Hello guys. I've been a member of this forum for quite some time, and have also been learning Japanese for ~ 3 or so years. This forum has been very valuable, and I'd say it's one of the best forums for learners.

Warning: This post is have a lot of messy thoughts that are all over this place. This seems more like a rant. Ignore this if you aren't interested in blabber.

Despite this hobby of mine, I've been struggling to keep up with it.

Pre-story 

The past 3 years I was learning on and off. Even now, I would say I'm almost ~n3 level, in terms of reading. I tried for months to write on lang-8 but never made much progress beyond simple sentences. I have 0 contact with any Japanese people. (I know you can sign up on certain websites and meet through lang-8, but is that the only way? Most of them want to have skype calls and I have 0 interest in speaking right now, sad to say.) I tried quite hard to push into that "intermediate" territory, but I still feel like I'm always stuck in the beginner stage. I started to get quite down about this.

I stopped learning Japanese for about 5 months.

Story

So.. came a time where now I have another focus in my life. I strive to be a web developer. This is the career field that I'm most interested in and I've been trying to work towards my goal. (If you're interested, I want to land a junior position within the next year.) Now this topic is quite difficult for me to understand, I don't think like a programmer and my problem solving skills are horrendous. I'm currently trying to understand JavaScript to the best of my abilities. I'm always trying to tackle things on freecodecamp or make a little project. 

Learning this has actually taken away all of my time to learn Japanese. I know I stopped previously, but getting into web development has taken up all of my time/energy. 

I work a part time job, usually ~ 6 hours a day / 5 times a week and that already zaps the energy out of me. When I get home I tend to try and learn things, regarding the topic above.

By the end of this I have 0, zip, nothing left for Japanese. I don't have the energy to do it. I have so much I want to do, I want to see progress, and I have so god damn many vocabulary words I need to get through if I ever want to be able to read anything. 

I love learning Japanese. I tried to get away from it but I can't. Web development and Japanese are two of the best things I've had in my life right now and I don't want to leave either one. (I've already ditched some of my other hobbies months ago. I gave up drawing and have been tinkering down how many hours I spend playing video games. Curse you, LoL!)

Sometimes I wonder if it's because I don't enjoy any native materials. I stopped watching anime 3 years ago, I don't play anymore visual novels. At best, I like a few manga series now and then. Hell, I don't even listen to damn Japanese music anymore. Why do I enjoy and miss the language so much?

Maybe I'm missing something but Japanese TV seems to be far lower quality than Korean TV. (I'm a huge Korean drama/variety show fan. Their shows are top notch but Japanese TV seems to always be lower quality in terms of production and content.)

What would you suggest? How do you manage your time for Japanese? How do you fit in Japanese when you have no energy for it?

I know the obvious answer is to just get rid of certain things, or to make time for it, but does anyone else struggle with this? Coming onto this forum everyone seems to be a Japanese god who can devote all their time to it. 

TL;DR: I don't have a lot of time/energy for Japanese anymore. I have another priority, but I still want to make decent progress in the language. What do I do? How do I power through those "I don't want to do anything" times?

You know, re-reading this post, maybe I should just go learn Korean. God dammit. 

Sorry for the rant, my thoughts are all over the place.

In order to make long term progress in anything you need to make it a habit. You probably already know this. Any other answer you get will pretty much boil down to this. You know what to do already, you just need to do it.

(I'm half talking to myself when I say this because I have issues with procrastination )

I am studying Japanese almost entirely in time I would normally not be doing anything interesting anyway. Mostly I use my lunch hour walking to a restaurant, waiting for food, walking back, and while walking my dog. I also fit in a few minutes here and there, like getting to work a few minutes early and study 10 minutes in the car and also while walking from my car to work, etc. When my commute was longer, I was even doing anki reps at red lights(really). All this adds up to over an hour per day and it's all just found time that I used to piss away checking facebook or reloading my email. So my study time rarely intrudes into other things that I like to do with my time.

(2015-11-24, 2:54 pm)MelonBerry Wrote: So.. came a time where now I have another focus in my life. I strive to be a web developer. This is the career field that I'm most interested in and I've been trying to work towards my goal. (If you're interested, I want to land a junior position within the next year.) Now this topic is quite difficult for me to understand, I don't think like a programmer and my problem solving skills are horrendous. I'm currently trying to understand JavaScript to the best of my abilities. I'm always trying to tackle things on freecodecamp or make a little project. 

Learning this has actually taken away all of my time to learn Japanese. I know I stopped previously, but getting into web development has taken up all of my time/energy. 

