In the tradition of Nuriko and IceCream and after a one year hiatus, I'd like to reintroduce this thread.

2013 Reflections
- Passed N1, but performed below what I aimed for (I scored in the 130s, but aimed for above 150).
- Started studying philosophy seriously again, but I'm still nowhere near my goal of devoting 40 or more hours a week to philosophy.
- Started exercising again, but haven't reached my goal of consistently exercising at least four times a week.
- I still have a massive RTK backlog of ~1600 cards. I've only reduced it by 300-400 throughout the year. However, I've added Japanese keywords to almost all my RTK cards (I had a backlog of ~1900 due cards. I reviewed them and added Japanese keywords as I went along. Now I have a backlog of ~1600 review cards, which now have Japanese keywords).
- Added, learned, and studied ~4500 vocabulary cards and ~500 grammar cards.

2014 Resolutions
- Score above 150 on an N1 practice test, and then begin studying either French or Chinese for at least an hour daily.
- Spend at least 40 hours a week on philosophy.
- Attend at least 2 philosophy events a month.
- Write at least 1 publishable paper.
- Exercise at least 4 times a week.
- Complete at least one cycle of P90x.
- Clear my RTK backlog.
- Befriend at least one well-educated and intelligent Japanese person who lives near me.
- Obtain at least 334/340 on the GRE so I can collect USD $100/hr tutoring (can't wait till this happens and then someone asks me "how do you expect to make money studying philosophy?" It's going to be like when Thales bought the olive presses.).
- Stop reading articles or browsing forums when I need a break. Go on a walk, lie down, or perform mundane tasks instead.

[Zgarbas]

2013 Reflections:
Amazing January-August. Made uber amazing progress. Then I stopped studying and it all went to hell >.<.

2014 Resolutions:
If I could get out of this slump, that would be great.

Vileru, not sure if you're interested in discussing this or you just intended to put it out there as a way to focus yourself, so feel free to ignore me, but I have a question and a few observations.
Question: You said you haven't achieved your goals, but how much did you achieve?
Observations:
1. Seems way too much work. Consider lesser workloads at first, and, once you are able to set up a routine, try increasing your workload in small increments. In general, keep your workload down, rather than allow yourself to fail to live up to your plans.

2. Consider daily goals (or even half-daily, meaning x number of hours right after you wake up, another x later in the day), instead of weekly, and organized in order of importance/difficulty. Work that requires intellectual effort early in the day, less intense work later on.

There's a cheap, short book called "Manage Your Day-to-Day, Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind" that goes into why these are good ideas.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Anyhow, reflecting back on 2013:
I made dramatic progress towards focusing my efforts on what I want to do, rather than what I had to do(crappy jobs) / what I felt like doing (partying, playing video games, in general procrastinating). I've started putting in 3-5 hour days of work, almost every day (I work from home, I'm a programmer). On a good day, I do five hours, on days I'm not well rested, I put in a minimum of three. I only go over five if I'm up against a deadline.

I've also been able to consistently study a good half an hour of Japanese vocab a day, and I'm having fun spending several hours with Japanese media.

Resolutions:
While I feel that 35-40 hours/week spent working is plenty, significantly less than that is a problem.

1. Establish a routine that's set in stone. Turn that "almost every day" into "every day", by getting rid of some of the distractions that are causing me to skip workdays. Take a laptop along on trips, say no to various invitations more often.
2. Sleep better (go to sleep at a reasonable time), turn those crappy three hour days into five hour days.
3. Charge clients more, allow myself to spend some of my "work time" working on personal projects or picking up new skills I'm interested in.
4. Lose some weight. Nothing dramatic, I'm not fat or anything, but I am teetering on the verge of it.

I would add 5. continue learning Japanese, but it's unnecessary. I couldn't stop if I wanted to, it's my favorite thing to do.

2013 Reflections
Memorized kana
Started and finished RTK
Completed 90 lessons of Pimsleur
Did a custom anki deck of ~1300 words/sentences
Finished Core 2k
Read and worked through all of Tae Kim's Grammar Guide
Completed 36 credits worth of classes at college
Exercised consistently, 3 days a week

2014 Resolutions
Plan on finishing Core 6k by April/May
Start, and maybe finish Core 10k by the end of the year
Read 10+ volumes of an easy manga
Start reading NHK easy everyday
Focus on immersing as much as possible
Graduate from college in the spring
Exercise more frequently

vileru Wrote:2014 Resolutions
- Score above 150 on an N1 practice test, and then begin studying either French or Chinese for at least an hour daily.
- Spend at least 40 hours a week on philosophy.
- Attend at least 2 philosophy events a month.
- Write at least 1 publishable paper.
- Exercise at least 4 times a week.
- Complete at least one cycle of P90x.
- Clear my RTK backlog.
- Befriend at least one well-educated and intelligent Japanese person who lives near me.
- Obtain at least 334/340 on the GRE so I can collect USD $100/hr tutoring (can't wait till this happens and then someone asks me "how do you expect to make money studying philosophy?" It's going to be like when Thales bought the olive presses.).
- Stop reading articles or browsing forums when I need a break. Go on a walk, lie down, or perform mundane tasks instead.

