• BD sends his regards: ☆ネットで学ぶ発音教室！ – トップページ http://bit.ly/59ianS #
• YouTube – 流し素麺 http://bit.ly/6SSBMP #
• Don't get worked up looking for the "right" way to do something. Just keep pinging back to it and the right way will find itself. #
• YouTube – Rihanna ft. Hins Cheung (張敬軒)-Hate that I love you cantonese "Rihanna ft. Hins Cheung " http://bit.ly/6eEEQz #
• A playful competitiveness can be good. But it's not actually the competitiveness that helps: it's the playfulness. #
• 「習以為常」
  教育部重編國語辭典修訂本 http://bit.ly/7jwTAU #
• Everyone remembers my friend Keiko, right?
  We've done a few podcasts we together.
  無論如何 here's her blog:
  http://bit.ly/5JdfIa #
• YouTube – Rhymester – B-BOYイズム "B-BOYイズム"
  http://bit.ly/7jwRaW
  歌詞情報 – goo 音楽 http://bit.ly/8ZDyqi #
• YouTube – Rhymester – ザ・グレート・アマチュアリズム http://bit.ly/4P9BkG
  歌詞情報 – goo 音楽 http://bit.ly/6pABxv #
• SRS Practices: What’s an SRS? | Spanish Only http://bit.ly/6Fywby #
• RT @irishpolyglot Is your language half full? A negative attitude is what holds people back from achieving their goals: http://su.pr/2bhYzz #
• Don't bother with method arguments. Tell people they're right: that's all they want to hear anyway. Then, go think whatever you want. #
• An SRS deck isn't for sitting in some database somewhere looking pretty and taking up space. It's for passing through your senses. #
• Got a vice? Don't go to war with it. Co-opt it. Give it money and a good timetable, and it'll sell out to you. Now you control it. #
• Techniquewise, there's some stuff I would blog about, but my opinion on it fluctuates back and forth a lot – often on the same day #
• Fallacy: if you disagree with someone, they have to know that you disagree with them and why. #
• Fallacy: you have to link your actions with your stated opinion. Decouple them. Speak diplomatically, but act pig-headedly. #
• Since you can only really act in one direction at any given time, taking action almost always entails a certain single-mindedness. #
• It's called "All" Japanese All The Time but maybe it should be "Some" Japanese All The Time" or "Anything (At All)" Japanese All The Time… #
• Until we have invested in ourselves the same time, faith and funds that we would in a child of ours, we have no excuses. #
• When pronouncing Chinese, I sometimes find that I literally have to let myself go. I can't be the usual me. I have (cont) http://tl.gd/573ft #
• 日本語で書いた方がいいのかなあ、そう云ふ地に足の付いていない「囀り」・・・（＾＾） #
• Memo To Me – Free Reminder Service http://bit.ly/4SpgYF #
• 世の中の面倒臭い事、その四：世の中の面倒臭い事をｶﾞﾀｶﾞﾀ五月蠅くリストアップする人。 #
• There are two types of language-learners: (1) Those that learn. (2) Those that have drama about learning. I've been both. #
• YouTube – Foxxi misQ　- Ultimate Girls http://bit.ly/8UOPfS #
• With large projects, the only wrong answer is to get overwhelmed, give up and do nothing. Anything counts. Every little bit helps. #
• F w wr t trn Nglsh nt n bjd, wld t lk lk ths? #
• People who forcefully tell you to be mediocre like them, never seem as forceful in taking responsibility for the consequences of mediocrity. #
• Don't believe that you're dumb or smart. Just believe that, with practice, you can. #
• Often, extraordinary sucess requires extraordinary methods. This can easily put you at odds with those who insist on being "intraordinary". #
• Sometimes, you get to a point where being good at a particular thing is far more rewarding than being liked, understood or "cool". #
• Insofar as they put you at odds with social norms, intense pursuits do (unfortunately) share traits with "emerging religions". #
• We make fun of non-standard dialects, but really, maybe we secretly envy them; they're so full of "life-force". That doesn't sound fruity… #
• A language is like the monster plant from "Little Shop of Horrors" — feed it media and it grows… #
• YouTube – BONNIE PINK – A Perfect Sky http://bit.ly/4MYQ1m #
• YouTube – DBSK – Purple Line (MV) TVXQ [HD] http://bit.ly/7Cwwx6
  Purple Line 東方神起 歌詞情報 – goo 音楽 http://bit.ly/4D7F3u #
• A language is undemocratic in that it doesn't have to give you a good reason why it works the way it works. It just does. #
• "People think all Americans are arrogant but what they don't realize is that half of their Canadian friends are American". My friend Jang Mi #
• I swear, like, every few months, like clockwork, I feel the desire to rewatch GITS. Not disagreable people — the anime. #
• Books are objects. Treat them like it. Objectify them. Read what you like of them from where you like. Screw their "wholeness" and order #
• A healthy SRS deck is a moving SRS deck. #
• I find that the more I compete, the worse I do. The more I play, the better. #
• Counting how long you've been studying language in years is kind of like counting how much cash there is in your wallet by its shape alone. #
• Call it "stochastic tinkering" if you want. Either way, the lesson is the same: screw around. #
• A healthy SRS is a moving SRS deck — one that has turnover in the form of deletions, reps and additions (in order of priority). #
• Compete less. Play more. #
• People who put you down are often feel very insecure themselves. I know because I've been on both sides of that equation. #
