Working Smarter Still Means Working Your Ass Off
Working smarter means less work and more reward. Skip the inefficient, and speed your way to the fruits of fluent glory. All the people on this site who are reaching their goals at high speeds are just working smart. They are playing the system. They are utilizing the best secrets to success. They have found the ultimate shortcut right?
No.
Just because you are working in a smarter way does not mean that you are using this as a shortcut to higher levels, and don’t have to put in the studying everyone else is putting in.
The people that go extremely fast are working smart. But they are also putting in a ridiculous amount of hard work. When you are tired, they are working. When you are demotivated, they are working. When you can’t bare to look at another Anki review, they put in 100. When you are doing something else in English, they are doing something in Japanese. When you decide to take the day off and go easy on yourself, they decide to work double as hard for that day.
It’s easy to look at the image of people who go fast and think they are cheating or doing something underhanded. But if you actually talk with them, they work harder than you could ever imagine. They sacrifice all their free time, they make Japanese a top priority, they put everything into making their dream a reality.
You work hard too? I know you do. And you too will also eventually be rewarded. It’s not a race, and your pace is what you make that best suits you.
But some people just work harder. And when you work smarter, harder, and longer than anyone else you are going to become better, stronger, and faster than anyone else. Just like there is really no such thing as an “overnight success,” there is no thing as someone who has merely floated their way to fluency on a cloud.
Work smart. Work hard. Be fluent.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Lately this really resonates with me. I have been studying since January of this year, and I have made some real huge improvements. University constantly slows me down though. I keep feeling like if I had more free time, if I had more time I could use to FOCUS on my japanese, I could be 100, 200, 300, 400 times better than I am!
At the end of the day, Maybe I am not putting in the effort I could be.
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll get up an hour early and watch some しゃべくり007!
Waking up early to watch しゃべくり007 is always worth it.
Try to challenge yourself to even just find an extra 20 minutes a day. Over a year thats 120 hours of more power you are putting into your Japanese.
I can very strongly attest to this. I’ve always been someone who’s very “clever”, but also incredibly lazy. I have on many occasions spent more energy trying to find the most efficient way to do something than actually doing it >_>
But when it comes to Japanese there just aren’t many shortcuts. I’ve had to keep a very measured pace to avoid burning out, and have watched some determined and hard-working folks blow right past me along the way.
That’s not to say I feel bad about it, though. For the time I do put in, I feel like I’m making excellent progress. I’m happy and I’m having fun and it works for me. But it’s always good to have strong people to try and chase after, right? =)
Very well expressed. なるほどね。
This is the truth.