I thought passing is passing and they don't show your score on the certificate. did they change it? or are you just doing it for yourself? If so I tihnk you're just better off using that time (used to take the test etc etc) towards something else.

2013 Reflections
-Did **** in learning Japanese starting January. Barely got passed ~です and ~ます until after my trip in Japan.
-Starting August, my real Japanese learning starts, how.... Anki has been discovered.
-Quit RTK
-Today: 3000 words, working on Tobira and Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese grammar, watching dramas and T.V shows all day.

2014 Resolution
-Pass N2 by December

This year has been my first full year of Japanese, so I'm happy to throw out a quick summary ^_^

All I did in 2012 was basically reach ~1,400 kanji in RTK then gave up, then restarted and caught up on backlog and toyed around with a couple hundred vocabulary words, then gave up again. But theeeen...

2013:
January
-Restarted Japanese after a nearly 3 month break (haven't stopped since!)
February
-Caught up on ~1400 RTK review backlog
March
-Got serious about Anki and customized it to my liking
April
-Started my own Tae Kim deck
-Switched from iKnow to exclusively Anki for Core6k
-Reached 1,000 vocabulary words
-Finished RTK1 + Supplement
May
-Reached 2,000 vocabulary words
June
-Finished reading first vol of manga (with a lot of reference help, of course)
-Reached 3,000 vocabulary words
July
-Continued slowly but steadily (got a brand new niece!)
August
-Reached 4,000 vocabulary words
-Reached 5,000 vocabulary words
-Finished my own Tae Kim deck
September
-Finished Core6k
-Started and quit a J-E sentence deck within the span of a few days
October
-Did Tadoku but did pretty awful; still, I read at least something every day
-Played Pokemon Y in Japanese and did good at first but then got discouraged
-Found a couple Japanese-learning study partners
November
-Japanese was on the back-burner this month to work on my novel, but I kept up with all reps
December
-Started Core10k
-Started my FMA: Brotherhood project (going through every line of dialogue in the anime and studying it)

Well that was a fun ride. If I can make a comparable amount of progress next year, I will be delighted.

Goals for 2014:
-Finish Core10k
-Finish FMA: Brotherhood project (64 episodes total, currently on episode 7)
-Reach volume 40 in Detective Conan (currently on volume 9)
-Find at least 1 Japanese language forum or blog to regularly read
-Start a Lang8 journal

...よーし！皆さん、頑張りましょう～！

Stansfield123 Wrote:Question: You said you haven't achieved your goals, but how much did you achieve?
Observations:
1. Seems way too much work. Consider lesser workloads at first, and, once you are able to set up a routine, try increasing your workload in small increments. In general, keep your workload down, rather than allow yourself to fail to live up to your plans.

2. Consider daily goals (or even half-daily, meaning x number of hours right after you wake up, another x later in the day), instead of weekly, and organized in order of importance/difficulty. Work that requires intellectual effort early in the day, less intense work later on.

There's a cheap, short book called "Manage Your Day-to-Day, Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind" that goes into why these are good ideas.

I spend at least 15-25 hrs/week on philosophy, so I'm only at around 50% of my target. My exercise routine has been wildly irregular this year, but I'd average it to 1.5 times a week. At my peak, I was exercising 4 times a week. At my worst, I didn't exercise for 3 months.

As for Japanese, I was aiming to finish my backlog of RTK cards. Although, I still might be able to do that if I study hardcore before New Year's. I had no specific goals for how many flashcards I would add, learn, and review, but I think 5,000 is not bad for a year. I'm quite satisfied with that, especially considering that I stopped adding cards in August, which means I reached 5,000 in less than 8 months (~20 new cards/day!).

To manage my time, I began making daily schedules. However, these were ineffective for multiple reasons. For example, usually when I was on the verge of finishing something and I had ran out of time for that activity, I would continue working on it until I finished, thereby throwing my entire schedule off. Another example is that I would begin an intellectually demanding task but be unable to concentrate, so then I'd take a break and my schedule would get derailed. Of course, unexpected things popped up too, and they also ruined my schedules.

