I like to use this site to see how people are studying but also to keep me accountable. Even if nobody follows my progress because if I say to someone I'm going to do something I feel more motivated to get it done. I have two parts of my life I want to improve on. And here I will list my plans and come back with progress reports similar to how ta1212127)63(726(37 did for a while.

First and most important is academic goals.

Need to finish college. I'm in my 5th of 6 years of mechanical engineering because of going abroad. I'm not actually behind but it feels like it. Classes need to come first and I pledge for now until the end of this school year to finish every assignment on time. Previously i would never do omework which is severly stupid in college. Included less strictly is reading for the classes but I need to read usually anyways when doing the assignments.

Japanese academics. My passion that I do for myself but also sometimes feels like work. I tried to push really hard before going abroad and burnt out for a year from reviews. I let myself far way too behind that I just reset my kanji deck and it's progressing smoothly 970 out of 2210 complete so far started september 9th. I'm behind on my core deck as well but putting that on the back burner for now. I'm in one class taught in Japanese so m not as afraid of vocabulary slipping. I'll tackle catching up in core over winter break. I'm managing my reviews for the next day making sure its an amount I can handle so I never will let them get up to say 350 because that is too much on top of engineering right now. Taking everything one day at a time.


Immersion environment

I have been lacking immersion because coming back from Japan I wanted to reabsorb America for a while but now I'm bored with it. I don't like tv too much except for select series and it feels like I'm slacking. Going to switch to Japanese tv shows and dramas again.

Never really liked Japanese music but I know that's because I haven't found the right groups. I've heard Japanese groups I have liked but never took down the names. I'm going to track them down and add them to my arsenal. Does anyone have a good source for discovering Japanese music including older Japanese songs?


Next area of my life I want to improve is fitness.

Oh man do I want to improve fitness. It seems simple. Lift heavy stuff get strong. Go for a bike ride get faster. But it's keeping up with fitness and not letting it fall behind thats hard. It seems so much easier to just say I want to go home and relax I'm tired let's take a nap. This attitude I need to change I'm 22 it's not too late to change my body for the better and I believe I'll be a lot happier for it. I want to work on my diet while I'm at it as they go hand in hand. And I'd like to quit alcohol all together except on occasion. Even if it's only small sets in my room I want to go for a workout at least three times a week. I'm currently 147 lbs at 5'9" I'd like to think I'm average but I want to become 160 and then 170 lbs. I'll get numbers for lifts and report back at a later date.


Love life.

Completely not interested anymore. My whole life has been about girls and relationships that I have had little time to just think about me and who I want to be. Take this as an eight month vow of celebecy. Occasional hiccups to be expected but last thing I need is a girlfriend right now.


This was just stream of thought now I want to make charts and lists and goals with numbers and averages with expected results to be computed. But I need to work on homework so I don't already fail what I wrote out.


If you read all this great wish me luck. You guys are the dedicated individuals I need to keep me motivated as I'm secretly competing against all of you. Competition makes me want to grow as a person but I'm still rooting for all of you to complete your goals. If you feel like telling me your goals you can tell me and maybe we can work out a way to keep each other in check.


TL;dr I have goals to catch up in studies and want to get stronger mentally and physically. Thanks for reading.


NSTFより

Why not exercise at home?
If you want big muscles, do P90X.
If you want to lose fat (and maybe see your six-pack), do Insanity.

Just pop in a 60 minute DVD everyday and you're done.
No need to deal with the hassle of going to the gym.
Literally, roll out of bed in the morning and exercise right there.
No wasted time.

You'll probably get much better results than if you went to the gym
and made up your own routine.

I'd just focus on finishing RTK and your studies. Those last 2 years are never easy.
Getting a good job and career should be top priority.
Do japanese in your spare time.

For Japanese music, look up the previous dramas that you watched.
Go to http://wiki.d-addicts.com and find out what were the opening and ending songs
to your favorite dramas. That would be a good start.

Being in college the gym is free. and me without a car means I'm stuck on campus for extended periods of time until i can get a ride from my mom or ride my bike home 5 miles. Should fill up time if i can get into it I've gone to the gym before with good results but never kept up with it so results fell.

I completely agree with you about my priorities.

