When I started learning Japanese, I was unemployed. I had so much time to listen to podcasts and study my Anki.
Now I’ve found a full time job and am struggling to keep up with the study. I have a hundred or so kanji in Anki to do per day and I usually can only go through half in the morning, some at lunch, and then the evening it’s a hit or miss if I’m too exhausted.
I also don’t have the luxury of listening to Japanese for hours a day anymore.
I’m worried that my studies are going to slip so far that I’ll end up quitting again.
by Psychological-Band-8
21 comments
https://youtu.be/3oi9z1HB2us?si=9-2cn40MRcQ5QzyR
I suggest you check this video
Simply lock in
The most realistic advice I can give is to re-evaluate your goals and make a manageable plan out of them considering your schedule, even if it slows your progress down a bit. Even with a full-time job, one can still dedicate 1-2 hours per day to study, and you can do a lot in that time if you do that every day (not to mention that at certain point you’ll be able to gradually introduce immersion in your daily life).
I don’t know your situation, but how do you „have no time”? I work full time, take care of 2 small kids, do all the adult stuff at home, still get 2-3h a day of me time.
Honestly, if you gotta be an opportunistic scavenger, there’s no shame in it. There are days where I get it in when I can get it in, as little or as much as that may be. Progress is progress. That might be a 3 hour sit down session on stream, or that might be me running through as much vocab as I can while riding the bus.
If you have to scale it down to adjust to your full time job, then set aside your ego and do it. Burning out trying to maintain the pace you had while unemployed is an immediate recipe for disaster.
>I usually can only go through half in the morning, some at lunch, and then the evening it’s a hit or miss if I’m too exhausted.
So that half you’re able to do in the morning? Congrats, that’s your new normal.
>I also don’t have the luxury of listening to Japanese for hours a day anymore.
If anything take this as an opportunity to restructure how you study in the first place. You were using the “unlimited” time of being unemployed to mask inefficient studying methods. You can achieve A LOT in a focused 1-2 hour studying session than say idly listening to podcasts and doing anki.
Make anki like 25% of what you do and focus the other 75% on reading.
Nothing is in vain if you’re making progress. Even if you only learned one word a day, you’ve learned more than if you had quit completely.
I think you’re going to have to set realistic expectations for yourself. Go to anki settings and lower the amount of reviews/ new lessons so you don’t feel overloaded at the end of the day.
Do what you can to maintain the exact same learning habits you have just in smaller, more manageable quantities so you don’t just find yourself dreading it at the end of the day instead of it being a habit you enjoy.
You can adjust the daily number of new cards and daily reviews in Anki to fit your situation. I would suggest reducing them to half of whatever they are now so you can get through your schedule in the morning.
Staying at it at half speed beats burning out and dropping it entirely in the long run, assuming you want to keep doing Japanese.
Just set your new Anki cards to 10 or 15 a day. That way you’re not swamped with reviews. As long as you keep it at a manageable level, you won’t burn out and will continue to improve. And you can still listen to a couple of bite-sized podcast episodes like Nihongo con Teppei. 😊
One thing to mention is that the transition from unemployment to working can take energy and capacity on its own. When you’re re-evaluating your goals, consider that you might be able to pump those numbers up in a month or two once you’re more settled.
Try to find something that’s sustainable and can make you happy—imo the burnout and self-imposed expectations are more likely to cause you to quit than anything else.
It needs some sacrifices. Here are some ideas:
– I’m sure you consume some media. Do not watch any youtube video, movie or TV show that isn’t in Japanese. Do not play any videogame that isn’t in Japanese.
– Try to commute in public transport instead of driving so you can use the time to do anki there. If you HAVE to drive try listening to a Japanese podcast.
– Hire somebody to clean your house.
– Order groceries online and have them delivered to your house. If you have to get them yourself, listen to a japanese podcast meanwhile.
– Mealprep.
– Check your screen time, if you have some social app (most likely tiktok or instagram), having an usage of +1h per day just delete it.
– Do not have children or pets.
I work a full time job and can fit in 3-4 hours a day.
Accept that your progress will be slower, there is no point in being frustrated. You’re still moving forward, albeit slower. I study one hour per week with a tutor, and 4-5 days on my own – anything between 15 minutes to one hour depending on how much energy and brain I have left after the day. Do you work from home or commute? Either way, try to split study time for commute and then after work.
Anki is nice because you can stick it on your phone and find bits of time throughout the day to do tiny study sessions. You can study while waiting in line for fast food, while walking somewhere, etc. Any time that can be spent playing some awful phone game can instead be spent on Anki. Then, once you’ve gotten your flash cards out of the way throughout your day, you can find the time to spend a few minutes reading manga or something.
I’m getting back into studying Japanese after not actively studying or interacting much with the language for the past 3ish years. The last time I actively studied was cramming for about two weeks for the JLPT about two years ago, and before that, it was during covid when I had a lot more control of my time because I was locked indoors for ages and was at the start of my PhD.
I’ve set myself a few rules which always work, no matter how unmotivated I am:
– do the stuff you don’t like doing in the morning. It usually gives you a sense of accomplishment
– set hard deadlines on the boring/necessary stuff (ex. 30 mins of textbook work/anki a day)
– set aside time for fun/play/just interacting with the language (ex. playing games in Japanese/reading/YouTube etc)
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been going through my backlog of 6000+ Anki cards – I wake up and first thing every morning and do a maximum of 30 mins. I’ve booked some lessons with conversational tutors on Italki once a week to get my brain used to using Japanese again (and also because I like talking to people). I’ve also done a few things to make access to Japanese easier, like downloading the Kindle app on my work laptop and having it open so that whenever I’m procrastinating, it’s easier to look at my Kindle rather than some other content in English. Over the weekends, I’ve started watching new shows on Netflix, but I’m taking it slow.
There are already many good comments.
My advice would be to set a realistic minimum of study time and number of repetitions that you can certainly achieve every day. If you have more time, just just do more.
Yes, your studying might slow down overall, but the important part is that you keep consistent.
Also, I think with good time management you can often listen to podcasts or anime series or other native material while you do other things.
For example while doing housework, while commuting or while driving a car or during meals if you eat alone.
1. Decrease your daily amount of new anki cards to decrease your daily anki workload.
2. Instead add more time into reading/listening/grammar practice. Even if you have a busy day and can’t get to it, it’s fine.
3. Do majority of your learning over the weekend. In anki have a look at the upcoming vocab etc. And “pre-study” it over the weekend. It’s fine if you don’t remember it, it will come up during your weekly anki reviews and it will go much quicker when you need to learn them at that point because you’ve already seen them.
Keep consistent every day but just reduce the workload, it’s better to do little every day than to do more at larger intervals of down time because it doesn’t help you build your memory
I work 50 hour weeks and still get my 25 new words in a day, just gotta get it done.
In terms of Anki, you can just reduce the number of reviews. Stop adding cards. Suspend stuff you aren’t gonna forget. Only add stuff once you’ve got less stuff to review.
Sneak in listening whenever you are doing chores, commuting, or if possible even at work. And read on weekends.
If you stay like that you’re gonna burn out very soon. You should prioritize consistency over quantity. It doesn’t matter if you only learn 10 kanji per day, as long as you can keep that up you’ll get there eventually.