I work a part time job, usually ~ 6 hours a day / 5 times a week and that already zaps the energy out of me. When I get home I tend to try and learn things, regarding the topic above.

By the end of this I have 0, zip, nothing left for Japanese. I don't have the energy to do it. I have so much I want to do, I want to see progress, and I have so god damn many vocabulary words I need to get through if I ever want to be able to read anything.

So back about 2 years ago I left Japan after having lived there for nearly 3 years, and while I didn't want to go, I needed a different job; I had been a teacher to that point. I came home and started coding and looking for a job doing it because I realized that was what I wanted to do. Its worth pointing out that I had been coding for nearly a decade on my own time when I left Japan so I'm not in your shoes exactly.

The thing that I realized after having been in Japan for 3 years, having talked to people that got real jobs, and looked at the jobs on Daijob.com and other places; is that skills are considerably more valuable than language. Companies in Japan are not falling all over themselves to hire people that are fluent in Japanese. Now the question of your post wasn't about going to Japan, it was about managing two things you want to learn. The simple answer is either decide which one is more important or figure out a schedule that lets you do both. Because I want to get back to Japan, I decided to just dump all of my Japanese learning/review and focus full time on coding and getting a job doing that. This is one solution, but it comes at a cost. Whatever you decide to do there will be a cost.

My suggestion would be to consider your life goals and then decide if trying to maintain, or even progress, Japanese while picking up coding is more important. Personally, career choice--the thing you do 8 hours a day 5-6 times a week--matter more than what hobbies you have on the side. If your career is something you enjoy then your hobbies are simply bonus enjoyment points instead of being the only thing that keeps you sane when you come home from work everyday.

My 2cents.

Hey~~~~~~~
So, you have a new priority, a really important priority for your career. Furthermore, you don't have any particular attachment to Japanese in terms of native content or contact with Japanese people, but for whatever reason you love Japanese and you want to continue learning it. This is really really hard for me to understand so maybe nothing I say will be of help because the way your motivation works is clearly different from me, but let me throw around a few ideas lol x_x

Quote:What would you suggest?

I really really think it would help if you found an attachment to Japanese in terms of either (a) native materials or (b) people.

(a) I feel your pain with native material. I have found some gems among the trash with drama and anime though. There's also Korean drama dubbed into Japanese. There's also (light) novels too where I've had much more success with finding good ones. As you improve, more and more you can start to do more of your normal (non Japanese related) interests into Japanese as well, like, I dunno, joining Japanese programming sites, reading Japanese books on web development, etc.

(b) I feel your pain with not wanting to skype immediately too. I made my speediest improvements in Japanese ("can't have a natural conversation" to "can pretend to be Japanese on chat" in the space of a summer holiday) after finding a chatroom (http://www.chaberi.com/). Only after making friends and improving on text chat did I start skyping with the people I met there. So that's one way to get in contact with Japanese people through text. Some of these people are still my good friends now. There's also mixi (https://mixi.jp/), a Japanese social network site where I exchanged messages with people and joined communities for shared interests and that was good too.

Quote:How do you manage your time for Japanese? How do you fit in Japanese when you have no energy for it?

I don't "fit in" Japanese, I just have people I want to talk to and hobbies and interests which require me to use Japanese. That isn't just now I can do that easily though. From the start (influenced heavily by AJATT) I always tried to make it so that Japanese wasn't an activity in itself to "fit in", rather I had activities which I would want to do anyway which just happened to be in Japanese.

Like as a beginner on that chatroom, I didn't go back everyday because I was thinking "I gotta study Japanese and learn some new vocab". I went there everyday because they were cool people and I wanted to try and chat with them, hear their news, etc.

Like, if I had other things or hobbies I wanted to do more then I wouldn't try to fit in Japanese, I would just do the thing that I wanted to do. But enough of the time (for me to make good progress with the language), it was the thing requiring Japanese that I genuinely wanted to do. Then again, I did enjoy bad anime and drama a lot more back then though, haha.

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I suppose my tl;dr advice is... don't cut back on your important learning, but if you can find some cool content/people in Japanese it could naturally replace your other hobbies. Not as a chore to fit in, but something you genuinely want to do.

This is a long post but judging from your post it shouldn't be a problem.

Quote:I don't have the energy to do it. I have so much I want to do, I want to see progress, and I have so god damn many vocabulary words I need to get through if I ever want to be able to read anything

This is your main problem. You have so much to do and you want to see progress. This is good but the main problem is you want to reach your goal as soon as possible. That is becoming an "expert" in web development and being fluent in Japanese all in a year (or even months). Now as you witnessed, that will never happen. 