• 有營伙伴 – BLOG – 麥長青 – 藝人 – tvb.com "成就要靠那份努力" http://bit.ly/9vPVo4 #
• YouTube – m-flo loves BONNIE PINK / Love Song http://bit.ly/9y77Jc #
• YouTube – Dragon Ash – Let yourself go, Let myself go.flv http://bit.ly/b6UISK #
• Each day, do whatever it takes to get yourself to take the initial step — everything is usually downhill after that. #
• 「別に」っていい言葉だね #
• Looks like someone SRSed his way to great success in the DAT (Dental Admission Test?)
  http://bit.ly/b3lahF #
• Limits are your friend. Just because you could do it all, that doesn't mean you should. Even ice-cream gets old. #Timeboxing #
• Trying to do the "correct" thing can be a great strain. Just set a finishing time, and let things decide themselves. #Timeboxing #
• IME, an aggressive card deletion policy makes for higher repcounts and retention. Thus, paradoxically, more deletion = more learning. #SRS #
• Now experimenting with deleting bad kanji cards as well. I figure if my environment tells me a character matters, I can add it back in. #SRS #
• YouTube – 永邦-魔鬼的眼淚KTV http://bit.ly/ckwPer #
• When you read my advice, don't try to fit yourself into my mold — change the mold to fit you. I myself am a work in progress. #
• Observation: native speakers, early on at least, never do anything boring in order to learn their language. #
• It's funny how we tell adult learners: you're a latecomer to learning language X, therefore not only are we going (cont) http://tl.gd/5j864 #
• Channel surfing (and hence excessive TV-watching) works b/c you exercise veto power: you say no to boring stuff. No veto→no fun. #
• If more people surfed (vetoed) books and parts of books like they do TV, there might be more book-reading. http://bit.ly/ad9gXB #
• Even if you delete a "useful" card, if you make daily contact with the language, you'll pick up that slack later — and in a funner way #SRS #
• YouTube – 椎名林檎 / りんごのうた http://bit.ly/bgUAPm #
• YouTube – マボロシ MABOROSHI – THE ワルダクミ http://bit.ly/bCC07z #
• An SRS deck only has meaning insofar as it undergoes turnover (deletion, reps, additions). No turnover, and it's just inert data. #
• Things that require you to look, act, speak and think differently from whatever is considered "normal" do tend to seem cultish. #
• How I Pick What to SRS « Liz Learns Japanese http://bit.ly/afhEzy #
• Sleazy tabloid news, baby! [Cantonese]
  YouTube – appleactionews 的頻道 http://bit.ly/6wBXaH #
• Sleazy tabloid news, baby! [Cantonese]
  YouTube – appleactionews 的頻道 http://bit.ly/6wBXaH #
• Even just 10 kanji a day, every day, will have you acquiring 3650 kanji over the course of a year. Just do one. Tortoises win big. #
• Each day, do whatever it takes to get yourself to take the initial step — everything more or less takes care of itself after that #
• Birthplace of the legendary "Bonnie Pink Strut"! YouTube – ボニーピンク　So Wonderful http://bit.ly/7DDRic #
• Tortoises pwn hares. Don't worry about how fast you're going. Just make sure that you're going. #
• Tortoises pwn hares. Don't worry about how fast you're going. Just make sure that you're going. #
• 栓抜き – Wikipedia http://bit.ly/brjVta #
• Personal projects do not die of lack of organization: they die of neglect. In fact, stress from overplanning can itself cause neglect=death. #
• YouTube – ギャグマンガ日和1 12「名探偵っスか！うさみちゃん／名探偵だもの！うさみちゃん」 http://bit.ly/c7N77P #
• The delete button is to an SRS deck as a chisel is to a sculptor. #
• "when a person’s social identity is attached to a negative stereotype, that person will tend to underperform in (cont) http://tl.gd/5q9s7 #
• AJATT Blog maintenance about to start… #
• </AJATT Blog maintenance> #
• Spaced Repetition Goes Mainstream? http://bit.ly/bMnNTP #
• キタユメ。 http://bit.ly/d5ImnY #
• NHKオンライン http://bit.ly/bSoj61 #
• YouTube – Miss you (Video clip) COLOR http://bit.ly/b44o6U #
• YouTube – m-flo featuring Lisa – Love Can't Wait http://bit.ly/7Dsui3 #
• ""No man is ever whipped, until he quits — in his own mind." Napoleon Hill " http://bit.ly/6iAvsP #
• Doing something, anything, that moves you forward isn't slightly better than doing nothing. It's ∞ly better. #
• Get Your Read On! « Liz Learns Japanese http://bit.ly/cT0Y9E #
• "Next time you are faced with doing something small or nothing at all, go small. You'll always win." http://bit.ly/ckAtXs #
• YouTube – KTV 陶吉吉 小鎮姑娘 陶喆 http://bit.ly/aXw5GZ #
• Rainbowhill Language Lab: How To Begin Learning Japanese With Manga http://bit.ly/cjJGtf #
• Literally and figuratively, turn your Japanese down to low if need be, but don't turn it off. Starting up again takes a lot of energy. #
• Rainbowhill Language Lab: How reading Manga can be good for your Japanese http://bit.ly/cOQTGK #
• Better to read a book 100 times badly than once (or 0.x times) well. #URP #MultiPassReading #SwissCheesing #
• La Migra is Spanish for…The Migra! #
• 「ABC係我係我
  橫睇點睇都係我
  無錯無錯
  ABC係我係我」YouTube – Jin 歐陽靖 'ＡＢＣ' MV http://bit.ly/b2EwNr #
• [Cantonese] RTHK is interviewing MC Jin live right now http://bit.ly/cNK9sg #
• [Thanks, D-star!] Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Quick Hits: Deliberate Practice http://bit.ly/b4CbR6 #
• "Stereotypes and the fragility of human competence, motivation, and self-concept" http://bit.ly/cEvCFd #

