That ridiculously small sample of the population is not something you should base your opinions on.

Secondly, where are you from? Chances are that that this ugly version of the American dream you’ve been hearing about is actually propaganda from your own government or fellow countrymen.

No country is perfect and not everyone is a good person either, but don’t judge an entire country’s population on a few snobby people and especially for things that their government did that the vast majority of the people do not stand for.

Seeing how you’re freely posting your thoughts and opinions, I’d assume you come from a country that has free speech. And sure, you can pull that out and tell me that you can say whatever you want because of your God(or)gov’t given right, but just don’t use that as a fall back for your bad manners, you’ll only embarrass yourself more on a global stage and cheapen the meaning of that right as well.

America exports the capitalist dream to all the peoples of the world – Freedom! Bombs! then more freedom, then more bombs. The general population must be just fine with that because that has been the status quo for the last 60 years or so.

Is this a veiled lesson on burnout, Katz? 😉

www.supermemo.com/articles/genius.htm

There’s more on the site and it’s all for free xD

PS. There is also this site.
yudkowsky.net
Not directly connected to language learning (the major point is rationality. And AI, in scientific meaning), moreover deffinitely not in Japanese. But it has some good stuff on self-development… And it’s also in e-book format. And it makes you smarter and more attractive (in a way).
For reading everything it’s best to go by Sequences, couse there are those articles whom bring you the light of understanding to everything. (I love not my English as I’m reading this now :/)

Attempting to be the best in the world or a country at a thing, whatever it is, takes a kind of madness. You need to be willing to make a commitment that pushes other things out of your life and brings you into conflict with ‘normal’ behavior. If you care about it enough, then being able to find this kind of singular focus is a blessing, be it sport, music, language, whatever. All great human endeavors have depths that cannot be fully plumbed in our limited lifespans. The depth that is found in a given pursuit is particularly hidden from those who have little experience of it, and hence the intense passion and devotion that one ‘little’ or ‘trivial’ aspect of human experience arouses in a person can seem incomprehensible. Why pour all the energy and effort of your life into ‘simply’ hitting a ball with a stick? For the same reason someone would pour the energy and effort of their life into plucking strings held taught over a wooden shell, or stare at musty old books in a library. If you are not personally a fan of academia, or classical music, or baseball, this person may appear small to you, perhaps an object of pity. Why, they could have been chasing girls, or drinking beer, or taking foreign trips, or doing x, y, z. Insert whatever you find valuable (which most of us reflectively take up from the society in which we are raised). But such individuals seem small or pathetic only because the depths of enjoyment and fulfillment available to them are not apparent to you.

『我々が高く飛べば飛ぶほど、飛ぶことのできない人々には我々がより一層小さく見える。』　ニーチェ

Moving away from a reply to the above and towards a general comment on the post – My own bit of madness is hardly comparable to Ted Williams, but for 2010 pretty much all I did was sit in my room reading, listening and watching Japanese. I was probably clocking an 80-90 hour Japanese immersion week (counting waking hours only, no sleep listening). Some 4000+ hours over the course of the year. A lot of people would have found it a strange/boring/crazy or trivial thing to do. For me it was one of the most exciting times of my life. It just so happens that as my environment has changed to Japan what I do is now ‘strange’ but in a positive way. I am able to do things quite easily which are supposed to be extremely difficult, such being where a foreigner (or at least a white guy) isn’t really expected to be (such as sitting in a lecture on philosophy, or even just very normal, mundane things like drinking with friends and making stupid jokes). I also can’t deny that it feels great being asked なんでそんなに日本語上手ですか？ (I get it a lot). But social approval and praise came only after the fact, and in itself in no way would have been worth the extreme dedication required to reach this point if I did not find value in the journey itself.

(I don’t like baseball either)

You can be mediocre on innate talent, but you’ll never be GREAT or even good without hard work. And more often than not, “talented” people never learn how to work.

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success [Hardcover]
Matthew Syed (Author)
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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success [Paperback]
Carol Dweck (Author)
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