Trust me I know how you feel. My profile is similar to yours. I'm a Computer Science student. I'm always at the university from 9am - 6pm. When I come back home from the university, I'm completely knackered and all I want to do is eat, rest, watch some TV shows, play video games and then perhaps (reluctantly) study Japanese and/or my CS course. But there are so many things I want to learn and so little time to do them.

What I did was to set my priorities right. What do I need to achieve as soon as possible? How do I see my future? From there on I began to remove all other unimportant things from my life. No more weekly Friday night/weeked parties. No more spending countless hours watching TV shows. No more spending useless time on social media. That is not to say I don't socialize. I do hang out with friends. I still watch TV shows once in a while and go to the occasional party but definitely not as often as I used to. We often complain that we don't have much time but we don't often realize how much time we have when when we cut out the really unnecessary things from our lives.

Judging from your post:
For a day:
24 hours - 6 hours (for work) - 7 hours (recommended sleeping time for adults) = 11 hours.

You have 11x7 = 77 hours per week of free time to do what you want to do. That is even assuming that you work in the weekends which you clearly don't. So you even have more than 77 hours of free time per week. If you're telling me that you don't have the time to study for web development and Japanese at the same time, then something is clearly wrong. Unless you're a parent which children, then that is another matter entirely.  I'm also taking into account that you are not a student. Judging from your post you seem to have cut down some unnecessary things but did you really cut down enough?

Therefore, what I'll advise you is to set your priorities. 

Quote:I want to land a junior position within the next year.

This is clearly your number one priority. To reaching a certain level in web development in order to land a job next year. Make a monthly (not weekly) timetable of what you have to study every day of the week. Change this timetable every month if need be. Put more time in studying web development than Japanese.

For example, 2-3 hours of studying web development and 1 hour Japanese for each day. The key is to start slowly and then develop your interest in learning Japanese. If you start strong, you'll collapse. It would become a chore and that is not good. Start slowly and after each month add an hour or 30 minutes more to your Japanese and web development study program. You'll soon get used to it and it would become second nature. It would also help you to gradually get rid of certain things so as to create more time for studying.

Quote:I have 0 contact with any Japanese people. (I know you can sign up on certain websites and meet through lang-8, but is that the only way? Most of them want to have skype calls and I have 0 interest in speaking right now, sad to say.)

I advise to start speaking with Japanese people as soon as possible. You don't need wait until you have an N1 certificate to start speaking in Japanese. Speaking helps you revise the grammar and vocabulary you learned and can help you "fall in love" with learning Japanese. If you have some money to spare, and if you don't want the burden of having Japanese friends at the moment, you can try using italki. There are some very good teachers that can help you pass the intermediate barrier. The entire lessons are in Japanese. The rates are very affordable too.

[url=http://italki.com/][/url]

Quote:Maybe I'm missing something but Japanese TV seems to be far lower quality than Korean TV. (I'm a huge Korean drama/variety show fan. Their shows are top notch but Japanese TV seems to always be lower quality in terms of production and content.)

I'm beginning to wonder if you starting to love Korea more than Japan :p. Perhaps you should start studying Korean. On a serious note, perhaps your level in Japanese is not high enough to find Japanese TV interesting. Just speculating though...I'm sure you watch them using subtitles. You need to find an attachment to Japanese, you need to enjoy learning Japanese and perhaps having Japanese friends can be the answer. They can introduce you to various parts of Japanese culture which can motivate you study Japanese.

Ultimately, what you have take note is that learning is a life-time process. The earlier you come to terms with knowing that learning never stops, the easier life becomes for you. Even after landing your job, even after passing your N1, you'll still have to continue studying and learning. When you start working in a company, you'll realize how little you know about anything. The good news is that it wouldn't be as hard as when you just started.

And I'll end with an Albert Einstein quote, that always inspires me and I hope it inspires you:

Quote:“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.”

Good luck!

Thank you for the replies. 

It's not that I don't have "time", I do. I just don't have enough energy. (aka I want to relax). I wanted to know how you guys power through those slum times, but I didn't make that clear enough. (Sorry).

For the user who is breaking my time down and is also into CS, aren't you ever mentally tired?? Learning web dev drains my mind after awhile. 

