Help: How do people who aren't consistently motivated use bunpro?

There is a loooot of great advice in here, and I’m just going to throw in my own two cents because your initial comment sounds extremely similar to me about 2 years ago.

I have more free time than most, but I could never force myself to study consistently, whether it was due to quick burn out, or just another sudden hobby I had picked up that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I struggled with guilt, and how slowly I felt I was going, especially when reading how much faster ‘everyone’ else was going.
After a really low patch, I decided to go to a psychiatrist, and they diagnosed me with ADHD and a few other fun things for the collection.
I was personally prescribed with something that worked really well, and it was an instant change in my ability to concentrate. Even with the help of that, I still have to work on my own willpower.
Now, instead of having to go through what feels like a locked door without a key, I have a keychain with about 5 different keys to sort through. So basically, I only have to convince myself to find the right key, instead of hopelessly wondering how to get out of the room.

After all of that, the next part was not comparing my progress to the progress of other people.
I still do get envious when I see people learning things faster, and with a higher retention rate, but I don’t let that feeling overwhelm me. I acknowledge it, and then move on.
Instead, I try to think about all of the little milestones I’ve made. Like being able to recognize and understand a word, without having to think about what it’s meaning is, or when I see something go up to Master on Wanikani, or Seasoned on BunPro, or even that one time I remembered how to write a kanji off of the top of my head.
Like yeah, I’m not as good as other people, but I’m better than I was, and that’s all that matters.

Like others have said, it might be worth just finding out if you do have ADHD or something similar, and if you do, your psychiatrist can help you down the right path in how to deal with particular things attaining to said diagnosis. And if you don’t, it’s good to have someone like a psychiatrist to help you talk through how you’re feeling.
The good thing now, is that there are so many different communities online that you can find yourself fitting in with very well, which could help you find different ways to deal with certain things you’re feeling.

Habits don’t always form easily, and they can be much easier to break. But don’t beat yourself up. You can always try again. Make your goals realistic, and start off easy.
If you don’t think you can bring yourself to do all of your reviews, just open up BunPro or whatever you’re using, and do 1 or 2 reviews. That can sometimes get the ball rolling, and before you know it, you’ve finished all of the reviews you had.

The good thing about living in Japan as a foreigner, is that the vast majority of Japanese people will assume you speak no Japanese, so even if you say something as simple as 大丈夫 (だいじょうぶ) you’re going to impress them.

Another thing I would recommend if you’re planning to come to Japan, once you’re getting on top of your mental health (which is the most important thing), is looking into different websites for talking lessons.
I put those off for so long, thinking, “Oh, if I just pass N4 first, then I will be able to speak better.” but unfortunately, it really doesn’t make a difference how many kanji you know, or how much grammar you know.
I very recently started taking lessons and just practice conversation in Japanese, and it made me realise I’m not that much better at it than I was a year ago.
Reading, talking, writing and listening are all independent skills, and while they do support each other, you still need to work on each one individually.
Since starting those speaking lessons, they are helping me solidify the grammar I do know, or helping me understand how to use certain words in context, or why you should use one word over another if it seems like they have the same meaning.

Sorry for info dump, I tend to ramble, especially when I feel like I can relate to how someone is feeling :sweat:

It’s nice to see you’re already taking little steps and feeling better about it.

Good luck!!

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Yep, the agony of regret is ten times more painful than the pain of suffering when it comes to learning and delayed gratification in general. I wasted so much time avoiding the necessary practise to obtain results.

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The one thing that is most motivating for me to keep learning and keep showing up for SRS is actually using the language:

  • I read native content (so far mostly manga and children’s books; Natively is fantastic for selecting good ones at my comfort level!), and take part in book clubs over at the Wanikani forums and Natively forums. Visual Novels are also great, but harder than beginner manga.
  • I play Japanese games - or at least try to, considering that good beginner games seem rare. My best bet for a first beginner game is hands-down Yo-kai Watch for the Switch!
  • I talk to natives at local meetups (found via meetup.com), at italki.com, via Discord servers and in VRChat at a language exchange.
  • I play English co-op online games speaking Japanese with a friend who’s also learning Japanese.

So now doing SRS has a point: It enables me to be better at all those things that I enjoy.

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I always find it super difficult to stay motivated, what spurs me on now to do bunpro every day (actually 5 days a week) is how over the past 6 years, I’ve repeatedly started and stopped studying - that process of starting up again after falling out the loop is always so painful when for example there’s grammar or words you know you used to know and have forgotten.

Keeping the momentum going and always studying feels so much nicer, even if some days you only manage 10 minutes and other days you spend an hour. It also helps that I live in Japan now and in between teaching classes I have the free time to study.

Basically the tl;dr is staying consistent no matter how long you have will be far less painful an experience!

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As others have suggested, it’s about routine and habit bundling.

I do my Wanikani and Bunpro on the train. It’s a 45-min train commute in Tokyo, and I know the moment I board the train, I will work through my reviews. Over time, it became a fixed habit.

You might enjoy James Clear’s book called Atomic Habits. He talks about habit bundling and how to form long lasting habits. I found it helpful.

Good luck!

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One thing which has really motivated me the past 6 months was applying for the JLPT exam. I was already motivated, but having the exam to prep for has ensured I do some studying every single day.

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Thanks to all the new replyers, sorry for being quiet work has been very hectic!

I have bene doing better at keeping up with updates thanks to people tips, and I think I’m going to instead focus on wanikani; I thought bunpro was my main blocker but now that im enjoying it a lot more with batches and taking my time, wanikani is the thing that is demotivating. It might be that I should stop using it and look for alternative ways of learning kanji :slight_smile:

As for people who’ve reccomended atomic habits; I’ve already read it! But I also reccomend it to anyone reading this who comes after me :slight_smile:

And I’ve also made friends with other learners and we talk to each other in very basic japanese, challenging each other in way which is like ‘i bet you don’t know what this means’ etc. We’re all very similar in level which helps too.

As for WK alternatives, reading seems to be a popular suggestion. I’m thinking of either regular books or potentially visual novels? Some people reccomend JP visual novels online so that might be a fun alternative and that also has the benefit of audio I guess.

Thanks everyone :slight_smile:

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As for WK alternatives, I have actually been using renshuu for kanji and vocab. they offer the abilityto draw in the kanji, and have a lot of different studying ways, as well as a text analyzer to turn what you’re reading into a study guide.
For example I pasted the entire script of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and it broke it down into kanji lists, grammar points, and vocab words. (though there are a lot of repetition with words, like あっち あちら 的 are all seprate words) however from my experience it’s the best when it comes to kanji for me. and I plan on using it for reading and reviewing words but it’s not exactly good with grammar or straight vocab review.
As a side note: i hated wanikani after i got level 8, i stopped it completely. most of the words it taught were completely useless, and many of the kanji it taught was far too slow to keep up with a normal learning rate. and according to my native co-workers and friends most the words or comparisons are just unused in modern japanese.

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