I'm thinking of switching to a priority list that I work throughout the day rather than a strict schedule with each hour planned out. This way of organizing my time will give me more flexibility, but still keep me on task. Does anyone have experience with this time management technique or do you have any alternative suggestions?

Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation. I'll definitely check it out.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I thought passing is passing and they don't show your score on the certificate. did they change it? or are you just doing it for yourself? If so I tihnk you're just better off using that time (used to take the test etc etc) towards something else.

I already passed the N1, so I'm just doing it for myself. I'm not planning to study specifically for the test. Any highschool-educated native speaker should be able to score 170+ on the test, so I'm holding myself to those standards (I want to do a postdoc in Japan approx. 3-5 years from now). Given my plans for next year, I doubt I could reach that level, so I'm just going to aim for 150+, and then perhaps shoot for 170+ in 2015.

Reflections
-Got into all of the Universities I applied to
-started learning Japanese in October
-Finished RTK
-Wrote a classical guitar piece
-Finished the Semester with straight A's
-sentence deck is about 300 sentences in

Resolutions
-improve my composition and guitar playing abilities
-Write 2 more guitar pieces and submit them to scholarship competitions (and hopefully win)
-finish learning Giuliani's Sonata Op. 15
-go monolingual before March
-have 1000+ sentences before February
-be able to read manga without much assistance by the year 2015
-be able to understand Anime without much assistance by the year 2015

2013 Reflections
・No serious Japanese study. No new Anki cards. But became more polished through constant use and am now near 100% Osaka-ben. Whether this is good or bad...
・That having been said, I did read about 6 Japanese novels, countless newspapers and a bit of manga. Although this feels like normal daily life these days.
・Wrote ~10 pieces of music of varying length and style.
・Laptop broke. Got it repaired. Lost music production programs in the process. Bought new, better ones.
・Lost a girlfriend. Made a lot of friends and even more acquaintances. Became a prominent figure in the Osaka craft beer scene. Got a new girlfriend.
・Quit a job. Got a new job. Lost that job due to visa troubles. Got a job again. Got through the final interview for a stable new job for next year and waiting for a response.. but considering turning it down in order to continue my easy job and focus on music. Because I'm an idiot.

2014 .. Goals!
・Write at least 10 pieces of music to match 2013. Preferably 15 - 20+.
・Polish composition skills in order to finally get a job writing music. 目指すはカプコン！？
・Failing that, finding a way to perform live and getting this show on the road...
・Study Japanese seriously again to fill in any gaps there might be in my knowledge. And possibly work on French.
・Attempt to teach my girlfriend English from 0 using what I've learned in my Japanese journey.

2013 Reflection:
-Changed position to Tokyo.
-Realized I'm tired of this job and that simply being in Japan isn't a good enough reason anymore, time to move on
-Dropped all Japanese studying when I realized having a good skill was probably worth more than being able to show on paper (N2) that I can speak Japanese. Started to seriously try and improve my self as a programmer and software engineer.
-Started working on more programs
-Actively started coming up with new program ideas.
-Came to the realization I would like to have a kid

2014 Resolution:
-Get a job I want, or leave Japan trying

2013 Reflection:
-Read a lot. Still suck at Japanese.
-Took N1. 90% confident I failed. Still suck at Japanese.
-Hardly spoke any Japanese. Still suck at Japanese.

2014 Resolution:
-Read more. Still suck at Japanese.
-Maybe stop sucking at Japanese.

2013 Reflection
-Went from beginner to lower intermediate Japanese
-Read 18 novels in Japanese, as documented here
-Did a fair amount of Ankiing consistently: stats!
-Generally failed my plans for programming and such, but did manage one entry to Ludum Dare.

2014 Plans (not resolutions, I'm not a very resolute person)
-Wind up sentence study/current Anki study at some point and turn that time towards kanji.
-Read lots. One book a week is the general goal
-Output more - lang-8 and actually, y'know, talking to people.
-Program some shit.
-Get a new job, preferably involving programming some shit.