I'm also not looking to become fluent in a year, or to become an expert in web dev quickly. Trust me, I know both of these take a lot of time. I've been studying Japanese for 3 years already. Web dev is always changing and is also a huge time sinker. I've been learning that for about 4 months. I know Japanese learning forums get a lot of "make me fluent already" posts, but this is not one of them. 

I guess ultimately i'll have to choose my priority of landing a career first. 

From what I'm gathering is that a lot of you guys end up -

• Doing anki reviews/new cards in your down time
  
• Talk to native japanese
  
• Immerse yourself into it like it's second nature
  

I'm going to actively try to work these into my life, surely, but slowly. Some days I won't have the mental energy for them, but I can definitely work them into the weekends. 

Another problem that users have mentioned is that I don't have any attachment to anything Japanese. You are so right about that. I need to explore a bit more. I have a 3DS LL but haven't touched any games for it in over a year. I've been slowly getting into Dragon Ball, and it's alright. If you guys have any recommendation, please feel free to share them. 

Hell, this thread was a huge rant of mine but I'm glad I got some good advice so far. Thank you.

Quote: For the user who is breaking my time down and is also into CS, aren't you ever mentally tired?? Learning web dev drains my mind after awhile.

Yes, of course. There are days where I just don't want to do anything. But now, it doesn't happen as often as it used to. I just had an epiphany of some sort. I realized how much time I wasted idling around. I was lazy up to the point of that I was tired of being lazy (if that made any sense). I also have been studying CS for 4 years at the uni. I am currently in my 5th and last year (MSc. CS). I think I just got used to it after some time.

Quote:I'm also not looking to become fluent in a year, or to become an expert in web dev quickly. Trust me, I know both of these take a lot of time. I've been studying Japanese for 3 years already. Web dev is always changing and is also a huge time sinker. I've been learning that for about 4 months already. I know Japanese learning forums get a lot of "make me fluent already" posts, but this is not one of them.

It seems like I misunderstood your post. If that's the case try and create a timetable similar to what I described in my previous post. Start slowly and build upon it. It shouldn't be a chore. You have the greatest advantage over the majority of the people studying Japanese, Time. Make good use of it. Make Japanese friends and try to talk with them as often as possible. It would help you have an attachment to Japanese.


Also are you studying web dev on your own or are you enrolled in a school? Do you have a passion CS? Some of my friends that took CS course because it made more money and it's easier to find jobs ended up abandoning midway because it was too hard. I am not saying that you must have a passion for web dev before diving into it. I am just saying it would make it easier for you. Just like having an attachment to Japanese would make it easier for you to learn Japanese.

So a little story on my end. My mom is German, half of my family is German. I should be fluent in it, right?

Nope! As a matter of fact, I hate studying it. Why?

Because outside of talking to relatives, there's absolutely nothing in German I have any interest in reading/watching. And believe me, I've tried! Really hard! It just doesn't get me excited. (Harry Potter doesn't really count IMO.)

What I discovered is that IT'S REALLY FREAKING HARD to get motivated to learn a language I don't want to use outside of 1 or 2 scenarios. I wasn't just going uphill, I was going uphill, in the snow, barefoot, into the wind.

So I quit trying to force myself to learn German. I might be interested in it at some later point, I might not.

I agree with the other advice: get out a big pad, and write down all of the things you want to do in life. (Yeah, a bucket list of sorts.) Then figure out which ones are more important than others. Pick a few you have the energy to do now, and put the others on a "Check back in a few months" list, and see how you feel about them then.

But yeah, if you don't have any attachment to Japanese, I'd put it on the "list" to look at later, and just not worry about it for now. Do what you can, as far as you are interested, but don't lose any sleep over it.

(2015-11-24, 5:41 pm)mkabness Wrote: Yes, of course. There are days where I just don't want to do anything. But now, it doesn't happen as often as it used to. I just had an epiphany of some sort. I realized how much time I wasted idling around. I was lazy up to the point of that I was tired of being lazy (if that made any sense). I also have been studying CS for 4 years at the uni. I am currently in my 5th and last year (MSc. CS). I think I just got used to it after some time.

Also are you studying web dev on your own or are you enrolled in a school? Do you have a passion CS? Some of my friends that took CS course because it made more money and it's easier to find jobs ended up abandoning midway because it was too hard. I am not saying that you must have a passion for web dev before diving into it. I am just saying it would make it easier for you. Just like having an attachment to Japanese would make it easier for you to learn Japanese.

I'm self studying it so far.  I've been learning Html/Css/Js. Most of my attention is trying to learn how to problem solve while getting vanilla JavaScript down. I've been avoiding jQuery and haven't touched any frameworks yet. (Same goes with CSS, I've been trying to make everything without the help of something like Bootstrap.)