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (or so I’m told — ‘coz you never quite know with these Internet quotes, do you?)

In life, oftentimes, the real choice isn’t between success and popularity, but between success and immediate popularity. It’s a toughie. Tougher, in fact, than the actual success path (“a day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work” and all that). Which is both good and bad, depending on how you look at it .

To me, that’s the real meaning of “delayed gratification” — the lonely gap between when the old social grouping rejects you and you’re again gratified by the acceptance of some new group.

I think we all have the power to establish and maintain good habits, but when threatened with the withdrawal of the camaraderie, admiration or love of our peers, that’s the real fork in the path; that’s where we make or don’t make ourselves. I imagine it’s where people who did keep on keeping on came the closest to cracking.

We can console ourselves with the knowledge that real camarederie wouldn’t have turned sour so easily. Although, that can feel quite hollow in the face of what seems to be the end of the world. And it is the end of a world, just not the world.

Maybe all the noise that adults make about teenagers and peer pressure is really adults projecting their own challenges with social resistance. Who knows? Anyway, enough psychobabble from me; I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

My point is…if you can either insulate yourself from or completely break through social resistance, then you’re well on your way to becoming unstoppable. For good or ill.

So, if in doubt? Screw ‘em. They’re replaceable. As callous as that may sound, it’s really no more callous than the open derision of people making feeble attempts to put you in what they presume to be your place. A place that’s invariably insultingly low. If anything, breaking social resistance is an act of charity, an act of love for at least one person — you — which is more love than your would-be detractors are showing anyone at the moment in question.

Social resistance is…it’s almost like a prank. I’m speaking purely in a metaphorical sense, but it does seem as though it’s all this sort of Zen-like episode of Punk’d on a massive scale, and the joke is on you. Mmm…Punk’d isn’t really the most apropos comparison; I was just feeling nostalgic about that show.

What I mean is this: it’s almost as though social resistance is difficult-seeming and difficult-looking by design, because once you can ignore, deflect or otherwise transcend social resistance, everything is, relatively speaking, a walk in the cake.

