So after 809 days I have just finished my last lesson. Feels pretty good. I’m not really sure what to say since this is my first post on the forums, and I don’t know if this is even the right place to post haha. I am just starting my 4th year living in Japan and I guess technically my 5th year of studying Japanese. I spent quite a bit of my time also studying grammar, vocab, and watching a lot of stuff in Japanese / reading stuff and interacting with Japanese people, which explains why it took me longer than some people. You can see I was fairly consistent though, minus a few hiccups here and there.
Here are some things I’ve learned and would like to share / recommend some of you do as well.
1. Consistency is key. Figure out what you want to do (for example improve your vocab) and decide a specific goal and time frame. Here’s an example: I want to learn 3000 new vocab words in the next year. Okay so this is around 8.2 new words every day. Be realistic and know that there will be days when you can’t do this, so plan accordingly. If I just call it 10 vocab words a day then after 5 days I have essentially made up for 1 day in case I miss a day. This will ensure you stay on track and don’t get too far behind.
But the most important part is that you stay consistent. Do those 10 words every single day, and don’t think about things like “man if only I were good enough to read novels” just focus on doing the work and when the year has passed you have your 3000 new words learned.
It’s hard to track your progress day to day or even week to week. When you don’t see progress or improvement it can be hard to stay motivated, but if you just trust in consistency you WILL improve.
2. Give yourself a workload that is specifically tailored to your life. Matt vs Japan for example has achieved a very high level of Japanese, but unless you have a schedule similar to his you can’t just copy his study methods exactly. Pick a manageable work load that you know you can do and if it ends up being too easy, bump up the work. I know from experience that trying to fill my days with 4+ hours of Japanese studying on top of my 10+ hours a day job and going to the gym and trying to get 8.5 hours of sleep every night doesn’t work well and sets me up for failure.
3. Be realistic. How much work are you putting in? If you’re feeling frustrated that you don’t sound like Dogen even though you do your WaniKani every day and lurk around the WK forums for a couple hours a day talking about the best methods from studying, you might need to be a little harder on yourself. A quote I once heard that really stuck with me is “If you have extraordinary expectations, than you have to do extra. You have to decide if you’re willing to do the work to put you in that category.” If you just want to learn some Japanese for fun and maybe be able to have casual conversations in Japanese, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to pass N1, get a job with a Japanese company, sound like a native Japanese speaker, be able to read the newspaper, etc then you are going to have to bust your ass. It’s the same for everything in life. Just be honest with yourself about what you really want, and how hard you’re willing to work to get what you want. Learning that about yourself is really difficult, but I think we can all agree learning Japanese is a good way to also learn that kind of stuff about yourself. I’m also guilty of spending time ‘researching’ what textbook is best or what method of studying will get me fluent the fastest, when I could have just been studying and actually getting better.
Anyways sorry for the long winded post, and I wish you guys all the best!
-Gavin
On a side note, my level 60 post was only the second thread I ever started. ^^; The first being my shameful lvl 1, why can’t I go faster without reading anything I must be the first to say this baby 
thread.
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