I enjoy it a lot, it's just tough. Good for you for realising what you were doing and changing it. 

@rich_f, Thank you for your response. I guess sometimes I have to realise when to let go as well, huh?.. :/ Thanks for the advice about making a list like that. 

Sometimes I wonder if I'd have much more fun diving into Korean. I'd love to visit there at least once and with all the dramas I'm watching ... maybe I should, honestly. 

I need to take a few steps back and re-evaluate some things.

There's a really good Freakonomics podcast out there on sunk costs. (It was a year or two ago, IIRC.) We have a lot of sunk costs in our lives. The trick is to figure which ones are worth chasing with more time/effort/money, and which ones need to be written off.

I'll get back to you when I figure my own sunk costs out!

For specific techniques to power through when you don't have energy I have a few thoughts.  

The most important thing is not to study too much. A sure way to get yourself hating to learn japanese is to jam in more study time than you can handle.  There is a big difference between studying because you are enjoying studying and studying because you are forcing yourself to do it.  Mostly I'm talking about the amount of time you spend.  From my experience, I've noticed adding just 10 more minutes of study every day has made a huge difference between enjoyment and drudgery.  I've noticed the same thing while doing endurance sports, upping the pace past a certain point just kills any motivation to proceed and turns an enjoyable activity into a battle of will.

Another important thing is to schedule short blocks of time for studying ~30 minutes and stick to the schedule.  There are so many reasons for this but the most important for someone lacking energy is that making decisions require mental energy.  If you make studying into a small burden at a defined time, you don't have to convince yourself to study because it's already part of you like brushing your teeth in the morning.  The key point is to avoid times when you trying to decide if you'll study now or not - it should be automatic.  If it's already scheduled and part of a habit, you just do it without even thinking about it and it's not such a huge burden that you'll second guess your schedule.

I'm not sure how you are studying, but making yourself as comfortable as possible can make a big difference.  I don't enjoy studying on my computer, so I study 100% on my phone and I can do that anywhere.  When I have an opportunity, I like to study outside in good weather because it's enjoyable to be there.  When that's not possible I enjoy studying while laying on the sofa or a moroccan rug on my floor as long as it doesn't make me sleepy.  Some might sat that doesn't sound like study, but it gets the job done so who cares.  You mention not wanting to study because you want to relax.  But for me, studying Japanese is actually what I do to relax because I've turned it into a relaxing and enjoyable activity with not too much stress involved.  Anyway studying in a comfortable environment is just another way of eliminating reasons for not studying.

[Zgarbas]

Mental tiredness only occurs when you're going above your threshhold. If you really push yourself to form a habit then in due time you won't even count it as an effort. For example, I realised recently that even in my i-am-not-getting-out-of-bed laziest days, I still spend at least a couple of hours studying something. This would be unafthomable a few years back for me, but as i alowly added more study-related habits to my life they just kind of occur naturally. I don't think 'time to read some handouts' or 'i should study spanish today' or 'i should read something today' etc., I just end up in situations where it has become natural to take out my phone and duolingo, or take out my book, or take out a handout from my handout pile, etc. some habits are new and need active thinking (recently managed to finish my first mooc! And Chinese/spanish aren't perfectly integrated into my schedule yet) but in due time they'll manage to fit in. It took time and gradual change for this to occur, and it was definitely a mental effort at first, but after a while of keeping at it you just stop considering it work.
I would suggest shifting focus from your long-term plans to short-term. You don't have to be fluent in a year; you just have to study for 10 minutes today.

(2015-11-24, 6:22 pm)rich_f Wrote: There's a really good Freakonomics podcast out there on sunk costs. (It was a year or two ago, IIRC.) We have a lot of sunk costs in our lives. The trick is to figure which ones are worth chasing with more time/effort/money, and which ones need to be written off.

I'll get back to you when I figure my own sunk costs out!

And leveraging your sunk costs is a valuable tool as well.  E.G.  Since I've studied every day for close to 3 years now, I have a strong incentive to not break the chain.

If you do continue with Japanese, you can try, say, studying 30 min a day on week days, and more on the weekend. Or even ditch weekday study and just watch some Japanese media with subtitles--it's relaxing, enjoyable, and gives you some listening practice. If you have a long enough break at work (or a long commute on public transit), you can get a little study in there too.

