Hey Wanikani community !
I stopped Wanikani two months ago, and now i got a computer, i want to come back.
Can you guys help me on making a routine for not leaving again ? I totally don’t know how to do it.
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Inspiration is fun but fickle; in my experience results come from routine. Do your reviews at the same time, same place, every day.
For me, this was every morning for the first hour at my desk at work, where I was lucky to have some free time before things got started for the day. The routine was so regular that it was actually a lot harder to do reviews on weekends even though I had more free time, just because the routine wasn’t as established at home. Only days I ever missed were weekends. Routine can be remarkable.
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The key is to change your perspective from ‘feeling motivated’ to ‘building a habit’. If you’re relying solely on feeling motivated, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself. For example, ask yourself, “Why do I want to learn Japanese?” etc., etc. It’s a valid thing to think about.
But, if you want to ensure that you make consistent progress for long enough, then you can side-step (to some extent, anyway) the question of motivation by focusing on building up a daily habit of doing reviews every day.
If you can keep doing at least one review session every single day, for about a month or so, then your brain will naturally begin to build that into a habit which will become ‘the new normal’ for you, and you’ll find yourself consistently doing reviews everyday, without needing to be super-motivated. You’ll be able to do reviews even when you feel a bit unmotivated. It’ll just be a habit by that point.
[Note: Part of maintaining a habit is to avoid getting overwhelmed and burning out. But you can worry about that later, after you’ve already built-up your daily habit.]
Just my 2¥. 
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I know that for some people it’s a lot harder than for others. I’m lucky enough to build habits easily, meanwhile my girlfriend absolutely sucks at it.
You want to make your Japanese routine as automatic as brushing your teeth or taking a shower. Easier said than done, of course.
A few random possibly useful tips:
- Don’t set the bar too high. It’s more rewarding to start with a very minimal routine of even only 10 minutes of Japanese every day and then do more if you feel like it than getting super ambitious and burning out.
Like if your baseline routine takes 10 minutes but you actually do more and end up studying for 30 minutes, you’ll feel good about yourself. If your baseline routine takes 1h and you end up studying for 30 minutes and moving on, you’ll feel like you failed.
Slow and steady wins the race.
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No excuses. Always do your reviews. It’s non-negociable. You don’t use excuses to avoid brushing your teeth or taking showers, right? You do it even on weekends and on vacations and when you have bad news, right? So do your bloody reviews. Always. 365 days a year.
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Once you feel like you have some habit going, don’t make harsh changes. If you feel for instance that WaniKani gets dull and not as useful (as it probably will as you get towards the 30s) then maybe think about reducing your WK time and picking up something else in parallel.
If you just drop one tool and pick up an other you risk messing with your hard-built habit and just not doing anything after a couple of weeks if it turns out that the new tool is too difficult/boring/…
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Try making your own study log on here. It can help to have support from others. Also, there’s a thread called “Accountability Partners” that you can share what you’ve accomplished daily. Finally, there another thread called the “0-0 Streak Challenge.” You can post when you have leveled, and finished all of your lessons and reviews. Speaking of, I have to get to my studies. Good luck 
https://community.wanikani.com/t/accountability-partners-anyone-can-join/63992
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I’m going to start my response with some advice that I sort of hate to see but that I have to agree with “motivation is nothing without discipline”. You need to find some kind of schedule that works for you and just stick with it. Every day. Each day. Even those days. Yep, including a day like that. For at least a year on the fast end. Multiple years probably. Even sometimes on holidays and when you’re sick or busy. Imagine it’s Christmas dinner and you need to go to your computer to do kanji reviews that day. Don’t kill yourself over it and take a break if really needed but committing to the daily routine does mean putting in a lot of time. Motivation won’t last long enough to keep you going through it all alone. You’ll wake up one day and ask what the point is. And if you keep doing it without having an answer you’ll stop.
Next I’m going to flip that advice around and tell you this: “Discipline is nothing without motivation”. Why do this? Literally ask yourself why you want to put a year or more of real time into studying Japanese kanji? Ask this not to stop yourself from doing it, but to evaluate what your reasons are. Do you have Japanese friends or family, maybe coworkers? Do you watch a lot of anime or play a lot of games and have some interest in the culture? Maybe you just enjoy the challenging idea of all those kanji in a language. What is the thing that Japanese would enable or allow for you to do or enjoy? Is there some untranslated book that you really want to read? Would it annoy you if you stopped now and never came back to it again? Discipline will get you into the habit of wasting your time if you don’t know what you want out of it.
Once you have some answers as to why you want to learn Japanese kanji, start working on your goals with the time you have. Do you have an hour a day that you don’t do anything in right now? You could start using it for wanikani. Or you could focus on learning some grammar and trying to read, but find something to try doing in or related to Japanese and see what you do and don’t like about it. Could you stick with it for a year every day? I ask this because wanikani isn’t the only resource you’ll need to understand or speak Japanese so while it will help you to learn kanji, you may also need to incorporate other things into that routine you’re trying to build. I went back and forth between saying Japanese and Japanese kanji because wanikani is focused only or mostly on remembering kanji (and some words that reinforce kanji) so if you want to be able to use Japanese you need to put the time into wanikani and also other things.