Maybe mental state alters behavior, and behavior alters mental state. And maybe the behavior of rejecting social resistance has profound effects on one’s mental state. And maybe these effects bleed into other areas and help us be more effective. And maybe that’s why we sometimes over-esteem celebrities and other people who have succeeded in one field: since experts can seem superhumanly good, we assume that they’re all-round superhumans.

I remember one time, writing out for an English friend, some of the various alternates of the sword (劍) character: 劍・劒・劔・釼・剣 … and she went “you see, I’ll never be able to do that [you must be magically talented]“…and it was kind of mini-heartbreaking because my intent had been to prove that any fool can learn kanji, not that I knew kanji. Daniel Coyle of Das Le El The Talent Code calls this the “HSE/Holy [Crap] Effect”.

Social resistance is like a matte painting of a formidable fence separating the worlds of those who do succeed (in many senses), and those who don’t. Once you realize the fence is fake, you simply walk off the set of the little Truman Show that had been going on and oh crap another pop culture reference. Thereafter, you may not become instantly unstoppable, but it will certainly take a heckuva lot more to faze you. By the way, “heckuva” sounds…Slavic if you read it a certain way.

So, it can pay to be a bit detached and solipsitic about it all. Like when your friends tells you about their drama and all you can do is laugh — you care for your friends, you’re just not taken in by the drama because you have the mental removal to watch it as farce. That kind of bemused detachment can be a great asset. And people may call you on it, and get upset at your lack of emotional abandon, but…more detachment will probably solve that as well.

The funny thing is, though, all of these ideas can be used to justify anything, good or bad. Then again, trains can be used for suicide, but we’re not outlawing them any time soon.

AJATT is often described as cultish. And it is, because I have carefully laid plans to whisk you all away to a compound in South America where we can watch anime and drink colored sugarwater. But really, what it is is that many paths, religious or secular, requiring significant investments of self, time and resources, are likely to at some point bring one into some level of conflict with common behaviors and levels of self-management that are considered “normal”.

Case in point: one or two of my Japanese friends sometimes make fun of me learning Chinese, yet these same kids — the same ones doing the mocking — also wish they knew Chinese, and even make half-hearted attempts (book purchases) in that general direction. Whenever we’re geeking out by my bookshelf, and things go quiet for a while, and the dust settles, they invariably sigh something we might loosely translate as: “dag, yo…I wonna know me some Chah-nese”.

If and when these conflicts occur, sometimes, compromise and negotation work. Other times, resolute boldness is called for. I don’t know which will be which for you. For example, I don’t object to people suggesting that my daily life be composed of a variety of activities. But I will happily walk, run and fly over, around and through people who think they have the authority to decide or even suggest the details (time, place and content) of those activities. Those are my “rules”, if you will. Yours may differ.

Let me give you a little story from the halcyon days of when AJATT was just me being me in Utah. My friends wanted us to watch Pulp Fiction together…in the living room. I like hanging out with people while not doing the same thing, so I was like…yeah, cool, whatever. I didn’t want to watch something in English, but I was willing to watch it with them, so I was going to read Japanese on my laptop while they watched. I often read and watch at the same time.

This compromise upset them. They wanted the movie to be watched in their way (laptopless) on their timetable (now). These were hardcore computer geeks; they knew about geeking out; they should have known better. In the end, after about 90 seconds of failed explanation, I simply went and did something else in Japanese. They got even more upset. About eighteen months later, one of the people who had been there apologized for the entire incident; in his own words, I had been right and he wrong; he hadn’t realized what I was trying to do; he now knew that I had needed to do what I did.

Rarely is all this drama an issue; usually, it doesn’t even come up. But sometimes you do have to choose between something you really want and like, and just being liked. Fortunately, when you choose the former, you do tend to get new likers. Either completely new people, or the same old people post-change-of-heart.

Do what you need to do. Do what makes you happy and comfortable. Getting the job done? Well, that counts as part of “comfort”. Sucking at Japanese made me uncomfortable. So, go become great at Japanese or whatever .