I understand where you're coming from--too many hobbies and not enough energy ^_^; Personally, I'm trying to reorganize my schedule so that I'm wasting less time, and I'm also working on some self-improvement so that I'm not feeling lethargic and lazy even when there are lots of things I want to accomplish. It's a challenge to keep from backsliding into my old ways, though.

(2015-11-24, 6:28 pm)Zgarbas Wrote: Mental tiredness only occurs when you're going above your threshhold. If you really push yourself to form a habit then in due time you won't even count it as an effort. For example, I realised recently that even in my i-am-not-getting-out-of-bed laziest days, I still spend at least a couple of hours studying something. This would be unafthomable a few years back for me, but as i alowly added more study-related habits to my life they just kind of occur naturally.

This actually reminds me of something else that is probably applicable to MelonBerry. Something that should be kept in mind when starting anything new is that in the beginning its always going to be hard. You have to devote so many mental resources to being able to actually produce any results in what you do. While you, Zgarbas, make it sound like you "just got use to putting in effort" the reality may be that you just got better at the thing you were doing (studying, etc) and so it didn't require as much effort. It doesn't matter what it is everything is hard in the beginning: model building, playing an instrument, learning a language, driving a car, even studying; but after a while we learn ways of doing it better.

I think this is worth keeping in mind MelonBerry because you say its really hard to do programming related things; like problem solving. While some might say its an issue of talent or no talent; the more likely answer is that you simply haven't internalized the ways to think about things. So you have to spend a lot more mental resources to arrive at a solution. I don't have any real good advice to give except to say that as long as you stick with it, Japanese or Programming, you will eventually see some improvement. The problem is whether it meets your expectations, "I'll be fluent in a year!" or "I'll be Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin, level in a year!"

(2015-11-24, 8:09 pm)vix86 Wrote:

(2015-11-24, 6:28 pm)Zgarbas Wrote: Mental tiredness only occurs when you're going above your threshhold. If you really push yourself to form a habit then in due time you won't even count it as an effort. For example, I realised recently that even in my i-am-not-getting-out-of-bed laziest days, I still spend at least a couple of hours studying something. This would be unafthomable a few years back for me, but as i alowly added more study-related habits to my life they just kind of occur naturally.

This actually reminds me of something else that is probably applicable to MelonBerry. Something that should be kept in mind when starting anything new is that in the beginning its always going to be hard. You have to devote so many mental resources to being able to actually produce any results in what you do. While you, Zgarbas, make it sound like you "just got use to putting in effort" the reality may be that you just got better at the thing you were doing (studying, etc) and so it didn't require as much effort. It doesn't matter what it is everything is hard in the beginning: model building, playing an instrument, learning a language, driving a car, even studying; but after a while we learn ways of doing it better.

I think this is worth keeping in mind MelonBerry because you say its really hard to do programming related things; like problem solving. While some might say its an issue of talent or no talent; the more likely answer is that you simply haven't internalized the ways to think about things. So you have to spend a lot more mental resources to arrive at a solution. I don't have any real good advice to give except to say that as long as you stick with it, Japanese or Programming, you will eventually see some improvement. The problem is whether it meets your expectations, "I'll be fluent in a year!" or "I'll be Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin, level in a year!"

Bingo with my exhaustion problem!

Great replies, thank you everyone.

[Zgarbas]

(2015-11-24, 8:09 pm)vix86 Wrote: but after a while we learn ways of doing it better.

Oh, definitely. But I think that in many cases where people have a hard time finding the time/motivation to do something, it has little to do with efficiency. Rather, the simple act of having to allocate time to a certain activity becomes a source of stress since it is a disruption to your routine. Having really big, far-away or semi-unrealistic goals just makes it worse since you can't associate that time investment with palpable results*. I just try to have some sort of guideline for the time investment (rather than the result) so that I'm not discouraged at the end of the day if I didn't manage to learn 20 new words; I'm just satisfied with my 5 minutes of study.

*programming is actually really convenient since at the end you have a running program to validate your investment, and this is repeated at short -even daily- intervals. Most other hobbies are not as instantly and objectively rewarding.

