I’m finally trying to hold myself accountable for what I really wanted and still want to achieve.
This is good, and I’ve learned that there’s a bleed over effect: the more you work to stay aligned with your goals in one area of life, the more motivated you are to replicate that commitment in other areas. I can say without hesitation that the lessons I’ve learned on my journey of language study over the past ten years have been fundamentally important to my behavioral improvements in other areas of life.
However, if you try to build a house on a risky or bad foundation, then you can say goodbye to that house.
I’ve found this not to be an issue with language study, honestly. I can see it being an issue for pronunciation if you learn to pronounce words without a native reference (e.g. if you are not listening to natives talk as part of your study). Another concern is if your foundation consists in inefficient behaviors, like Duolingo. But if your foundation is a simple, consistent, progressive, and self-conscious effort, I think it’s hard to go wrong.
start tracking different things and see after a while what makes more sense to use in comparison
You can also adjust your criteria as you progress. So, for the foundation, word count, videos watched, and chapters of Tae Kim read are good examples of serviceable metrics. But I imagine that an intermediate stage might include things like articles/books read, shows watched, posts written, etc.
I found an anki deck that teaches Japanese including grammar from Tae Kim
I’ll give a shoutout here to Bunpro, from our very own @ZenMaster
This service is the best flashcard-based Japanese grammar app I’ve ever used. I highly recommend it, and in fact I’ll be returning to it soon now that I’ve resumed by Japanese journey. Migaku is developing their own course that is similar, but I find Bunpro to be far more effective and it syncs with your Wanikani account.
This is the video I didn’t know I needed the most.
The YouTube algorithm recommended it to me the other day and since then I’ve watched a few more of his videos, and they are exceptional.