Don’t hesitate to change the connotations of the primitives a bit or to personalize them. With 人 Heisig recommends to chose a special human being – I chose my best friend, and the stories with her are fun, just because she is in there and imagining her doing funny things is making me smile. Just the like, imagine a specific dog for 大 etc. The stories should be weird and funny, they stick better, if they are. If you just don’t have the same idea of funny stories as Heisig has, noone hinders you from making up better, more funny stories. Think of specific things.

Khatz is also right in that the easiest way to clock up the time is to watch or do things you’d want to do anyway. (I listen to a lot of prank calls, radio shows and so on). With Japanese, I honestly can’t imagine how easy this would be — there’s just a whole world of material out there. It’d be a cake walk.

I suppose the typical image of this word is doing something you hate, or some type of punishment. But it could also mean persistence. Relentless effort, by my own definition.

If you stop your Language B learning for a month because you’d rather use Language A, that’s not persistence. You’re going to fail if you do that. You still need to learn a way to get Language B into your life on a regular basis. Specifically, you need to find your own way.

However, I’ve certainly run into times that are not fun. That’s not the same as “boring”, mind you, because I don’t do boring things, but rather, it’s the frustration of feeling like you aren’t making any accomplishments, or just difficulty finding the meaning of a tricky word. I find that it’s having the good things that helps me through those times.

That’s my understanding of discipline.

In other words, give yourself a reason to not give up. Or better, give yourself many reasons to not give up. It’s the chunky, delicious goodness that adult kids love!

Although I’m not so sure I agree anymore—mainly because since reading a certain blogger’s musings I’ve become a bigger “nurture” person regarding what drives us. There are two ways to think about it: Do we have natural drives that move us towards being good at a certain set of things, or does being good at a certain set of things move us towards practicing them? I tend to favor the latter idea.

I once took a small vacation from directed Japanese (some immersion, some reps, but no adds or ‘trying’), and I decided to come back simply because I really wanted to do some work on the project again. Japanese had a gravity that I couldn’t avoid. I tend to think that, say, in my Starcraft example, what was making unhappy was a large skillset tied to competitive gaming beginning to slowly decay. Pushing against the gravity that that causes is just bad news.

Of course, the exact same results appear if you consider it a matter of needs going unfulfilled. Kind of a silly discussion really, because when it comes down to it it’s more about what you’d prefer to believe, rather than what’s actually right.

Anyway, to directly answer your question. the justifying L1 with L2 thing happens to me about once or twice a week it seems. But when this happens I figure it’s time to find more L2 entertainment that will keep my Japanese baby happy. By doing that, it eliminates the want for L1 stuff.

If I interpret my own self along these lines, my way of getting absorbed in pretty much anything but what I was _supposed_ to be doing could end up manifesting itself as ‘being lazy’ (i.e. playing games, watching TV, etc.) Now it’s like I’ve become super dedicated, but really I haven’t changed who I am in any fundamental way, I’ve just directed my ‘drives’ more fruitfully. Maybe that’s what you’ve been doing too? ^^

ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E3%83%AA%E3%83%92%E3%83%BB%E3%83%8B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%81%E3%82%A7

It was around a month ago. I fought off every urge to slack that I could with a lot of success. I did a lot more reps and a lot more adds and took in near-zero ‘optional’ English. After about a week of this, I found myself shocked at how deeply unhappy I felt.

Things that I consider needless competition with my Japanese project, that seem more like parasites on my time/energy rather than “wholesome” activities, were the first things I targeted. The biggest one was Starcraft, which I thought was just the next game in a 10 year run of a video game addiction. I remember when I stopped the masochism, called a friend, and played. Within minutes, I felt a strong mix of happiness and relief; I vocalized it, said it to my friend, “I am SO happy to be playing Starcraft.”

Trying masochism was eye-opening. I would almost recommend it if just so you can truly distinguish between which things in your life are distractions, and which are those hidden hobbies you enjoy for the same reasons you enjoy Japanese, but you just never thought of them that way. I make time for Starcraft now, a few hours a week minimum. Meanwhile, I still stay the hell off of Reddit.

And as for why The Korean was able to roll through English with such admirable discipline, well, I can only guess. He seems to have stopped commenting on this post, so perhaps he won’t come around reading again and I can get away with theorycrafting in his absence. My guess is that the pressure from his parents actually created positive feedback from his punishingly hard work. Whereas we with our primarily self-directed projects have only our intrinsic rewards, he had—and this sounds corny, but I’m serious—his love for his parents acting as an extra force to push him through the pain. Maybe he’ll disagree.

Regardless of what the reason was, the fact is that everyone’s circumstances are different, and how much energy you have to work on something is related very directly to those circumstances. Lesson learned on my end. My appetite for Japanese is something I’ve stopped wishing I could control, and I’ve been better and happier for it.

Thanks for the reply 🙂

Looking back, I think my question was worded badly; after all, anyone who’s hardcore should have the audio on all the time!

To rephrase my question: There are times, like schooling or work, when we must go into L1, but other then that, how often – if ever – do you allow L2 audio to justify also doing something in L1?

A personal example would be that by having Japanese audio on, I feel that it’s okay to put my TV on mute and watch a hockey game at the same time.

(Actually I don’t think it’s okay… sure, it isn’t hurting me, but at the same time, it isn’t helping either… It just works as a good example.)

For the latter, I ALWAYS have Japanese on no matter what I’m doing. Whether I’m doing something in L1, L2, or L-less, it’s on. The only consistent time I’m not plugged in is in the shower.

If it’s the former, I never make the decision to watch any movie or tv in English myself. However, if I’m invited to watch with someone I want to hang out with I join them (but I still have my headphones in). Japanese is pretty much tangled in whatever I’m doing, wherever I’m doing it. So, it’s hard to completely separate out the times I revert to L1. But, living in an English speaking country, English is bound to happen. I don’t fret about the times I happen to dabble in L1. I just make sure to get back to L2 more often than not.

Just make them interesting.

(Watching a 20 minute video on the subject made it possible for me to study for my Biology test. Before watching I was struggling and getting nothing done for 2 hours)

I suppose everyone is different, but I think I’ll use your 2,000 – 2,500 as my intermediate goal.

I’m getting to be hardcore; the vast majority of my time is spent in Japanese, I just still have some seams (and a couple really large ones) that need to be stitched up.

Just one more question – for you or anyone who’s hardcore, really – how often do you multitask in L1 and L2? (ie have anime on the TV, but visiting an English website.)

I pretty much said all I wanted to say in my post, but just to quickly summarize:

I agree that language learning can be fun. In fact, it is fun. But it is not fun all the time. Nothing in the world is fun all the time. In particular, the most important building blocks of language learning — building vocabulary and grammar — can be incredibly boring. But you won’t get anywhere if you give up on them because you’re bored.

That’s all. People can email me or comment on my post if they want further discussion.

p.s. Allow me to apologize for sniping in the previous comment. I disagree with your position but I do respect your achievements. Posting on the internet seems to take ten years off my age…

“The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.”
— Timothy Ferriss