Nobody has mentioned what I think is the most important component of your ability to do anything: diet and exercise. Instead of trying to tell you why you should train yourself to eat better and work out, I'll point you to this excellent writeup by Didier Sornette, who is a world-famous physicist and applied mathematician (you might have heard of him if you read the more thoughtful brand of financial journalism):

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1111/1111.4621.pdf

He points out seven ingredients for a recipe of life. Without these, it gets harder to do what you want to do. They are:

- sleep
- love & sex
- deep breathing; daily strength exercises
- water; chewing
- a proper diet (more below)
- power foods
- play

Dr Sornette is a vegetarian by empirical observation that he feels and works better when he doesn't eat animal protein. I personally have found that I do better on the paleo diet. A great short read is Mark Sisson's post, "The primal blueprint": http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitiv...blueprint/ Half way down the page, he lists the components of the modern primal blueprint:

- eat lots of plants, animals, and insects (if it wasn't running around or breathing CO2 a week ago, don't eat it)
- move around at a slow pace (walk a lot)
- lift heavy things (quit your aerobics at the gym and just lift heavy weights)
- sprint once in a while
- sleep
- play
- get sun (do the above in the sun)
- avoid trauma (wear a seatbelt; look both ways before you cross; don't expect others to watch out for you)
- avoid poisons (wheat and grains, sugars, processed foods)
- think

A lot of this is "obvious" but it's helpful to read two short posts—short in that, you read them once and you practice them for the rest of your life—to prepare you for heavyweight intellectual pursuits. I read both these posts when I was starting grad school, a time when thinking and cogitating are extremely important, and they changed my life. It's simple: the junk food you eat, the nutrients you don't get, the exercise you don't do, all these things prevent you from having the physical energy and brainpower to study Japanese. It's easy to find the "willpower" to eat right, avoid toxins, and sprint if the alternative is crappy Japanese progress.

(The usual disclaimer: I'm not claiming that if you don't have a good diet and exercise, you can't learn Japanese or that you can't be smart. Or that this kind of food and exercise patterns are the best. The only thing unarguably true in what I've said is that you have to take care of your body if you want it to support your mental activities. The rest, Sornette's and Sisson's posts, are what have personally worked for me.)

As aldebrn said. Among all those things I think the most important one is a regular sleep, both in term of hours spent asleep, and to respect the hour you go to bed and you awake.

Another two things I find helpful, even if not as much as the ones mentioned by aldebrn, are "posture" and "respiration".
A good posture and a slow and regular respiration someway help concentration. I don't know why, maybe posture helps a good digestion and circulation, and respiration helps brain do get ossigen at the right time and in the right amount?

Also, about diet, I find that I feel more active when I eat not much... so, not only the quality of diet, but also the (small) quantity helps, imho

(2015-11-25, 10:41 am)cophnia61 Wrote: As aldebrn said. Among all those things I think the most important one is a regular sleep, both in term of hours spent asleep, and to respect the hour you go to bed and you awake.

Another two things I find helpful, even if not as much as the ones mentioned by aldebrn, are "posture" and "respiration".
A good posture and a slow and regular respiration someway help concentration. I don't know why, maybe posture helps a good digestion and circulation, and respiration helps brain do get ossigen at the right time and in the right amount?

Also, about diet, I find that I feel more active when I eat not much... so, not only the quality of diet, but also the (small) quantity helps, imho

The sleep one is a bit hard for me, actually. I get up at 5:30am to work for 7am. I have a lot of nights where I'm struggling to fall asleep so when I get home.. I usually just want to lay around.

I haven't had a chance to read all the replies yet, so sorry if I mention something someone else already mentioned. :p

Studying
As someone did mention though, most of my study time is not in my "free" time but rather during times where I'm doing something else but can afford to give attention to my phone. For example, taking the bus/subway, walking, while waiting for someone to come back from the bathroom, etc. :p My not free time study is mostly spent adding new content to consume during the above mentioned "not 'free' but mentally free time."

Basically this: "elevator's on the 13th floor so I have to wait 1 minute for it to get to the 1st floor? Oh, look! Anki!"

Web Development
Also, as a programmer myself, I also wanted to give you some tips about programming.  Programming can be mentally draining and difficult, especially at first. If you have a genuine interest in it (as you seem to) it will become infinitely easier and fun once you get it down! I enjoyed it all in school and in my free time, but my first real programming job left me coming home with headaches every day for the first bit. Now, programming is my relaxation!

I'm not sure about what you already know, but I suggest getting HTML/CSS down first. It's very simple and absolutely a must for web development, no matter what back-end language you're using. Next, I'd recommend leaving JavaScript for a little later. JavaScript is becoming more and more popular and prevalent and we're evening seeing entire applications built in JavaScript nowadays. But in my experience, JavaScript is 2nd to the server-side language. It's still mostly used to add extra niceties to websites, like AJAX (loading content without refreshing the page), animations, the WYSIWYG editor when writing on forums, etc.

