Ugh.

This is my third day in a row of reviewing 100+ orange cards. I guess I was really productive about 30 days ago, 14 days ago, and 7 days ago, because lately I've been getting a steady flow of orange cards out of every box.

Stories are starting to swim together: a lot of the cards in the lower boxes are from Lesson 27, so I have Mr. T popping up so often that he's trying to push his way onto cards where he doesn't belong. I think some of the story-swimming might be caused by letting my imagination wander as I search for the keyword's story, and then unintentionally memorizing that mental wandering, reinforcing the wrong story. I need to slow down and focus harder on the correct story once I give up and flip the card.

Time and willpower fading: with 100+ review cards, by the time I finish my review, I'm late for work and my brain is all squishy and tired. I only get to add a small handful of new cards. My progress through new cards is about half as fast as usual.

Hopefully, this will balance out in a week or two: I'm adding new cards at a lesser rate, so I should have less to review in 3, 7, 14 days. This will free up time so I can study new cards at my usual rate.

Maybe I just needed to whine for a bit. There, I feel much better now.

But it still breaks my heart to fail a card out of box four. Oh superfluous, can you ever forgive me?

--Z

Any tips to avoid the squishy brain feeling? I get this a lot, mostly I suspect because cos my job (programming) tires the same parts of my brain.

If I review/learn kanji in the mornings before work it is particularly noticeable - I tend to go on to not work well midmorning, which is otherwise my most productive time.

I like loading the cards into my cellphone (using Twinkle) and review during walking between places, or just walking around outside -- no squishy brain feeling this way.

I'm getting squishy brain too. I took a 2 week vacation during which I couldn't do my reviews. I kept up some studying a hundred more kanji during the time.

When I got back I had hundreds of expired cards waiting and loss of memory of recently learned kanji and I lost confidence to continue learning new kanji until I get my current reviewing back on track.

What do people usually do in this situation?

Remember that you don't have to do all your orange cards the day they show up. if you have a ton of them, it's probably best not to try to do them all in one day. Do a sensible number of them every day and soon enough they will even out. Probably a good guideline for your daily maximum is (total cards in use) / 40. Maybe make the 40 a little lower if you have a lot of cards in the first three boxes, and a little bigger if you have very few cards in the first three boxes.

Unfortunately the only way I know to avoid Squishy Brain Syndrome is to study lightly or know the material so well that studying isn't much of an effort, and that takes time.
頑張れ！

I've had this problem with supermemo before, where I've left it for a week due to being busy and having lots to do when I get back to it. I just have faith in the system and keep plugging away at it. If I don't catch up on the first day it's no problem, I'll catch up eventually. And if I fail a word then it's just another chance to review it when it comes up again. Yes it means more reviews that could have been avoided overall, but what's done is done. Just keep ploughing ahead and let the stacks take care of themselves.

And as for having so many to do without missing any days, I suggest that's the fate-fairy's way of telling you to slow down a little to let the brain harden up

ziggr Wrote:Ugh.
I think some of the story-swimming might be caused by letting my imagination wander as I search for the keyword's story, and then unintentionally memorizing that mental wandering, reinforcing the wrong story. I need to slow down and focus harder on the correct story once I give up and flip the card.

Time and willpower fading: with 100+ review cards, by the time I finish my review, I'm late for work and my brain is all squishy and tired. I only get to add a small handful of new cards. My progress through new cards is about half as fast as usual.
--Z

I've had similar problems. Here are some things you might try:

1. This might be due to fatigue. Read the supermemo article "Good sleep, good learning, good life"
http://supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
An excellent article on tayloring your sleeping habits to maximize your learning efficiency.

2. Recognize that we all have good days, bad days, good weeks, bad weeks, etc. It's something like the old bio-rhythm concept (I'm not saying I buy the bio-rythm theory, I just know I have these ups and downs).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorhythm
I sometimes have really bad days, and do terribly on my reviews. Inevetibly, within a few days, I'll feel like superman an kick-ass (intellectually speaking).

3. You already know this, but you overloaded your workload. Back off till it becomes reasonable again; maybe even avoid adding new cards for a few days. When you're having a good day, avoid adding too much new material, because it might hit you when you're not having a good day. If you have a constant amount of time for review, only add enough material to fill that time.

