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A Method For When You Don't Feel Like Learning New Kanji - czpr2 - 2014-09-01
Hi,
I thought I'd share with you my method for learning new kanji on those days when you just don't feel like doing any. It's not particularly original, but it is helping me a lot so I thought I'd pass it on.
Anyway, first step: get out RTK, turn it to the right page and get a pen and paper ready. Dead easy.
Now just do one kanji. Surely you can do that. Pick an easy one if it helps. Also, as a side note, I like to set a timer when I'm learning kanji. I reckon it takes me about 3 minutes to learn a single kanji plus a 10 second breather in between if I'm doing more than one, so I set a buzzer to go off after 3 minutes. It helps to keep me from daydreaming too much and it's also quite good for motivation ("3 minutes? That's all I need to do? Easy!")
OK, you've learned that kanji. Congratulations! Give yourself a well-deserved break for a few minutes - check your phone, listen to a song, whatever. After you've had a sufficient break you can start thinking about kanji again. One was pretty easy, right? Well if one was easy, two shouldn't be much harder. So try that: this time do two kanji (with a 10 second breather in between). Then have another celebratory break and up your game to 3 kanji! Lather, rinse, repeat, this time do 4.
So now you've managed to do 4 kanji in a row, which means..... you've done a whopping 10 kanji today! Not bad considering you couldn't face doing any at all, eh? At this point, you could keep adding one kanji at a time and start to really rack up some impressive numbers with seemingly very little effort. Because you're only doing one more kanji than the last time, it doesn't seem as daunting as doing, say, 10 kanji right off the bat. Also, make sure you don't skip out on the celebratory breaks otherwise you'll only get fed up.
That's it for my routine. I'm currently about half-way through RTK and although I don't use this method every day, it does certainly help me learn more kanji on the tougher days. I got the basic idea for this from the zenhabits.net blog. There's a ton of good stuff on the website so be sure to have a look. (I think this is the link to the article I got the idea from but it's been so long I can't remember! http://zenhabits.net/focus/)
頑張って!
A Method For When You Don't Feel Like Learning New Kanji - john555 - 2014-09-01
My method to get through RTK1 was basically to say, "I'm going to cover 100 new kanji this week" at the beginning of each week.
Then I would just force myself to do it, by the end of that week.
A Method For When You Don't Feel Like Learning New Kanji - czpr2 - 2014-09-01
I think it's quite good to set mini goals like that. The only problem is that, for me anyway, if I don't manage 100 in a week, I'm like "well that's kanji up the shoot" and it's really hard to get started again.
A Method For When You Don't Feel Like Learning New Kanji - TsugiAshi - 2014-09-01
If I don't feel like learning anything new, I'll at the minimum keep up with reviews. That way I'll better retain what I've already learned. Then from there maybe progress to learning 1 new thing a day until the slump ebbs away.