• You cant be good at everything right off the bat. Full, adult, native-like fluency is the sum of partial, domain-local fluencies. #
• Awwwwwwwwwwww…太可愛耶
  YouTube – 人類從小養大「黃小虎」愛撒嬌脾氣好 http://bit.ly/5vXa9J #
• Oh, AJATTeers…if only you knew how gutless I was #
• 『「アウトプット」を基準に「インプット」すれば無駄が零に近付く』 Advice for localized fluency, which of course makes a great stepping-stone http://bit.ly/7PMCoC #
• “バブリーなフィーリングで！”
  http://bit.ly/6MZp6b #
• 「制壓射撃」
  http://bit.ly/4XWczz #
• AJATT tip: Don’t wanna do it? Don’t do it. #
• Some Cantonese love for AJATT
  日文有冇得自學? – 語言討論 – 香港討論區 discuss.com.hk – 一個香港只得一個香港討論區 http://bit.ly/6LDXsP #
• Some of the best advice you can get for AJATT-style learning is actually from people aiming only for domain-specific fluency. #
• Don’t bother with method arguments. Tell people they’re right: that’s all they want to hear anyway. Then, go do whatever you want. #
• Deleting from your SRS is not “losing ground” any more than washing vegetables is “denying nature”. #
• Read It Later: Save Your One-Read Wonders — One reading list, everywhere you are. http://bit.ly/5pIzDF #
• 周星馳萬歲萬歲萬萬歳！
  http://bit.ly/7TS1pQ #
• 日本語ましょう！って・・・言うじゃな～い #
• 世の中の面倒臭い事、その一：小麦アレルギー。 #
• 世の中の面倒臭い事、その二：マフィンが食べたいのに小麦アレルギー。 #
• Limits set you free. Freedom isn’t the absence of limits, it’s the freedom to set your own limits. Or not, I dunno… #Timeboxing #
• 『よく「出る杭は打たれる」と言いますよね。
  しかし、自分の経験からは、「出過ぎた杭は放置され」ます。』http://bit.ly/4Bs8cM #
• Non-native language users are like animals in that relatively paltry amounts of time, $ and effort are invested in (cont) http://tl.gd/4crqh #
• JReK – Japanese Sentence Search http://bit.ly/59ql5h #
• Whenever you find someone struggling with something complex, it’s almost never the complex thing that’s their problem. #
• Heisig broke the so-called “rules” and got called a crazy liar. So did I. Now it’s your turn . #
• 技術的特異点 – Wikipedia http://bit.ly/4y6HJ7 #
• I like the term language “user”. (1) It leaves room for reading/writing. (2) It implies that language is a matter of habituation. #
• Antidote to hero-worship: Imagine your hero going to the toilet for “the big convenience”. That should clear your head for a while #
• ｷﾞｷﾞﾃﾞｨ　ｷﾞｷﾞﾃﾞｨ　ｷﾞｷﾞﾃﾞｨ　ｵｰｰｰﾗｰｲ！！(＾＾） #
• One of Bennie K’s best vids …YouTube – 『Sky』 / BENNIE K http://bit.ly/5QHs3M #
• 世の中の面倒臭い事、その三：ツイッターで小麦アレルギーを一々嘆いてる奴。 #
• Learning a language is very…asymptotic. Do we hit zero? Dunno…but we can always keep getting closer and closer and closer. #
• I’m like that pianist. Miss one day of Japanese, and I know. Two days, close friends know. Three days — stuttering mess. It’s that fragile. #
• Confidence and optimism are free. Why be stingy? #
• Tell yourself that it’s precisely because your project is large that it can benefit from a tiny bit of progress. #
• No project is ever too big or too small to benefit from small amounts of progress. #
• Given enough practice, a level of skill that seems impossible can become inevitable. #
• Whenever you find someone struggling with something complex, it’s almost always because something simple is missing or broken. #
• 四字熟語データバンク http://bit.ly/7uuYFt
  Thanks, Kouryuu! #
• In a self-directed project, the choice is not between doing it right and doing it wrong, but between doing it fun and not doing it at all. #
• AJATT is a cookie recipe at most. And we all know there are a ton of ways to make cookies. #
• If someone needed to practice to be in a band, you wouldn’t stop them; you’d work around/with them. Why stop a language-learner? #
• “With a bad attitude, anything can be hard to study”http://bit.ly/5NXvH5 #
• Sure, you want to do That Thing That’s Good For You That You Should Do, but do you have your consent yet? #
• Don’t blame the language; don’t blame yourself; blame your methods. Don’t accuse the steak of being uncuttable, just get a knife. #
• Think of your SRS as an SDS (spaced deletion system) as well. Be prepared to delete just as much as you repeat. #
• Learning a language is very hard. Not the language itself, but the dealing with people bent on telling you how hard it is. #
• だーら買・わ・な・いってば！（笑）
  http://bit.ly/5ai0Xu #
• No language has such a shortage of sentences/phrases that you need to pick boring ones as well. #
• Language-learningwise, I’d say the Internet still lags far behind cable/satellite TV in many ways. Not all ways, of course. #
• Monolingual Japanese online dictionaries
  辞書 – Google 検索 http://bit.ly/8yTyh7 #
• 六次の隔たり – Google 検索 http://bit.ly/5Pl4xU #
• “If anyone in the history of the world has done it, then you can certainly do it.” http://bit.ly/5NXvH5 #
• It’s not the dog in the fight and it’s not the years on the language: it’s the minutes in the years. #
• Evil technique to get people out of your way: affirm their opinion verbally while willfully negating it with your actions. #
• YouTube – 時代特急 / Flick http://bit.ly/4Q7A3A #
• Is there something you “should” do but just don’t want to? Be reasonable with yourself. Find out why. Negotiate. Cut a deal. #
• YouTube – MP4 – Chinese Rap http://bit.ly/8pWF3Q #
• The only “requirement” is to come into contact with your L2. Within that, anything goes; individual L2 media must entertain *you*. #
• Open your L2 books randomly, flip pages randomly until something grabs you. No need to force sequential access: it’s not a scroll. #