4. This is a combo of 1 & 2 above. Maybe the time of day you're reviewing is bad. It may be a sleepy time for you, or a high-stress time. Modern schedules are so hard to rearrange, but it's something to consider. I have to study during a sleepy time. I found something that helps me; when I start to zone out really bad, I lie down for about 5 minutes. I get right on the verge of sleeping, then I get up. An actual nap makes me worthless for studying, so I prefer this pseudo-nap. I don't zone out after that.

I've had the same experience, and I feel similarly about it now.

Trust the reviewing system. Don't be afraid to fail a card. Just keep swimming. The tough ones will come around more frequently. I usually try to keep the expired boxes empty, but . . . I'm really only rationing the first box....10 or 20 a day from "failed" to the first box, but when I have over 150 that have expired, I just don't do them all. I try to set a time limit and then just quit when the time is up.

ziggr Wrote:Stories are starting to swim together: a lot of the cards in the lower boxes are from Lesson 27, so I have Mr. T popping up so often that he's trying to push his way onto cards where he doesn't belong.

I pity da fool.

ziggr Wrote:Time and willpower fading: with 100+ review cards, by the time I finish my review, I'm late for work and my brain is all squishy and tired. I only get to add a small handful of new cards. My progress through new cards is about half as fast as usual.
--Z

You might not be doing anything wrong. I typically had to review about 115 orange cards (a couple of times as high as 200), and I still finished RTK1! I did gradually reduce the rate of new cards:

Month 1 - 700 cards
Month 2 - 500 cards
Month 3 - 400 cards
Month 4 - 350 cards
Month 5 - 92 cards (and done!)

Of course, you should follow your own pace not mine. Even if you're losing speed, this is still so much faster than learning kanji any other way that there's no embarrassment in slowing down (It is important to be diligent about refining the stories of cards that you failed. But the most basic advice I would give is not to be discouraged and [kana]ganbatte[/kana]!

An update, one month later:

Thanks for the advice, I took it and it helped. To avoid squishy brain, split the study time into two sessions. To stop worry about failing cards...stop worrying about failing cards! ^_^

An average day for frames 1300-1700:
90 review cards
20 failed cards
15 new cards

Most of the 20 failed cards are recent additions. Many stories need a few passes of refinement before they gel into something memorable.

In an attempt to lower that "20 failures/day," I tried spending longer on the stories during the initial study phase, but this didn't help me. I'd end up second-guessing myself, unsure which stories might be memorable and which would not. Initial study time would take 2-3 times longer, and I'd still fail 20 cards per day. I found it more efficient in my case to let the system catch the unmemorable stories.

Kicking myself over the failures just makes me cranky and hinders the creative thought necessary to find the right stories. Trust the system, relax, close your eyes, and let the same system that worked for frames 1-1299 continue to serve you well for frames 1300-2042. I remind myself of this fact at least once or twice each review session and I keep the cranky away.

Reviewing 90 cards in one sitting can be a tall order. If I want to get it done without taking forever: kiss the spouse goodbye, go to another room, close all computer windows except kanji.koohii.com, stop reading the forums, and get to work. Stay focused, but not hurried: the whole point is to reinforce keyword->story->kanji memory links. Often a well-focused study session can complete the entire day's kanji work in less than an hour.

If I'm just not focused on the kanji, I either find that focus, or I stop and work on it later. I'd rather work hard for one focused hour than flail around uselessly for two or three hours. Having the flexibility to work in the morning, evening, work on new cards, review old cards, and do part now and part later, really helps fight off the burnout.

Somehow, I get it all done every night, usually by 10:00pm California time, which is when the kanji.koohii.com servers seem to turn the crank on the "next day's review" clock.

Thanks again to everyone for the kind words, the advice, and for listening to me whine.

1681 cards down, 361 to go, and 36 days until Christmas. ^_^

--Z

Generally speaking it is better to use short sessions of 20 minutes or less. Take a break and come back. Trying to do too much at once is sure to cause trouble later.

Also, not to discourage anyone, but you are nowhere near halfway done when you've studied 1000 kanji. 1400 done with 642 to go is probably halfway. Expect to have to slow down toward the end because more of the kanji are complicated/obscure, and you have to spend more time reviewing all of the previous kanji. Reviewing 10% of the kanji per day is reasonable, but that is 200 a day when you are at the end.

