Is there any better feeling than "the click"?

WaniKani
1

Sometimes when I commit to a certain path in life, I question myself along the way. This is pretty human I think. By doubting ourselves, we counterintuitively can reinforce our commitment to the thing we are doubting. My decision to learn Japanese came for a sudden and unexpected reason, and since I have no real need to learn it, it’s easy to ask myself “why are you doing this?” when things get tough.

I’m a bit over 1 year into WaniKani now. And I’m not nearly as far as I thought I’d be. But I’m now long recovered from a 2000 review surplus, after spending 150+ days at level 15 while life got in the way. And I’m making steady progress again (and going intentionally slower this time). But I still question myself sometimes.

The feeling when I get 5 burn reviews wrong in a row? Pretty bad, though I’m learning to ignore that feeling.

The feeling when I got 10 burn reviews right in a row, without having to stop and think about any of them? Pretty good.

But I’ve recently realized the best feeling. And remembering this feeling gives me something to look forward to in the many hours of WK lessons and reviews I’m still staring down in my future. This feeling happens as follows:

  1. I get an item in a review which I’ve failed many times before, i.e. a leech (but I don’t actually recognize it as a leech… yet).
  2. I exercise a small amount of conscious thought to decide what I should answer. I come up with the wrong answer (the one I’ve continually been giving). Conscious thought stops, and my brain tells my fingers the wrong answer, and my fingers start typing it. Before my fingers finish, a subconscious voice speaks up and says “no, that’s wrong… the answer is actually ____.” My fingers correct the mistake they were about to make, and the leech is dead.

That moment where my subconscious mind speaks up without being asked? It is such a beautiful feeling, I think maybe incomparable to anything else I feel in my day to day life (and I’ve spent a lot of my life seeking unique feelings).

Has anybody else felt this?

Similarly, but not quite the same, is when you see a kanji in the wild and just instantly know what it is, even though you haven’t seen it in a very long (this often applies to burn reviews for uncommon items). Feeling your brain work like a machine outside of your control is a wildly satisfying feeling. It’s one reason I try to not spend too much time on a single review anymore. If I have to think about it, I don’t really know it. I will type in the first thing that comes to mind and take the loss if it’s wrong (in other words, I prefer to spend valuable seconds after the failure rather than before it). Though I make an exception to that rule for burns sometimes.

2

As cliche as it is, the fun part in most things is really the journey rather than the destination. The fun thing about learning a language, especially a really difficult one like Japanese, is that the journey is so long and complicated and you’re learning so many new things everyday. I agree that one of the best feeling when studying with wanikani or with grammar is realizing your past mistake, you really feel like you’re learning and making progress in those moments. Burning items is cool too, but by that point you’ve already seen it a bunch of times and have consistently been getting it correct.

As for the lack of a “need” to learn Japanese, all hobbies come down to something that is fun, but you don’t “need” to do it to survive. Video games, watching movies, drawing, anything really. The thing I like about learning a language is that there is an element of real world application that you don’t get with a lot of other hobbies, and being able to learn through media is really cool.

I reset my levels around 8 months ago, I had got up to around the same level previously. I gave up on Japanese before for the reason that you were describing, that I felt like I have basically no need for it. I thought I’d be way happier if I can just relax and not need to worry about 1 more thing, but really I missed it a lot so I came back. Not to get too philosophical, but I think that human happiness requires constant purpose and goals and motivation. Your life could be perfect and all of your needs met, have absolutely nothing to worry about anymore, but you’d still be depressed unless you’ve got new things that you’re after. Learning a language, finishing a game, etc. Learning a language like Japanese gives you a fun challenge that takes several years, that’s what drew me to it over a simpler language like Spanish. Since realizing that, I’ve had a much deeper appreciation for learning the language and my mindset has been a lot better. It’s something I get to do, not have to do.

3

Hmm I might have to argue with myself, I found another good contender for best feeling ever (but this one is more like “amazing luck” rather than “amazing growth”).

I do about 20 new WK items per day. Today, immediately after learning my 20 new vocab words, I flipped over to Bunpro to address my daily review queue there, and the first review sentence I got contained not one but two words from the 20 I had just learned. That also feels good.