think it actually helps to take a minute to really focus on writing out each kanji or bit of vocab. If you can’t afford an ipod for listening to Japanese audio, they sell generic mp3 players at walmart for $20 that work just as well.
    No more excuses.. get your study on~

  4. yeah i agree, people have so much time, normaly im aware of where my time is going too, like i just spent 1 hr reading random stuff on the internet cause i felt like it. the importance is becoming aware 100% of the time and giving yourself a set amount of time to “fuck around” so that your not always mechnical. I usually give myself 1 to 2 hrs a day to just do whatever, depending on how I feel.

    Anyways i just found this blog and i really like, I am on my path to japanese and atm im at like level 25 on your scale. I think people who want to learn need to be aware of the HUGE time commitment needed when learning this language. ive probably poured like 200-400 or so hours into learning this language and everyday i still have to input 100+ words on my anki. it seems like it never stops.

  5. It is true that you need motivation and a want to do this. Without it you will get bored, be hurting yourself, and wasting your time. Why waste time on something you don’t enjoy doing? In fact, I enjoy Japanese so much, I have to FORCE myself to do other things.

    Without fun and motivation, being able to learn all the 常用漢字 will seem terrible to you, and then going through all those sentences, adding like 30+ a day? Impossible without fun, you will burn out extremely fast. It’s like a fire. Without oxygen, it just burns out. Without fun, your strive to learn will just burn out.

    I had a problem with this a few months ago, but then I realized I was treated Japanese like a task instead of my toy. Luckily I’m all for playing now, and I get the same amount of learning as i did during the “task phase”

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