If you posted in the equivalent thread from last year find your post and tell us how you did:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10333&page=1

current progress is in bold

Last Year Rael89 Wrote:1. Stop getting distracted by other languages. - check, although I did start dabbling in canto a little bit recently.
2. Continue losing weight and get down to around 160~165 from current 175 - 171 not-check, but still good.
3. Achieve 5000 cards in my main anki deck. currently ~2900 - ~5700 - check
4. Maintain current pace of over 1 hour of J-tv per day. more like 3 hours a day super-check
5. write 10-12 songs - lots of unfinished material so not-check
6. read the rest of the unread j-books/manga that are on my shelf. about 6 or 7 books. - check. bought some new ones, though so that'll be for 2014
7. Speak more regularly with my Japanese Skype contacts. (referring to voice chat. waste to much time text chatting and not really improving my actual speaking abilities) not check
8. Meet one Japanese person in RL - sadly no-check

So now for 2014:
1. Maintain my addiction to J-TV and watch 1+ hours a day.
2. Get more serious with the music finish some of songs I've been working on
3. Perform one of them live. Even if its just outside in front of some hobos
4. Finish my book backlog again
5. Get more speaking practice
6. Continued from last year: Meet one Japanese person in RL
7. Venture outside the state of New York once. or at least the city of Buffalo.
8. Make some new friends

edit: one more
9. Hit more full voice G4s and maybe even A4s

2013:
After living in Japan for a short time my listening skills skyrocketed and could converse easily with locals. After returning to Australia definitely shied away from Japanese (felt so happy to be in English speaking soil again) so I've lost a lot of those survival skills which is such a shame.

In 2014 I'd like to remember why I started since I no longer feel that sense of culture shock/burn out of living where no one spoke English. I'd like to:

- Keep up with reading the Japanese magazines I frequently enjoy.
- Finish RtK & grammar cards
- Log an entry in lang-8 weekly
- Listen to some sort of audio (music/audio clip/tv show/movie) EVERYDAY!

Start slow and see what comes of it

2014 Resolutions


1. Finish Core 6k
2. Finish RtK (might not do this)
3. Finish Tae Kim
4. Start mining words from native materials
5. Start reading
6. Stop wasting so much time on Japanese forums (no offense guys :p)
7. Pass N2 in December 2014 (Currently ~N4)
8. Come to terms with the fact that, yes, someday I will die and all my experiences, skills and knowledge will disappear. Failing that, try to put this fact out of my mind while doing Anki reviews.

Nice work everyone! 頑張って！Vileru, I'd go easy on the P90X, I tried doing Insanity and soon my body just got mad at me. A video can't listen to your body.
Does philosophy mean reading or can it involve discussions or what?

2013 R: Started grad school, good grades, new experiences, quit band, maintained Japanese (slow growth).
2014 R: I aim to practice mindfulness and compassion in 2014, get straight A's in school, dig into Yomichan everyday and take N2.

Hirakana Wrote:8. Come to terms with the fact that, yes, someday I will die and all my experiences, skills and knowledge will disappear. Failing that, try to put this fact out of my mind while doing Anki reviews.

Awww! *Hugs* Hee, I thought it was only me who ended up thinking things like 'I'm just going to die someday anyway, so why am I spending my life sitting here reviewing these squiggles? I should probably go to parties instead, like the cool kids do'.

2013 Reflections
Well, I still have the on-off studying problem, and my memory is pretty flaky. My health (and the brain fogging effects of painkilling drugs and lack of decent sleep) doesn't help. But, I think I've convinced myself 'yeah, this is something I need to do', and I already know why I want to. So that's a step towards more accountability, at least. I'm starting to feel a bit more confident, because somehow despite how little Japanese I know, increasingly I'm coming across stuff and going 'hey wait that was actually in Japanese and I understood it', and I was able to have a conversation on chat with a Japanese person, in which it proved possible to communicate a surprising amount of information, even if it was in a way that was hardly elegant. I was discouraged before because I'd look up words and yet still not understand the sentence, it really felt ’無理だよ’. What has proved the most helpful was recognising if I understand the meaning, that's enough, rather than trying to be 100% sure about anything and explain every bit of grammar - which I can't do in English, so I don't know why I thought I had to in Japanese. I know there'll continue to be slang, shortened versions etc that'll throw me off, real Japanese isn't going to follow grammar 'rules' completely to the letter, anyway, no point worrying excessively about it, just use grammar insofar as it's useful.

2014 Resolutions
1. Manage reps better. I know they end up taking too long with my current 'watch anime while doing them' strategy, listen to music instead and focus properly instead of getting distracted every five minutes. Not getting through them is my main problem by far, so if I can fix that, I'm good.
2. Finish redoing RTK.
2. Finish Tae Kim.
3. Start reading Japanese stuff, yay! Got some manga for Christmas, so try to read a page a day (in addition to above other study).
4. Be nice to people. Yes, even if I don't feel like it.

Ampharos64 Wrote:Awww! *Hugs* Hee, I thought it was only me who ended up thinking things like 'I'm just going to die someday anyway, so why am I spending my life sitting here reviewing these squiggles? I should probably go to parties instead, like the cool kids do'.