In response to this article on binging and purging, I got this really cool comment from Maya, one of AJATT’s best link-suppliers:

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any examples of when they started to fall behind in something and they eventually caught up by making it more fun/changing their style? I’m not doubting that this is the way to go; it’s just that I’d like a concrete example.

Lately I’ve fallen behind with my sentence reps (whereas I have no problem maintaining an immersion environment)… I think the problem is that I’ve come to look at the reps as “work/studying” (whereas as anime is always “recreational”)… even after deleting a decent chunk of sentences, the problem seems to persist. I’m currently almost a week behind in reps, and still can’t motivate myself to get around to doing them. I’ve obviously been doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what.

Here is my response:

@Maya

Just one idea here (I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone else has to say):

Delete even more.

Don’t go to your SRS to do reps any more.

Go to delete.

Go for deletions. Deletions are your new “target metric”. Delete until you hit a sentence that you give a crap about. Then delete until you hit the next one like that.

You’re probably overloaded with “should-learn” sentences — “shoulders“, like I was in Cantonese. Or maybe you have cool sentences, but they lack the punch they had when you entered them. Those are now “shoulders”, too.

Get rid of anything even remotely sucky. Delete. Delete. Delete. Don’t worry. You obviously don’t need them. You’ve been off the SRS a whole week, right? That’s a sign. A big, freaking sign.

Delete boring things from your SRS, otherwise they will “delete” you — they will “make” you never want to touch that SRS again.

Basically, Maya, you great discoverer of all things Disney and Japanese, you have two choices.

a) Delete bad sentences, however many there may be, so that you can do at least *some* SRSing.
b) Never SRS again for the rest of your life.

Right now, you’re on a collision course with (b).

Don’t get rid of the whole deck in one go. A lot of people do that. I personally think that’s ill-advised. Delete. One by one. There will be some leftover items — “keepers“. The keepers will be the seeds of a renewed deck, a deck of keepers (mostly), a deck that makes you actually want to do reps. The keepers will have a pattern to them — format, length, source, content, whatever — that will guide you in acquiring more keepers.

If you’ve got a really sucky deck, you could end up literally halving your cardcount — I once did. In the extreme, you could end up with only 10% of your original deck. No biggie. Let it go. Fuhgeddaboutit. Remember what’s at stake. Sentences are interchangeable. Motivation to learn is not.

Let me share some of my Japanese sentence deck stats for today with you, to give you a quantitative perspective on the whole thing:

• Repcount: 135
• Added: 2 cards
• Deleted: 100 cards.
• Total: ~235 cards processed, ~42% deleted.

135 reps and 100 deletions is infinitely better than 0 reps and 0 deletions. Now let’s extrapolate — assuming about the exact same daily performance over the course of one week, that comes to nearly 1000 reps and 700 deletions. 1000 to 0. That’s not 1000 times better, M-star. That’s  “even more infinitely better” than 0 reps and 0 deletions.  ∞:0 ratio.

So, go break some eggs and make that omelette .

We all have such noble intentions with our sentences. We all want to be good kids; we want to do the right thing; we want to eat everything that’s given us. But being an obedient doormat and being an effective learner are not, repeat, not the same thing.

Know your “rights”. The right to enjoyment (= the right to veto boredom) is one that school — my favorite scapegoat for everything — would tend to try to discourage you from exercising, so we often forget that we even have it; we equate exercising it with being “lazy”, unproductive, irresponsible. But now you know to say no to uninteresting sentences.

