How to study with a full time job

16 comments

1. It’s tough but what I did was purposely schedule time every single day 5 days a week. So if I worked at 3pm I’d get to work early and study for an hour and a half or so. I purposely wouldn’t over schedule myself so I would feel burnt out either. It’s a balance really you should get one of those 100¥ schedule books and make a plan of what days, how much time and etc., you want to put into it as well.

2. I don’t really have any useful advice and I’m sorry for that, but you asked how we manage with a full time job so I’ll answer that.

   I’m sure I’m not the only one like this. I do practically nothing at work. My attention is only required maybe 1.5 hours a day. The rest of the time I work I spend reading books (this looks better on the job than playing on your phone). When I get home I do Anki / wanikani and other textbook studies whenever I feel like it.

3. I take regular 5 minute “smoke breaks” from work to do Anki/Wanikani. I also commute by train so that gives me 30 minutes a day to do listening practice or read the textbook. Then once or twice a week I’ll actually sit down with the genki workbook for an hour or two.

4. It’s better to rather do a bit of both vs. only doing Anki or only doing textbook/grammar otherwise you forget.

   What I did was 30 min Anki before work and 30 min grammar/textbook/reading after work.

   If you have less time then adjust your time you study , you can always adjust the amount of new cards you do in Anki if you have less time.

   The general trend I’ve seen with Anki if that you have around 10x as many reviews vs. cards you do.

   I.e. if you do 20 cards per day you’ll have around 200 cards to review if you haven’t tweaked ankis default settings.

   Basically scale down the amount of daily cards you do to say 5 then after a week if you see that you’re doing fine then increase it to 10 etc.
   Until you reach a point before you feel overwhelmed.

5. Find things you want to read for fun. Even working full time, you have time for Japanese, but you have to make that time desirable over relaxing because you worked all day and “earned it.”

6. > How do you manage your time with a full time job?

   After work and during weekends I read a lot of books/manga and play videogames in Japanese.

7. I work full time, been studying Japanese for 5 years. I have a one hour lesson every week, for which I get homework, and I also study every day on my commute. What this means is that I have defined time set aside for Japanese, and I do something every day, and that’s the kind of thing structure you probably want to move towards. Study grammar for 30-60 minutes one day, test yourself on your understanding of it a few days later. Every day try to do 5 mins of kanji, 15 mins of vocab. And then just fit other practice in as and when you can. All practice is good practice but try to establish a minimum base level to keep yourself ticking along at a steady pace.

8. Gramma studies shouldnt be crammed all at once for all I know so just dedicated a few minutes maybe 10-30 minutes each day to do Gramma and just focus on building consistency same with the kanji studies just do maybe 5-10 new kanji per day which should take you another 30 minutes or so. I’d say just focus on consistency that’s the most important part it doesn’t matter even if you just learn 1 kanji in a day in like 5 minutes just focus on building consistency once it becomes a daily habit you’ll find it much easier to slowly increase the time and make it more manageable.
   Even with a job just consistently learn something each day. I think that’s the best approach.

9. I do a combo of set aside time and overlap with existing activities.

   For example I set at least fifteen minutes at start and end of day for my flash cards. I replaced Reddit time. I use my lunch break to study now instead of scrolling Reddit (I use too much Reddit). And I overlap with other activities. For example if I’m riding my exercise bike or on a run I can do something like listen to podcasts. While watching TV in the evening I can do some light studying or reading as well if I’m not that interested in the show. I guess I could turn the TV off but that’s not how I roll.

   I also try to do “smoke breaks” like the other person mentioned. Taking 3 minutes every hour for a short burst gets you an extra ~30 minutes throughout the day, and depending on your job won’t hurt.

   Then of course the time honored tradition of doing more on weekends.

10. Don’t wast your time in over optimizing your learning and learn in that time instead. Don’t be that scared in taking the wrong approach. If you don’t have a fixed date where you have to be at a certain level, there is nothing wrong with being a bit slower than other.

11. This is just *my* recommendation and it’s not a hardcore rule. I based this estimate on unofficial JLPT study hours. N1 = ~4800 hours (for people without knowledge of kanji characters), divided by 365 days over the course of 4 years = ~3 hours daily. Your study time to pass any give JLPT may vary. Asterisk asterisk grain of salt. I did a study regime similar to this while studying for the JLPT N1. I was working full time, I’m single with no children. This is my experience which may not reflect your experience.