If you really hit a wall, spend a few minutes and write down on a piece of paper why you started to study in the first place. What is your goal? Why do you want to finish? Then spend another few minutes using "positive imagery": imagine that you have already finished. See yourself posting on the "I just finished RTK1" thread, enjoying the congratulations from people you have been sharing stories with. Recall all of the efforts you put in, the obstacles you had to overcome, and smile as you realize that it was worth it!

brose Wrote:Generally speaking it is better to use short sessions of 20 minutes or less.

Somewhat realted, supermemo suggests sessions of less than 1 hr. I definitely become less efficient after an hour (sometimes before). My 5 minute psuedo-nap helps a lot, but it's best for me to avoid long sessions of this sort.

brose Wrote:Generally speaking it is better to use short sessions of 20 minutes or less. Take a break and come back. Trying to do too much at once is sure to cause trouble later.

Also, not to discourage anyone, but you are nowhere near halfway done when you've studied 1000 kanji. 1400 done with 642 to go is probably halfway. Expect to have to slow down toward the end because more of the kanji are complicated/obscure, and you have to spend more time reviewing all of the previous kanji. Reviewing 10% of the kanji per day is reasonable, but that is 200 a day when you are at the end.

For me, the ~900...1000 range (lesson 27 afaik) was by far the hardest point in the process, I actually stopped studying for quite a while at that time.

Lesson 27 is brutal, no doubt about it, but 36 is even worse I think

brose Wrote:Lesson 27 is brutal, no doubt about it, but 36 is even worse I think

Squishy brain, and now this to look forward to? :(

Need a hammer.

[ファブリス]

For lesson 27 the key is to use a good character for "person", then the lesson can be really enjoyable.

In lesson 27 Heisig suggests to use a "colorful member of the family or a friend whom you have known for a long time", as an example. He also recommends to use "someone who excites your imagination".

I was left with the impression that I had to pick a real person from my family or friends, instead of an imaginary character, although he doesnt explicitly advises against using an imaginary character.

For the choice of "person" primitive, do not limit yourself to persons whom you know from your everyday life.

I didn't feel comfortable using persons I've met in the real world, and picture them in a mnemonic fantasy world, so I ended up using Mister T as a character. This worked really well for me.

My reasoning was that although movie/music celebrities are real persons, all we know about them is through the media, so they become almost caricatures, and they are very good as "primitives" because they are part of the collective imagination.

Use a character for which you have a positive image, and if that character is versatile, it will be easier to create stories. For example the president "Bush" might be fun to play with for a while, but since he is mostly associated with his role of president of the United States, he is not so versatile.

Yeah, lesson 27 "person" was where I finally gave up several years ago. It's really important to choose a memorable person. Who did I choose to be my "person" several years ago? I don't even remember. I'm guessing that my poor choice contributed greatly to my eventual giving up.

Contrast that to now, where Fabrice's "Mister T" works perfectly for me. He's colorful, funny, serious, tough, and if the real life Mr. T ever found out that his image has helped dozens of people further their own education, he'd be proud.

Lesson 36 "thread" is similarly dangerous. 糸 is another *really* common radical, so pick something vibrant, versatile, and memorable. Choose well and the lesson goes smoothly. My own choice of Robert Ito is working out so-so for me.

Actually I was (and am) quite happy with my choice of 'person' (who is someone I knew), it was not a problem in itself. I think that Lesson 27 was such an issue not because of her, but because it was another in a sequence of other long, rather hard lessons (23,25,26...), and it was quickly getting overwhelming.
The 'thread' lesson presented much less trouble for me, but that could be because by that time I discovered this site and was using much better review software (Twinkle instead of KingKanji).

A couple thoughts:
- it is not crucial to pick just one name for a primitive; quite the opposite, I think that for the more popular primitives it is often better to have two or more.
- if you do have two or more of them, try putting as many of them in the story as you can. I usually tried to use both 'thread' and 'trixie', and even though I had many doubts about 'trixie', it kinda worked.

ziggr Wrote:the whole point is to reinforce keyword->story->kanji memory links.
--Z

uhu... yeah... that's the thing, right... hmm...
when i started with the RTK 1 (wow! great system!! etc etc blabla and all the things we love about it ) i studied and studied, enjoying it so much i was cutting down on my sleep.

basically:
1. watching/"stroking" the kanjis...
+
2. attaching the keyword and the story to it....
+
3. ...and remembering them.
=
so when i see a kanji, i can say the keyword, and i'm happy thinking that i will be able to read a newspaper in japanese etc etc.

in that way i'm learning very fast and a lot of kanjis in short time.
....but then i wanted to review them here, then i saw...
....IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND!

damn...

so i need see the KEYWORD and connect the story to get to the kanji!
( keyword > story > kanji ), right?

and that's NOT what i feel RTK is giving me...

am i stupid or did i just miss something very basic about it?
help!