You can keep being liberal about what enters your SRS deck, just be liberal about what leaves it, as well. Garbage in, garbage out.

Written from painful and rather embarrassing-to-share experience,

Khatz

Epilogue

Through the magic of deletion, Maya has since turned SRSing from a chore, back into a game and now lives a full, happy, besentenced life . In her own words:

Thanks to everyone for their advice!

To sum things up, I’ve gone through my deck and deleted ~450 or so cards that were boring/unpleasant/so easy that they had become useless. I’m not quite done yet; I can still realistically see myself deleting another 50-200 cards, but I think I’m getting much closer now.

I’ve also decided to change the pace at which I add/learn sentences. When I started doing sentences, I wasn’t actually done with RTK; I was just impatient, and I figured that I could “pick up” the remaining kanji on the go. This never happened/isn’t likely to happen, and my incomplete knowledge of kanji is creating problems for me, so I want to go back and finish learning them properly. I’ll still add/learn sentences, but at a much slower rate (at least temporarily); I actually see this as a really good thing, because it will encourage me to only add a small quantity of really good sentences, instead of adding tons of nonsense, as I seem to have been doing the past while. Needless to say, my overall immersion environment won’t change.

Thanks to everyone for your advice/anecdotes/encouragement!

…

Today was my first day doing reps anew – I went through a hundred of ‘em in under half an hour. This definitely wouldn’t have been possible a couple weeks ago

Everything felt fresh and simple <3

Men of AJATT, on to glory! See Surusu famed in story! Waves these burning words before ye: “Britain scorns to yield!”.

Hmmm…and on that note.

Surusu now supports import of decks from Anki. Current limitations:

• Only Anki “cards“ (not “facts”) exported in the form of tab-separated text file, are supported.
• As you might expect, repetition history is not imported. However, Surusu does have facilities such as the warp button, whereby you can set very long intervals in a single click, allowing you to basically say: “I know this card very well, don’t show it to me for a long while”. This keeps well-memorized cards out of your hair so that you can spend more of your time on the cards you know less well.

In other news:

• Surusu now also supports rudimentary “undo” of repetition scores. If you accidentally give the card the wrong score, simply click on the link to its data page (shown at the top of the current page together with interval information), and “reset” it.
• Surusu decks can now be deleted and merged as well as renamed. However, delete and merge are irreversible, one-time operations, so use them with care. At present, there is no deck trashcan, i.e. no undo for deck mergers and deletions.