Personally I don’t have a very concrete reason for wanting to learn Japanese. I’m not as interested in anime and games as I once was. No one I know speaks it. It won’t help my career. I think I find some enjoyment in the challenge and I like the fact that so much of the language is built on symbols and idea pictures as words. But I remember being in the first grade and having a small related arts class where a Japanese teacher showed us how to write the kanji for trees and ours names in katakana. So when I was six I wanted to learn Japanese. When I was in high school I remember seeing a poster asking for signatures to create a Japanese language class the next year. I signed it and very few others did. So I signed up for wanikani and then left it alone for nearly 10 years. When I was sixteen I wanted to learn Japanese. More recently I got back into it during the pandemic and when a friend also wanted to try learning it, so now I’m twenty six and I’m learning enough Japanese that I recently read a children’s novel. So I ask myself when I’m thirty six, will I know Japanese? Or will I be disappointed because I put it down and failed to come back?
If you find that something isn’t working out for you don’t be afraid to change it.
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Talking about making a routine. It starts by making one, sets commitment, and takes it to action.
It’s about “time management” initially, but not only time, but also place / environment, and time of the day. Or maybe weekly obligations. For me, it makes a lot of sense to make weekly agenda, not just daily.
Turning schedules into habits takes time. Maybe a month initially, but it isn’t exactly impossible to regress. So managerial skills towards events in life remain important. It is also possible to turn other things in life to an advantage, making use of them.
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How to make a realistic routine. You start by taking note of your actual schedule during an acreage week.
To do wk effectively you need around two 30-60 minute time slots every day, separated by 6-10 hours.
Now looking at your schedule think where you can fit in these time slots. Can you substitute or move something in your current schedule?
For example, in my case I can extend my lunch break from 30 to 60 mins and do most of my reviews then. Now I just have to stay 30 mins longer at the office but it’s not a problem, I just switch the time slots around.
Then in the evening let’s say I don’t have a fixed plan, I just do whatever is fun that night. In order to do wk I know I need to do a 30-60 mins of wk (reviews and lessons) in the evening. So you make it easy I can just decide to do wk right after coming back from work. But depending on a day I can move this time slot a bit.
This is basically how you set your schedule. Don’t try to make huge changes, probably not going to work. Find underutilized time slots and put wk in those.
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On the topic of streaks, a old and cheesy tool which I find works for me for building and sticking to a daily habit is a paper calendar, which I mark up with letters when I do the things I’m trying to make a habit. Right now I have to do physio exercises for a shoulder injury, so when I do those I put a P in the box for the day; and I’m trying to cut down on sweet food like cakes and biscuits so I write an S if I didn’t buy cake that day; and so on for another few things, some of which are now very strong habits I’ve kept up for years and some of which are new. For some of them I’m keeping up a streak, and for some it’s more that I want to look at the week and not feel like I slipped off the path more than once or twice. Marking off the letters on the calendar is motivating, in an odd way.
(Speaking of which, I had better go do those physio exercises…)
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I’ll add on to the chorus of people saying that making stuff a routine or habit can really help! Language learning is a long term endeavor, and no matter what there are going to be ebbs and flows in motivation. Changes in your life, changes in interests, changes in your available time, or even changes in your reasons for wanting to learn japanese are gonna happen over the next few years whether you want them to or not, and so having a habit of japanese learning to fall back on is a good way to make sure that you keep at least a little bit of study happening every (or mostly every) day!
But, one thing I haven’t seen people mention is that it’s ok if wanikani ends up not being for you. Don’t be afraid to try out other methods of studying and try to figure out if there’s something that puts the wind in your sails a bit more. Habits are great, but it’s a lot easier to start building a habit if it’s something you enjoy doing 
Don’t get accidentally pigeonholed into thinking that this is the only way to learn japanese
I’m also a big fan of reading people’s study logs and joining book clubs and challenge threads here on the forums. If you surround yourself with other people who are all working on the same kinds of stuff, I find it’s a lot easier to stay wanting to study!
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That’s the neat part, you don’t.
Discipline is more important than motivation.
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For me, consistency is the most important. I have a lot of days too when I feel totally unmotivated to do anything, but the important part is not waiting for the motivation to kick back in, but to do even the smallest task even if it takes 2 minutes. For example, read just 1-2 sentences in Japanese, it’s still better than doing nothing. Just stay consistent and over the time it will get easier. Sorry if it doesn’t make sense, i’m not a good writer, but I hope I could help somehow.
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In a similar vein, my goal is to start things. Open wanikani and do one review. Once I’ve done that the second one is right there so it’s easy to continue.
Open a book and read one sentence. If you’re too tired to continue at least you read one sentence. If you still feel interested reading the whole paragraph will give context. Or if you forgot the context read some previous sentences to figure out what’s happening.
Starting is discipline. Continuing is just inertia.
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I believe it’s called the “two minute rule”. If an action will take 2 or less minutes, do it immediately. Then from that point onward, it will be much easier to continue.
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Set your browser’s homepage to WaniKani. That’s what I do. Hard to skip my reviews when it’s only one button away. 
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I thought about making a study log but i don’t know how to do it (like how to structure the post and things like that.
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I would suggest just looking at a bunch of other people’s logs just to get a general idea. It’s your personal log, so there’s no specific way you have to do it. Most people just give an introduction of themselves, the reasons that they are studying, and the resources they hope to use. I haven’t even gotten around to any of that, yet. I just posted my (potential) daily study plan, and update it as my goals change. So basically, just write it however you’re comfortable, because it’s your log
As far as how you do it, I think there’s a specific thread to post study logs (I mixed that up to in the beginning, but I’m sure someone will direct you if you ask). To make the study log thread, start it exactly how you started this question, but with the title of your study log.
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yeah i know about the second part, no worries
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