The battle against laziness

This seems old, but I have to find a way to reaffirm myself. Before I used to do reviews two times a day, once when I wake up and the other before I go to sleep. Sadly speaking, recently I fall (again) into the habit of not wanting to do wanikani or studying japanase (again). Look like I’m such a total fucking loser with no hope bad learner. Now I’m at level 30 now and it should be a waste if I stop or procrastinate my study.

Is there any LPT I can use? Should I quit? (of course not) what steps I can take?

Why I don’t want to study… well because I’m lazy and like to play games or reading novels. Maybe it’s a psychological effect(wtf) when everytime I do wani reviews I feel like it takes me lots of time. (it’s just a feeling I don’t think it’s true I know but it really hinders me whenever I start to do wani reviews)

ok i’m feel i’m done

I really appreciate any help.

*blurred for inappropriate manner.

edit: if @koichi happens to pass by this topic could ya gimme a title named “the procrastinator” ? arigatou gozaimasu.

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I think it’s normal to get this way once and a while, and I also think that it’s not the end of the world. It might be your brain waving the 白旗 at you and yelling “enough!” Whereas you shouldn’t stop entirely, just take on an easier load for a week and don’t punish yourself.
頑張ってね :heart:

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I can totally identify with this after having run into a very similar bump around level 10. The review pile was reaching the range of 150-200ish per day, and it was really starting to grind me down such that my study habits suffered. I got back into things by using the reorder script to a) decrease the burden of reviews and b) improve (I think) my learning. The magic trick? Using the script so that reviews for kanji and vocab show up back-to-back (ie, reading is followed immediately by meaning).

This decreases the burden of reviews by making them a lot faster to motor through due to the fact that you don’t have to dredge up the meaning and reading of items separately. Some might argue that this is cheating/a worse way of doing reviews since you’re in theory reviewing the items half as many times – I know I certainly had feelings to this effect which made me hesitant to change my review order. However, my reasoning which ultimately got me over that misconception was twofold:

  1. Having the reading and meaning paired up actually reinforces them because you’re calling them up simultaneously (neurons that fire together wire together, basic associative learning), and having the reading always appears first means that I’m in the habit of thinking in Japanese whenever I see the kanji. I also noticed that during reviews I was calling up either the reading or the meaning, not both, which struck me as inefficient. I’ll also note that my review stats haven’t suffered at all since I shifted my review strategy.
  2. Anything that keeps us doing the reviews is a valid way of reviewing, and having time to keep up my pace on WK AND get to grammar/reading on the side is a huge boon.

Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that it’s possible to make WK a little bit less of an obstacle with the reorder script; you should give it a look and see if that keeps you going!

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I think you might be getting a bit burn out from WaniKani, which is normal since it can be quite demanding. I too have suffered from this and I’ve found that it helps to take slower pace.
What I did in my case was stopping lessons altogether and concentrating on lowering how many daily reviews I get by burning and leveling items. This not only helped lessen the WK daily load overtime, but also pay more attention to those pesky leeches that are so frustrating whithout the load of new vocab.
I’m currently doing lessons again, but that “lessons pause” time helped my brain take a breather and I’m actually getting faster at my reviews.

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Two things I like doing:

  1. Pomodoro technique:

Super simple time management technique. Basically you set a goal (either do X amount of reviews or review for X amount of time) and don’t stop for anything until you hit that goal. Then you take a break for some predetermined amount of minutes where you do something you enjoy. It’s a really simple reward loop that’s great when you’re low on motivation.

I used to do 300+ reviews a day and never would’ve made it through without this.

  1. Grammar:

A lot of people on Wanikani put grammar on the backburner for some reason. Unlike vocabulary and kanji where there’s just thousands of things, there’s only like a couple hundred grammar points. You can make absolute leaps of progress in a short time compared to vocabulary, where you can sink in tens of hours and only make like little baby-steps worth of progress. There’s a clear endpoint with grammar and it feels good since it’s easy to see your progress.

Anyway yeah that’s all I got.

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Well, if studying japanese it’s becoming too burdensome, then slow down. Don’t loose what you have done so far, keep doing your reviews, see them shrink after some days and probably they will be less of a chore.

Then, you like reading novels? do it in japanese!!:sunglasses: … most likely the intellectual level will be numbed down… but there’s lots to read, so eventually you will find something you’ll enjoy.

I can relate all too well with your situation. And that’s what i’ve done :sweat_smile: … reading much often and relaxing while doing it, without droping what I’ve have accomplished until now… :man_shrugging:
In the end, I will resume the more intensive routine, and it’s fine to know that you are allowed to slow down and enjoyment it’s part of learning as well :yum:

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I live by this technique. I have no Idea why it works so well to me, but I feel like I can do anything as soon as I start a pomodoro with 25 min work and 5 min breaks.

If you told me to work for 25 min and to only rest for 5 I would hate you, if you told me to do a pomodoro I would be down af :stuck_out_tongue:

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My problem with that strategy has always been keeping myself honest with the 5 minute break :sweat_smile: There’re just so many cat gifs to be seen!

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To be honest, I was the same for several years. I ended up moving to Tokyo to study full time at a language school instead of beating myself over attempting to do two full-time tasks at once.

I am still struggling on whether which way to learn Japanese the best way

It also means that you complete that item straight away so, if for any reason you can’t finish your reviews, you don’t exit with half done items that will roll over to the next session.
I hate it if I’m tackling a pile of 50+ reviews, have put in 25 answers but they’re all loose halves, get called away to do something and have to exit, then come back and restart to almost as many reviews! It’s very demotivating.

Laziness and procrastination is a massive struggle for me too, especially as I have been neglecting grammar. What’s helped for me is being more consistent with Lingodeer. I only do wanikani reviews once a day now, partly to stretch my attention span, but I’m taking time in the evenings to work through and revise a solid chunk on Lingodeer and I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere with my understanding.

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arigatouuu ne : <

I did have a pomodoro and to be honest it liked it very much haha. I think I would give this a try.

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Thanks, if I read japanese novel in…japanesee that would literally take me 1 day to go through 1 page haha. Well maybe i’m just being lazy and want to whine with you guys : < Thanks again

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I hope your struggle will end soon. ganbatte ne.:blush:

oh that’s interesting. How’re your language skills now? My speaking skills are very bad comparared to others. I’m trying to brush them up before going to japan.

WaniKani will never have more than 10 items active at a time in a review session. And you can always use the wrap up button to do smaller batches of reviews.

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The difference between before and now is that you’re thinking too much. You’re thinking too much about your “lack” of progress, about forcing yourself to do reviews. That’s the difference between the You that did reviews and the You that skips them.

Stop thinking. Forget about forcing yourself to do anything at all. When you brush your teeth every day, you’re not thinking about how many brushes you give each side. You just do it.

You don’t need to know how many reviews or lessons you have. You don’t need to think about your accuracy or leveling up speed.

The number 1 reason people reach lvl 60 is because they show up every day to do the work. It’s not about speed or intellect.

Forget the other stuff. Those things are stopping you from getting to the goal. Just go for it. Don’t be afraid. This is what guarantees you success. Do it and you’ll win.

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Very zen! :relieved:

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Such good advice. I will come back to this comment whenever I struggle!

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