Just keep telling yourself: Bitches love guys who spend their life sitting and reviewing little squiggles. True story.

Nice reflections Ampharos. I know I've had those above-mentioned-and-then-quoted-by-tzadek thoughts too, but I've also thought that whole 'yolo' thing the kids say to rationalize killing brain cells could be interpreted the opposite way. Like I'm gonna die some day so I hope I spend my life learning kanji and not being a nuisance!

Re your resolutions: I hope you have manga that compels you to read more than a page per day.*

*and trust me, I'm all about attainable goals, but also about page-turner manga.

Tzadeck Wrote:Just keep telling yourself: Bitches love guys who spend their life sitting and reviewing little squiggles. True story.

Hee, well, I'm a girl so I dunno if that'll do me much good. Still, I've never liked parties anyway. www

And yup, girls like guys who study squiggles, they can ask them 'what's this squiggle? I can't read it....'

tashippy Wrote:Nice reflections Ampharos. I know I've had those above-mentioned-and-then-quoted-by-tzadek thoughts too, but I've also thought that whole 'yolo' thing the kids say to rationalize killing brain cells could be interpreted the opposite way. Like I'm gonna die some day so I hope I spend my life learning kanji and not being a nuisance!

Re your resolutions: I hope you have manga that compels you to read more than a page per day.*

*and trust me, I'm all about attainable goals, but also about page-turner manga.

Thanks! : ) Heh, yup, know what you mean there.

Yeah, I have some manga that are really interesting to me (side material for a game series I love), it's just Tae Kim + RTK takes priority for now, and that what with having to look up most of the words, with no guarantee of actually being able to understand the sentence even when I have, it takes a while to read a page (and to feed the sentences to the SRS so I actually remember at least some of the new words). XD I got a LN, too, my intention is to keep it somewhere I can easily see it, so I'll be sufficiently irritated at the reminder of how hard it is to read it that I'll be motivated to study some more.

皆、頑張って！

Lets see...

2013 Reflections
- Finished RTK1 using this site in Feb (started Aug '12), and continue to review daily.
- Went back and went though Genki I again since being out of school for years and continued on myself to complete Genki II as well. Vocab/grammer/workbooks.
- Started and completed Core 2k production as of October and continuing to review, trying to get those daily due cards down.
- Started and completed Tae Kim using a shared deck I highly modified to fit my needs.
- I started reading Japanese the Manga Way after reading so many recommendations about it here, but put it to the side because other activities took too much time.
- Started Core 6k, this time recognition (changed for several reasons, too much to elaborate on here).
- Had my first son who is 6 weeks old and somehow, miraculously, I still find time to study (sleep however...)

2014 Resolutions
- Finish reading Japanese the Manga Way. I really enjoy the format, I just need to find time to do it. It's bad but I find it hard to be motivated to do anything that doesn't have cards due today.
- Finish Core 6k. At 20 cards a day, this puts me ~June.
- Complete a deck or two of Subs-SRS of something.
- Start reading something real, manga-wise most likely, for the purpose of actually understanding it, no matter how much I look up or how slow I go. Somehow, someway, all this work needs to pay off.

I feel pretty good about 2013. It was a productive year but I don't feel at the end of it that my comprehension is where I thought it would be at this time last year. Too ambitious I guess, though I feel as though I got a lot of work behind me.

Ampharos64 Wrote:Hee, well, I'm a girl so I dunno if that'll do me much good. Still, I've never liked parties anyway. www

And yup, girls like guys who study squiggles, they can ask them 'what's this squiggle? I can't read it....'

Haha, I actually considered the fact that I had no idea if you were a girl or guy, and posted anyway. So I'm not a true believer of rule There Are No Girls on the Internet™, I just decided to go ahead and make the joke. To be completely PC about it, I don't want to assume that anyone is gay or straight either

Congratulations Papa/Mama Muteki San!

Edit: Made same assumption Tzadek made about Ampharos

Looking back on 2013

Passed a test with one of the main translation agencies in the world so was extremely happy.
Have started learning Arabic, and am enjoying it.
Helped Paypal in reporting a major fraud and donated the money I received as a reward to charity.
Have improved my programming skills and have greatly enjoyed doing this.
Have almost written a new massive anki deck for Japanese.
Have studied French to English Translation under a senior translator.
Have helped my Assylum seeker friend set up a business
Have suffered somewhat with depression and fits of jealousy

Resolutions

Stop procrastinating
Learn Arabic
Listen to 2 hours Japanese a day
Train in the gym 7 am every morning