Techniques to help consistently think in Japanese

Hello Everyone,

Like many of you I am constantly going between the feelings of "hey I'm getting the hang of this" to "my Japanese is so trash why am I so bad at this after all this time"… normal things, you know?

But after a recent conversation session I realized I'm getting majorly stuck trying to not translate in my head. I've tried digging through past posts and usually the answer is practice, practice, practice.

And that's great, but I was wondering if any of you had activities or methods you've practiced to help jumpstart your internal monologue in Japanese.

Unfortunately I can't stick post-it notes everywhere, and I try and get in my listening practices when I can, but I'm hoping some of your successes will help provide some methods that will click with me.

Thanks for sharing what you can!