Top highest priority bottom lowest priority
Engineering course work
Internship/Interview experience
Japanese course work
RTK/Anki
FSAE club
Making that money
Fitness
Sleep

Because i also rockclimb fitness and sleep are my play activities. I don't really have time for social interactions besides ones that relate to school. I'm part of an FSAE club which builds a formula style car every year but not sure how dedicated i can be to it this year.

The way I see it (just adding my 2 cents to this thread). If one wants to get to their goal, all one needs to do is just start. I used to have these big goals by the end of the month and end of every year. I never reached those goals because it was simply to much to do (even for me). So I decided, just do something every day. I started just doing something everyday (immersion,srs reps,writing,listening,watching what I eat,going to work,school work,etc). I know if I can do something everyday (even if it's just a little, I'll succeed). That is what works if one wants to accomplish their goals.

Most people tend not to look at the process but rather the result. For us language learners its definitely the process that will get us the results. Then again, for anyone else it's just the result they see. Just keep improving the process of how you do things (don't work hard but work smartly).

Yeah this is the attitude I've been picking up lately not thinking about what I need to do so much as just doing it. Like

I went to the gym today. Going to be sticking to starting strength routine for a while first couple weeks being about form and trying to find correct weights for me.

I did 3x5 squats at 115 1x8 115
3x5 bench press at 115
2x5 dead lift at 135
2x 10 dips
1x5 full range pull ups.

Not my best work but my squat form is off I think I twisted my hips while in Japan. Probably from sleeping weird need to fix this somehow. Also practice with boxes as I wasn't engaging the back of the leg too much as you should be. Dead lifts need to be increased so I can only do one set. Same with squats but 3 sets and slowly to work on form.

Also did 40 new kanji.

I'll probably update this monthly? With any notable self congratulations I accomplished. So next update would be November 1st.

ta12121 Wrote:The way I see it (just adding my 2 cents to this thread). If one wants to get to their goal, all one needs to do is just start. I used to have these big goals by the end of the month and end of every year. I never reached those goals because it was simply to much to do (even for me). So I decided, just do something every day. I started just doing something everyday (immersion,srs reps,writing,listening,watching what I eat,going to work,school work,etc). I know if I can do something everyday (even if it's just a little, I'll succeed). That is what works if one wants to accomplish their goals.

I couldn't agree more! That was what I found after years of thinking and searching, literary. If we do as much as we can everyday, someday we will reach our goals. Of course knowing our priorities here is important because we don't want to stick behind in important things.

Some days we may have to go shopping, fix something, do a social responsibility, etc.. and in those days the lower priority stuff will suffer. Also doing activities every other day seems more appropriate for someone with many things to do.

It seems harder to balance personal goals and social life than balancing many personal goals, so I keep social life at minimum too.

What I've found to be most helpful in this sort of life is a big-screened (4" min) smartphone/device! It helps in keeping the immersion environment up with audio, video and text, doing necessary readings, searching for something online and doing reviews, all anywhere!

Good luck!!

Only two months have passed but I need to take a look at what I should do from here. About this time everyone is taking the JLPT and congrats to everyone that is going to pass and if you don't you took the test which is great practice and also a big step just doing that.

I want to pass the JLPT N2 next year. I took it a year ago. I just didn't sign up for it this year as I don't feel rushed to get the certificate and I've been lazy recently.

Quick Deck Stats:
Core6k progress 4160/6000
Mined sentences 846/846
Kanji completed 2221/3007

I am mainly concentrating on finishing Core6k as it is easy for me to do while keeping up with my engineering studies. I should have finished this while I was in Japan so I could be even further at this point but looking back doesn't really help me progress. This deck I keep at 150 reviews max for the next day. So if i finish my reviews for the day and it says i have 102 reviews the next day I'll add 50 new cards that day. I expect to finish by the end of February at the latest. More likely I'll finish by the end of January.

After that I want to add clozed delete sentences to my Mined Sentence deck. Most of the sentences in there right now are from textbooks i studied from in the past. the deck is pretty much inactive with only 1 review a day. I have added about 10 sentences to this deck since two months ago but that's because I don't read for my own benefit often. As far as reading goes though this semester I have read ~300 manga pages so that's a plus because I could never bring myself to do that before. I started to read Yu Yu Hakusho for own enjoyment.