The server-side language is the portion that'll most likely be handling the bulk of the processing. Taking input, performing calculations, reading and writing from a database, etc. Combining server-side languages and HTML/CSS is really easy and fun! Choose a popular language like ASP.NET (C# or Visual Basic), PHP, Ruby, etc. and learn that.

Once you've got that down, you can add in JavaScript and get into some cool stuff like AJAX. Also, pure JavaScript is a big pain. I hated it when I learned it. I STILL hate it. ARRRG!!! But lookup jQuery! It's a library written in JavaScript that makes writing JavaScript fun (even for me) and it's become an industry standard. Most companies use it and almost all web developer ads I've seen have it listed right beside JavaScript (or leave out JavaScript entirely and just say jQuery!).


Conclusion
That ended up being longer than I intended. But yeah, if you want some more tips, let me know. I don't know what your specific goal is, but that's just what I've seen from my (limited) experience.

(2015-11-26, 2:14 am)Wovaki Wrote: The server-side language is the portion that'll most likely be handling the bulk of the processing. Taking input, performing calculations, reading and writing from a database, etc. Combining server-side languages and HTML/CSS is really easy and fun! Choose a popular language like ASP.NET (C# or Visual Basic), PHP, Ruby, etc. and learn that.

Maybe you haven't heard about it, but you should google Node.JS. If this is news to you, then I'm sure you'll be surprised. If its not, then don't discount Node.JS, its gaining more and more traction in the industry.

(2015-11-24, 2:54 pm)MelonBerry Wrote:

TL;DR: I don't have a lot of time/energy for Japanese anymore. I have another priority, but I still want to make decent progress in the language. What do I do? How do I power through those "I don't want to do anything" times?

You know, re-reading this post, maybe I should just go learn Korean. God dammit.

If you are struggling with motivation, why would stopping Japanese and starting Korean be any different?

A lot of people say they struggle with motivation, and you can read all the advice and articles you want but in the end you just have to sit down and do the job. That's literally it.

But I will say this:
Write down your current standing (be honest with yourself. what level are you at and why? )
Write down your long term goals (what is the ultimate purpose of learning Japanese? where do you see yourself in 5 years?)
Write down your short term goals (learn 10 words a day for 1 week - or something like that. Make it something realistic so you can actually achieve something and you can see progress instead of regret by the end of it)
Prioritize Goals (what things can you do now that fit into your work life schedule?)

Not to make you feel bad, but I am also a full-time junior web developer and I suck at programming but I still study Japanese at least 1 hour every day. That's why I say you just have to do it.

(2015-11-26, 2:32 am)vix86 Wrote:

(2015-11-26, 2:14 am)Wovaki Wrote: The server-side language is the portion that'll most likely be handling the bulk of the processing. Taking input, performing calculations, reading and writing from a database, etc. Combining server-side languages and HTML/CSS is really easy and fun! Choose a popular language like ASP.NET (C# or Visual Basic), PHP, Ruby, etc. and learn that.

Maybe you haven't heard about it, but you should google Node.JS. If this is news to you, then I'm sure you'll be surprised. If its not, then don't discount Node.JS, its gaining more and more traction in the industry.

I have heard of Node.js although I honestly haven't looked too much into it yet. I do want to get around to it though. I've heard it's pretty powerful. Maybe I'll check it out in my next project.

Just the way the OP sounded, it sounds like they don't have any formal training/experience and is rather new to web development (sorry if I'm wrong :p). So I thought I'd give my experiences. Node.js is definity gaining traction and I've seen quite a few job ads with Node.js as a requirement. However I believe more "traditional" server-side languages like PHP, ASP.NET, etc. are still more common and so I thought it'd be a bit better. :p When I did a (quick) search of jobs between node.js and php in Toronto, Canada there was about 4-5 times the number of jobs.

That being said, that's just my opinion. If JavaScript is where you want to go, then by all means go for it. As vix86 said, Node.js is becoming big and there are definitely jobs available there.

Edit
Reading your post actually got me really curious about Nodejs so I did some reading on it and ran a few basic tutorials. I haven't got very far into it but it looks interesting. I still can't see any reason I'd want to use nodejs exclusively for a web app, although it's definitely possible. It looks like it has some really huge potential in handling a subset of features though, such as web API's or things like maybe a messaging system? But like I said, I only spent a few hours looking at it.

I'm going to try and find a project to use nodejs in. That being said, I still feel it's more useful for a beginner to focus on a more traditional server-side language. But nodejs definitely will open up opportunities and is very interesting.