----------
(sorry... i just need to say it out loud so i know myself what i mean.
like this: )

if i see the KANJI for "stomach", i think "the rice from the field is put into what bodypart? the stomach!"
piece a (rice) cake!

but when i see the KEYWORD "stomach" (like when i'm reviewing) i hardly connect it to the rice field and the body part, which is the kanji...

there... thanx

edit: think i found something about it at http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=332
but anyways... give me your thoughts...

::twincy

Hesig makes this distinction repeatedly in throughout the book. It's his main point. I'm sorry you missed it, but don't see how you did. (>_<)

Keyword>Kanji kills two birds with one stone:
you can produce a kanji by thinking of it's keyword/meaning,
and then after, with repetition, you can then recognize kanji's keywords/meaning.

Kanji>Keyword is crippling because you are limited to only reading; you can not produce anything. Kanji>keyword doubles your workload.

Good luck with the switch! I think you'll find it much more useful, even though it will be difficult.

I think this is a problem with a lot of the shared stories, including my own. They tend to work better as kanji-->keyword than keyword-->kanji. The story may explain why the elements of the kanji add up to the keyword, but not make the connection from keyword to elements. In order to write the kanji, the keyword has to trigger the mental picture or movie which will connect with the kanji's elements. Sometime it helps to make an association between the keyword and a phrase, then connect the phrase to the elements. For example, for second (frame 899) my story is second-->second hand on a watch-->the second hand on my watch is made out of a few strands of wheat which hit me in the face as the hand turns-- actually feel the strands hitting you in the face one at a time. That may sound like a lot of work, but it only takes a couple of seconds to form that image in your mind. In fact, I dare you to try to forget it!

I used to think that the "two birds with one stone" theory is wrong, but now I am convinced. Even if you only need to read the kanji and not write them, you are still better off learning to go keyword-->kanji.

dingomick Wrote:Hesig makes this distinction repeatedly in throughout the book. It's his main point. I'm sorry you missed it, but don't see how you did. (>_<)

the thing is that i have to work with the free pdf available,
since i got in touch with this method just about some days ago
i just don't have the book yet :/
it'sa bummer.
i guess there's a lot of things i didn't read about it that i should,
and reading TOO much in the forum feels like too much information to sort out.
hmm. maybe i should read the preface again...

brose Wrote:I think this is a problem with a lot of the shared stories, including my own. They tend to work better as kanji-->keyword than keyword-->kanji.

The story may explain why the elements of the kanji add up to the keyword, but not make the connection from keyword to elements. In order to write the kanji, the keyword has to trigger the mental picture or movie which will connect with the kanji's elements.

I used to think that the "two birds with one stone" theory is wrong, but now I am convinced. Even if you only need to read the kanji and not write them, you are still better off learning to go keyword-->kanji.

yeah. when i see the kanji i almost straight away can say the keyword and i move on, feeling good that i'm sooo fast.
but when i see the keyword at this moment (i'm around 50 kanjis only), the kanji takes shape in my mind very fast... and, sure, i feel good about knowing the kanji > keyword (and that's the goal, right?) but the story is coming after.
i want the story to be etched as well, 'cus everybody says it has to...

this sounds like my short-term memory is working quite well (?).
maybe thing's gonna change after 200 or more kanjis...

i know i remember things very fast.
(i learned the czech language in 6 months without no lessons whatsoever
and the kana took me less than day, and i'm sure i'll NEVER forget it.)

thanx guys! 乾杯！

(btw: did i just repeat myself again...?)

::twincy

The free PDF contains the parts that the people here are referring to:
page 9 of the pdf (page 7 of the book), line 3
and
page 44 of the pdf (page 43 of the book), line 4, in ALL CAPS

It's common to be able to recall the character without remembering the story, but your memory of the character will be much stronger if you do have a story in your head, so when this happens, review your story, close your eyes and form an image in your head, and then review the character a few days later. You'll get it.

Oh, no problem Twincy. I thought you were half way through the book or something. If it's only 50, it won't take long to "redo" them. Reread his introduction and preface carefully again. Focus on:
Keyword >
Vivid Story >
Kanji.

Soon enough you'll be hundreds and hundreds of kanji in. Ganbatte!