Short and Simple Question: How do I shut the idiot in my head up? Anyone have any mental tricks?
I suffer strongly from what I would call presque vu or tip of the tongue when I am doing my reviews. I can only describe it as trying to remember a mnemonic, but an idiot in the back of my head is screaming a wrong answer be it a kanji reading or, even worse, a synonym for a word. Let me give an example of what keeps happening to me with a personified anecdote.
Higher Brain: okay, so it ended with ćā¦ what was the dumb story again forā
Reactionary Brain: KAKU! Itās KAKU like KAKUDO and KAKASU!
Higher Brain: Those arenāt evenā
Reactionary Brain: I wonāt shut up until I see red! Enter KAKU and prove to me that itās wrong!
Higher Brain: Exasperated Sigh åļ¼ćć (Red flares up, checks to see itās ćć)
Reactionary Brain: Ooooohā¦ Well, we knew KU!
Higher Brain: Okayā¦ next. The meaning of čØ. It began with an Iā¦
Reactionary Brain: Investigate?
Higher Brain: No. Weāve been over this. Not every kanji is investigate or research.
Reactionary Brain: Interefence?
Higher Brain: No. Youāre only guessing that because it starts with an I. We know thatās a vocabulary word, not a kanji.
Reactionary Brain: Incindiary, Idiom, Indecisive, Idiot, I canāt think straight?
Higher Brain: (Hastily types I canāt think straight to get reactionary brain to shut up.)
Reactionary Brain: Ohā¦ Instruction! That was gonna be my next guess!
Higher Brain: No. It. Wasnāt.
I donāt give it time to think at times like those. Thatās when I speed run reviews. Do I know it instantly? No? āEeeā it is and keep moving. You end up seeing the word/kanji more and getting more opportunities to associate it with the right reading/meaning. It might hurt your accuracy, but I think it helps in the long run. You get faster at reading and recall this way.
So not a direct solution, but a way to bypass it altogether
I have similar problem but not as much as your. What Iām doing is I try to take things slowly when I heard the stupid voice in my head. Itās not really stupid but itās just false informations or doubts in your memory bank. So when it happens I just go dive down in to why I memorized it that way and clarify things so I wouldnāt make the same mistake again.
Hmmā¦ I donāt know how my brain would react to that. I know Iād overflow my apprentice items like that. How many items are in your queue with that strategy? Iām currently sitting on 53 items I havenāt tried learning yet because I keep hitting sequences of failing things right now and Iām scared to overload considering I had to reset levels because of compounding failures before.
Do you mind giving an example? I am the type of person who forgets where I put the list of things that I needed to write a list for remember something, so delving into root causes of memory lapses could be many things.
What kind of time are you putting into WK right now? Do you zero out all your lesson or keep them at a certain amount? If you zero out your lessons, itās probably not a good fit.
It works fairly well for me, but I can handle having 200-300 reviews a day so long as I do them at least once a day. My apprentice varies between 100-150 usually.
Iām not good at memorizing anything either. For example, when I was a kid, Iām really bad at subjects that heavily rely on memorization like history, biology, chemistry, etc. On the other hand, Iām really good subjects that about understanding the formula like math, physic, computer, etc. Interestingly enough, when I reach my adulthood I found history are fascinating. Iāve read a lot about history and I remember all of them. Itās not about memorization itās about learning.
So my approach to learning anything is I donāt try to memorize them but I will try to understand them. For wanikani I will make clear visions in my head what those radicles and mnemonics are. When it comes to vocabulary I read many sample sentence I could find on the internet to know what context they could be use in.
Hope this helps
ps. Iām so sorry my English grammar is not going anywhere because itās just too hot in the afternoon so my brain is not functioning lol.
Yes. Right now, I just pushed myself from 100-ish apprentice items to 72 apprentice itens with my last review. I find that I will forget about half of my master/enlightenment items and half of those will become apprentice again, so I try not to take on too much at one time. Thatās what happened with my last reset, items just got overwhelming and it exploded on me to where I walked away for a bit and came back to WK and reset.
Thank god I am not alone in this. I learn via asking and rephrasing what I hear as well as visually or mechanically. I am good with directions from A to B, stories, and subject matter, but I am terrible with no-context answers like answering a date or a name. If I canāt make the radicals form a sentence or derive meaning of a kanji from a sequence of words, itās like trying to remember someoneās name on a flashcard, which then Idiot Brain starts shotgun blasting until something works and Iāll probably forget it down the line.
Higher Brain: Dirt sliding out of your mouth is definitely a disturbing image, but I am not sure how this will get me to remember å and ćć.
Reactionary Brain: Yeeeah. I think that is gross. I mean, if I wanted to announce something, Iād just vomit rainbows. Thatād get folkās attention for an announcement. Should we remember it as we ćć rainbows of vomit to attract attention?
Higher Brain:
I totally get it. Slice of life isnāt everyoneās thing andā¦ you can easily find veeeery troubling things in that fandom. To each their own.
Apologies to your teeth. My mother and brother grind their teeth in their sleep which is not pleasant from what Iāve seen from their dentist visits.
Back to the topic at hand though (or hoof considering the GIF mood Iām apparently in), outside of pass-fail for longer periods of time, any other mental things I might consider? Iāve researched the topic myself which helped me find presque vu in the first place, but really nothing actionable.
Sounds like your System 1 and System 2 are in disagreement. And this is absolutely normal for human beings. Iād say the more you practice, the more accurate your automatic replies will be. Maybe there are some shortcuts for avoiding System 1 quick judgments, too, but are you sure itās the thing that causes issues for you?
Try these exercises to calm down your nervous system. It doesnāt seem like much, but it really helped me to improve my reviews. The brain works much better when youāre calm and relaxed.
In that case, I think it would better for you to try quick recall. Although you might have more reviews on average, it should go faster and this way youāll get more exposure to the kanji and vocab too.
Iāve trained mine to be right a majority of the time by failing quickly and reinforcing the right answer. So in my case, second guessing the idiot gives me wrong answers.
