I have time, but these days I no longer watch any TV, practice sports, or even read much(aside from japanese).

I'm pretty sure I'll break soon though.

I got to a point where I felt like I had absolutely no time to study Japanese. I decided that a little time was better than no time at all, so I started going into work ten minutes later and used that ten minutes to study. (Previously, I would arrive 15 minutes early to ensure that I had a safe buffer in case there was traffic or something.) I managed to make that 10 minutes much more productive than I would have hoped. Now I am studying more kanji a day than back when I spent 30+ minutes on them. I just practice writing them less and don't mark a card as failed if I only missed a tiny part of it. (Failing too many cards leads to being inundated with reviews.)

I also deleted most of the rss feeds I used to read everyday because they were time hogs.

Well I'm still in the RVTK1 stage so being as I can't read all of my "extra curricular" input  at the moment comes from listening.

Car ride to and from work = 50 minutes of my shadowing CD though I usually only actually shadow out loud for 30 minutes or so (15 minutes each way) before my voice gets tired.  The rest is just pure listening.

After a few hours into work I have the office to myself (I work nights) so then I cue up the Fuji News Network daily feed and try to get at least a couple hours of listening that way.  This is also where I add most of my new Kanji and work on my failed stack. 

Get home from work around 12:30am and sit down and do all of my expired cards and then maybe another hour or so of random listening from whatever I can find. 


What I really want and have been meaning to do is to get an MP3 player and fill it up with a wide variety of interesting listening material and then just wear ONE single discreet ear bud and run the wire underneath my clothes.  This would allow me to listen nearly 24/7 while still being able to respond to what's going on around me via my other ear.

I work full-time and have a two-year-old kid.  That basically equals zero practice time anytime through out the day and most of the night because of both child-care duties and the futility of concentration.  I study about 4 hours a day: 11pm to 3am, and then wake up at 7:30am to go to work.  I consider myself quite good at time management, but for the last 6 weeks, besides work, my kid, and kanji, I do absolutely nothing else.  It TOTALLY SUCKS.

Last edited by potempkin (2008 October 10, 12:08 am)

chochajin wrote:

I'm just curious and maybe some of us can get ideas how to manage our own free time better.

I was in the same position, and my answer was quite effective for me:

I get up 30 minutes earlier and use that time to study Japanese.  Then at lunch, I eat while studying Japanese on my laptop.

In addition, I now listen to Jpod101 while I'm working.  I dunno that I'm learning much from it, but something is better than nothing and I get a feel for pronunciation as well.

Lately, I've even been carving 30 minutes to an hour out of my evening and using it to study as well.  That 30 minutes is the hardest since there are no firm boundaries around it.  The morning and lunch timeslots are marked in stone and can't be changed, so it's easy to just sit down and study in them.  There's nothing else to do with them anyhow.

See any decrease in your productivity?
I'm pretty impaired for days if I get only 5 and half hours of sleep two nights in a row!
7 is pretty much the minimum I need to have normal brain function!

alantin wrote:

See any decrease in your productivity?
I'm pretty impaired for days if I get only 5 and half hours of sleep two nights in a row!
7 is pretty much the minimum I need to have normal brain function!

It takes a lot of getting used to. I've been doing it for years. I even find myself waking up at 6:30 AM on holidays.

http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/0 … -done.html I read that article about 1 or 2 years ago. I've actually been following the "method" for years before that, but that's pretty much what I do. It will take time but your body will adjust to it.

nickoakden wrote:

CaLeDee wrote:

好きこそものの上手なれ (Become good at what you like doing) : Yes I stole it! But I like it

Did you get it from a bookmark that came with Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar?

I have one of those.

It comes with every book from thejapanshop.com site I've got several of them now.

I only have about 3 hours from the time I get home from work til the time I go to bed, but I read a Japanese novel on the bus and at lunch time. Sometimes I write notes while watching tv, but only when I feel like it.

One trick I use is to break up my study with other productive tasks. I simply can't study for more than an hour tops. My concentration wavers and I stop taking in the Japanese. If I take a break and watch TV or what not, it doesn't help so much as I am still concentrating. So I break up my study with productive tasks that don't engage me mentally.

Cleaning, doing washing, making food, etc. You also feel good after this as you have done something productive. After this I feel fresh and can go back to study.

Another tool I use when I am not motivated is an egg timer. I set it and keep studying until it stops. I will never break this agreement. This stops me from focusing on who much I have done or how much is left, because it no longer matters as I still have to study until the time is up. Then this helps me get into the mood for study.

Also, study in the morning as soon as you wake up. Your mind will be fresh and you will get into it easily. For me at least, if I start the day by browsing the web or what not, it sets a sluggish tone to the day and I struggle to break it. Start the productively and you should get more and higher quality study in.

Lastly, don't study too much. Give your self a break sometimes. See your friends or whatever. Becomming a shut in will change your study from a fun hobby to an obsession. I think it is important to keep in mind that your mental and physical health are more important than Japanese

This problem is particularly relevant to me right now. I still live with the parents, and between college classes, my mother having cancer, and job hunting, I barely have any time to do anything, let alone study Japanese. I really wish I had more time, but I just don't. Especially since I've been wanting to take my Japanese study up in intensity by reading manga and looking things up exclusively in a monodic.

The obvious solutions are to cut down on other things. But you know what? I don't watch TV, I don't surf the internet, I don't do anything unnecessary (except occasionally check this forum). It's not like I can cut it down any further when my mother-going-through-chemotherapy is too sick to make dinner so it falls on my shoulders.

The best solution I suppose is more self discipline. As in, always have manga with you. Always have a music player (read:ipod) with Japanese stuff on it. Always have a phone or laptop to do your reps on with anki. Always be looking for that sentence to put in.

My thoughts are with you, alyks. My mother is a cancer survivor, and my father-in-law just died of cancer this year. You have, ultimately, more important things on your plate. Japanese will still be here one way or another. But it's good you're still able to study.