    “Study” can also include listening to level appropriate podcasts, reading, meeting up with Japanese friends and whatever else makes Japanese enjoyable to you.

    Proposed Genki (and other textbook) Study Plan:

    Two or three 45-60 minute study sessions a daily. Example: Chunk A – vocab, kanji and dialogue; Chunk B – textbook; Chunk C – workbook. You don’t need to do full hours of each. Feel free to adjust everything to what makes sense for you and your goals.

    Before studying the chapter, get the vocabulary and kanji (if any) down. Genki marks the vocabulary used in the dialogue, so it’s easy to prepare for.

    Try reading the dialogue WITHOUT looking at the English translation. Try to guess the meaning from the pictures and the dialogue prompts. Check to see how you did.

    Chunk A: Everyday practice vocabulary, kanji (if any) and dialogue, shadow the audio, review the previous day’s work… you can preview the exercises you’ll be doing so you can brush up on the vocab you’ll need.

    Chunk B: Everyday work in one grammar point. Do the associated exercises in the textbook. If it’s a speaking exercises, do both parts.

    Chunk C: Do the workbook exercises sometime later.

    Don’t forget to do the reading and writing in the back of the textbook. You can get your writing checked on an app like HelloTalk. Do corrections and resubmit. Move on to the next chapter and repeat.

    You can add and subtract chucks or mix things up depending on your preference and life factors. You can combine low effort and high effort study in a day or study session, or break up the hour.

    For example: while making and eating breakfast, listen to a podcast (30 minutes), watch a YouTube video for grammar during lunch (30 minutes). During your commute (60 minutes) do Pimsleur. Read manga for 20 minutes a day, do the workbook for 20 minutes and meet with a tutor for 30 minutes.

12. I do wanikani and Bunpro. I’ve been slacking on bunpro though. I’m level 20 in WK. I do reviews on my breaks or whenever I have a minute with my phone. (transit to and from work, before bed, lunch breaks) I’m not the fastest by any means. But it’s working so far. I took the n5 in December

13. My study time is severely limited, a little over 1 hr X day, and as such I simply have to structure my study time in a way to do a little bit of everything each day

    Vocabulary and kanji for roughly 20 to 30 minutes, another 15-30 minutes of going through the Genki textbook . After that is done either reading or listening practice, maybe another 20 minutes.

    It’s slow but it seems to work fine, I would love to have at least 1 hour more because I really want to finish Genki soon so that I can do more immersion.

    Unfortunately I had to say goodbye to a lot of other passtimes but I see it as an investment; the more effort I put in now the sooner I’ll be able to enjoy using japanese for actual fun stuff like playing video games

14. I have 2 jobs and I work out. I still study everyday. If you wanna do it, you’ll find the time. I’m also single and have no kids though

15. If you have a job where you can have headphones in you could immerse with audio at work.

16. I did 0-A20~ish (+all the kanji) while working 85+ hours a week and ended up being able to get out of that situation by interviewing for a job where the employers couldn’t speak English.

    My biggest piece of advice is to focus on increasing your efficiency with the side-goal of reducing the amount of effort you put into everything.

    For example, something like wani-kani or a textbook will often give you a lot of extra steps to help your confidence. For example, a textbook will have you 1) see an example sentence, 2) get an explanation of the grammar 3) do a few drills involving that grammar structure to practice it and 4) memorize a list of vocabulary separately to make 1 and 3 possible.

    In reality, the part of the textbook that actually gives you the grammar is 1. Sometimes you might need 2 to make it comprehensible, but 3 and 4 are kinda not necessary, so switching the textbooks out for something like Tae Kim, Cure Dolly, or Nihongokyoshi, or at least skipping over the drills when you read your textbook would fit in your schedule better.

    In addition, I would prioritize reading things like manga and watching videos, especially (as a beginner) content that I have previously watched and enjoyed in English. That gives you more vocabulary while simultaneously letting you drill all of the words in the text you already know. The fact you have already watched it in English makes picking up a lot of the rarer vocabulary in that particular text much easier, while you will become familiar with the more common words very fast.

    Then I just looked up words I didn’t know and put them in anki. This is the most flexible: I oftentimes just take pictures at the moment, do a quick lookup on my phone, and then maybe make a flashcard later.