Kanji I will most likely start to finish RTK 3 after Core6k. I legit ENJOY learning kanji maybe because its easy after doing RTK1 twice but while I may not benefit directly from being familar with these Kanji It's a goal I need to get done for myself. While doing this I'll add Japanese keywords to my Kanji deck as I have been in the process of doing this anyways.

Immersion environment.

I realistically spend about 4 hours in Japanese a day. I sometimes increase this to 12 hours by just turning Japanese on before sleep if you count that. What keeps me out of Japanese is my current addiction to League of Legends which plays on bootcamp for my mac. For some reason I can't get a video player to work on the bootcamp of Windows I have. My music in my Ipod is still 95% EDM. I plan to change this when I have time over winter break. Make the ratio 50/50 Japanese/EDM as long as I enjoy the Japanese songs I'll be okay with both on my ipod I believe. I carry around my ipad which is loaded with Japanese shows but I get bored of them quickly. need to rotate them around.



Fitness. =(

I have done basically nothing for this. This needs to change it is something I really want to change but have lacked motivation to do so.




TL;dr Slow progress in Japanese, no progress in fitness; Little progress in immersion environment.


Accomplishments Since last time.
Started reading a manga for myself.
Read ~300 pages of manga for class.
Finished RTK1 for the 2nd time
Progress in Core6000

If you're interested in goal vs process orientation, this is a great read. (2 parts) It sums up the issue pretty neatly. Of course, this doesn't only pertain to training either.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/trainin...art-1.html

According to my n=1 sample ones outlook can certainly change, but he's probably right in that it doesn't happen very often. If you want to learn anything else about training, he's probably got it covered in an equally balanced way.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Fitness. =(

I have done basically nothing for this. This needs to change it is something I really want to change but have lacked motivation to do so.

Here's a tip (pretty simple). Listen to Japanese podcasts while you go to the gym. It's interesting (if you pick a good podcast), plus you're getting a workout at the same time. Two birds one stone. I'm not sure of your level, but I really enjoy TBSRadio's 爆笑問題（ばくしょうもんだい） podcast. It's reallly funny.

Here's a page with a bunch of other podcasts to choose from. Hopefully you'll be able to find something you like:
http://www.tbs.co.jp/radio/timetable/index-j.html

If time is an issue for fitness, and you're not particularly worried about getting ripped, HIIT is well worth a look. 2-3 times a week is plenty and even 15-20 minutes can give some impressive results. A couple of HIIT sessions is like 10x as much jogging minus the muscle-wasting hormonal meltdown. There are some awesome studies about its positive effects on metabolic risk factors, and it may even increase your satellite cell pool, so getting ripped could be easier should you decide to head back to the gym. Resistance training + HIIT is the ultimate win if 4-5 total workouts a week isn't unreasonable.

Reading the latest fitness/nutrition news on SuppVersity usually motivates me to get off my ass, and occasionaly down a bit of taurine .

Combining resistance training with HIIT can be problematic due to recovery though. Kind of why it's also hard to improve both strength and endurance at the same time.

As for taurine, I tried to read the article but don't really understand the point it was making. Rodent studies are kind of irrelevant to humans; where's the link? o_0

astendra Wrote:Combining resistance training with HIIT can be problematic due to recovery though. Kind of why it's also hard to improve both strength and endurance at the same time.

That's why I mentioned 4-5 total workouts/week. HIIT is basically just 8-15sec sprints with 1-minute rest periods. It's a tough workout, but I don't think it's what you have in mind with endurance training. I'm doing well with 2x RT and 2x HIIT (total of ~2hr/week), and I have a bad history of recovery after previous attempts to get an exercise regime going.

astendra Wrote:As for taurine, I tried to read the article but don't really understand the point it was making. Rodent studies are kind of irrelevant to humans; where's the link? o_0

That blog is just about the latest health/fitness studies; there isn't a 'point' as such. The reason it's worth reading is because of the guy's understanding and familiarity with the research and sensibility that allows him to put a study in context - the taurine article has over a page of references, and goes far beyond the rodent study in the headline.