“The more mistakes and failure you can handle without loss of self-esteem, the faster you can grow, and the grander and more expansive your growth experiences can be.” [Beating Yourself Up – Steve Pavlina] goo.gl/mxF7GT The problem with English and every other language I have been exposed to is that it has (they have) only…
Mental Tools
On the Value of Learning How NOT to Do Things
by khatzumoto
So, again, as with many things, Japanese has a specific word for it: 反面教師 (=はんめんきょうし=hanmen kyoushi). Literally, “reverse teacher”. Now, long ago, I read a Japanese nonfiction book that advised against the use of hanmen kyoushis. It argued that we were just as likely to imitate them as to contradict them. And, like a dutiful,…
All I Ever Needed to Know in Life, I Learned from Cloud Storage
by khatzumoto
This entry is part 3 of 26 in the series Timeboxing TrilogyDropbox is lazy. In several ways. It has to be in order to get anything meaningful done. It avoids busywork like eye-contact with a panhandler. If it can avoid uploading a file, it will. If it can use LAN transfer instead of burdening the…
The Art of the War of Learning Languages: Sun Tzu on Immersion
by khatzumoto
This entry is part 15 of 17 in the series The Art of War of LearningOne who moves to the country with his playlist first and with his body second is at ease. One who moves to the country first and then tries to learn the language is at labour. Thus, one skilled at learning…
How Learning a Language is Like Conquering a Country (But Not in the Way You’re Thinking)
by khatzumoto
This entry is part 13 of 17 in the series The Art of War of LearningRecently, I was doing SRS reps in my Japanese STEM deck, and a card based on this paragraph came up: “3歳までに教育を開始しないと手遅れという考えは、3歳までの家庭環境が人格を左右するという三歳児神話の一種である。” [早期教育 – Wikipedia] goo.gl/mXBH3G It’s from a section of the article where they talk about critics of early accelerated…
Don’t Learn Grammar, Learn Phrases
by khatzumoto
So, I was learning some new words in Mandarin the other day. And, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I like to do things like use the materials that Taiwanese people would use to learn English or Japanese. It’s “working backwards” in a way, that is, not quite using books in the way their authors…