I think what happens to most learners is that motivation slows down or just stops completely. It feels like you should do something but you just let it keep sliding and eventually don't get the time to do it. I still sometimes have to re-motivate myself for Japanese, even though it's been 3 years+ of learning the language. 

I pretty much have to find something new and refreshing and I have to keep telling myself what I have accomplished and what I will accomplish if I keep going forward. It's hard sometimes to keep up the learning when motivation is causing you to slow down but I think all it really takes is just finding what motivates you or what does get you motivated to keep going.

For me all I really need is to tell myself, plus having different media and definitely music (motivational) and different learning methods to keep me going(yes I know it's long but it's pretty much a bit of everything works for me)

I find that whenever I end up in that kind of rut (which I also feel sometimes after a JLPT), the best thing is to reasses my studies. 

I ask myself: What am I doing to study?  What are the skills I'm lacking in?  Can I think of more effective ways to practice those skills than what I've been doing until now?  Am I avoiding doing something that I should be doing simply because it's difficult and I'm lazy?

Write down the answers to these questions, and maybe some other important questions related to your learning.  Then work to makes changes.  It will probably help with motivation.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 December 14, 1:03 am)

I also have nothing but time on my hands, and I definitely understand what you're going through. I don't have a specific December slump but they come seemingly randomly. I don't have THE answer on how to combat this but there is one thing I usually do that slowly takes me in the right direction. Instead of waiting until I feel like studying, I just start anyway. If it turns out I really can't be arsed I generally won't force myself, and I'll settle with maybe 5 reviews (studying=anki in this post because it's easily quantifiable). Just making yourself do those 5 reviews doesn't really hurt since it's such a small amount. However sometimes you won't mind going on and maybe you'll do a 100 reviews, which, if it happens, is a big step forward.

I guess you could call it testing the water just to see if something pulls you in. If not, no harm done, and you can just try again a bit later, if it does happen, then you've successfully studied.

Then, of course, as you've probably heard before, just doing something you like doing in Japanese for a while can trigger your will to continue studying. Doing this is also fits in very well with my "testing the waters" method since you might need something else to do between the tries, and this at least has some effect on your Japanese ability.

When I graduated university I was the only student whose parents didn't see them graduate and despite being offered funding for a PhD I fell apart psychologically. I was unmotivated and self destructive.

Motivating myself these last three years has been a challenge...

I think goal setting is helping and also mixing with like minded people has been helpful.

I think only you can motivate yourself.