• YouTube – ここがヘンだよ日本人「日本の少年・少女と外国人」http://bit.ly/5RcCLH
  ケビン・クローン http://bit.ly/8ydrSS
  YouTube – “鈴木紗理奈” http://bit.ly/5DHP9O #
• YouTube – 太田光の私が総理大臣になったら秘書田中 http://bit.ly/7xkPBf #
• Biological fatalism is perhaps the core flaw in Anglo-Saxon culture. It has hurt everyone, including Anglo-Saxons. #
• YouTube – Ｍ☆Ａ☆Ｇ☆Ｉ☆Ｃ　久保田利伸 meets KREVA http://bit.ly/6PpUv5 #
• Stand up for yourself. When you stop giving up, people give up trying to stop you. #
• What is the easiest positive thing you can do? #
• AJATT Sucess Story (well, demo): wmb27, an AJATTeer(!), shares his Chinese with us.
  YouTube: 老外的書評 http://bit.ly/5LH8Xg
  多謝晒！ #
• 毎朝決まった時刻に如何してもお外に出たがる猫＝世界最強最煩の目覚まし時計(笑） #
• YouTube – m-flo loves Chara / Love to Live By http://bit.ly/4pKggq #
• Beliefs really are powerful — ‘ever been unable finding something in the fridge beause you believed it wasn’t there? #
• If you believe you can’t learn a language, you won’t be able to, even if you actually already possess the ability. #
• Learning a language requires you to simultaneously have a thirst for knowledge and tolerance for ignorance. Annoying, eh? #
• 踊るの好き好き！とても好き好き！
  YouTube: http://bit.ly/8lwQ26
  Lyrics: http://bit.ly/7TCuq7 #
• YouTube – 經典金曲 – 熱情的沙漠 1973 (歐陽菲菲) http://bit.ly/5haZVQ #
• Kanji Makes Japanese Easy – Dumb Otaku http://bit.ly/8ht1Bj #
• YouTube: Really cool arrangement of the 北方官話版 of 男兒當http://bit.ly/6Utfe7
  Correct lyrics: http://bit.ly/6nAOki #
• RT @coach_marketing “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”–Henry Ford//Timebox, baby! #
• Learning a language is easy. You’ve done it before, and you can do it again. If in doubt, look back at your “native” experience. #
• Ed shares these words of Wisdom from Willard Christopher Smith.YouTube – Will’s Wisdom http://bit.ly/6Pnzls #
• Perhaps the most damaging lesson of schooling is that others’ opinions of you matter more than your opinion of yourself. #
• f(success at a task) is often inversely proportional to f(discussing the task). So, if in doubt, hush up and get tinkering! #
• 楓の樹液って、ゆーじゃな～い！メープルシロップ – Wikipedia http://bit.ly/77bWhX 実際、和風に言うと「楓汁」（かえでじる？フウジュウ？）になるかと思いますが・・・どっちにしても「楓」の訓読みも字自体も大好き（＾＾）。 #
• Two weeks into the new year and you’ve probably screwed up already. I have . Forgive yourself anyway. Reset. Move on. #
• 舞台劇では文句言わずに受け入れるような視覚的解かり易さや記号性が、映画となると中々許されないってのが多いよね。要は、映画への判断基準が厳しく、一方舞台劇だったらどんな二億番煎じでも大絶賛される気がする（笑）。
  三回もアップしてスンマセン。 #
• RT @sevarg The Hemingway Hack: http://www.secondactive.com/2009/08/boost-your-productivity-with-hemingways.html #
• If one choice were really that much better than the other, you wouldn’t be having trouble deciding. So screw it pick whichever. #
• RT @sivers LOVE this mindset: “not talent, just hard [play]“: http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/01/12/i-have-no-talent/ #
• RT @sivers LOVE this mindset: “not talent, just [practice]“: http://bit.ly/7aUI6g #
• Google の理念 http://bit.ly/6WzY3x #
• The basics give you the power to circumlocute. If you can circumlocute, then you will never be at a loss in any conversation. #
• 漫画の新聞 / 米ソニー、ついにSDカード参入へ http://bit.ly/4QDawq #
• You’ll never find 100% unanimity in language-learning advice. But that’s not the point. The point is to pick, test and remix. #
• Raher than try to achieve something per se, instead just try to make a positive change in your situation. #
• The secret to sentence-picking from text/phrasebooks without dying of boredom: Ignore order. Follow your curiosity. Pick randomly. #
• Basics. Basics. Basics. Basics. Basics. Developers. Developers. I mean, basics. Basics. Basics. Basics. http://bit.ly/7mmlRv #
• Simple vocab. Simple vocab. Simple vocab. Simple vocab. Simple vocab. Simple vocab. Simple vocab. http://bit.ly/7mmlRv #
• True optimization is not getting more done, it’s making things easy to do. Once things are easy to do, more naturally gets done. #
• Since making things fun makes them easy to do, fun is the ultimate optimizer, sheer joy the ultimate success metric. #
• Question: does anyone out there have an SRS (mnemosyne/anki/etc.) deck of Remembering the Hanzi? If so, let me know #
• AntiMoon. Always worth a read.
  Antimoon.com: How to learn English effectively http://bit.ly/6KjQHf #
• Thanks for the RTH deck info, everyone! #
• “その二の腕　pink! pink! pink!
  頭の中　sick! sick! sick!”
  マキシマム ザ ホルモン/[F]
  YouTube: http://bit.ly/53qpBN
  Goo Lyrics: http://bit.ly/8KYkfc #
• No one’s saying not to get the job done, we’re just saying: always retain and freely exercise your right to veto pain and boredom. #
• Deleting from your SRS is not “losing ground” any more than backing your car out of a ditch is “running away from reality”. #
• “How long should I keep doing kanji SRS reps?” asks the neophyte: “Until your card intervals exceed your lifespan”, says Khatz. #
• Swahili in the hizzouse. “Maisha iko sawa na Trust”/マイシャ　イコ　サワ　ナ　トルスト
  YouTube – A Kenyan condom commercial http://bit.ly/8wSU2P #
• RT @GoddessCarlie Skipped a day studying? Don’t try and catch up, just do your normal amount. [Do more] when you have…nothing [else] to do #
• You tried to do something complicated today, didn’t you? No, my friend. It’s the BASICS for you . Easy. Simple. Fun. #
• An expert isn’t someone who’s perfect at complex stuff — no one is. An expert is someone who’s perfect at the basics. Prolly. #
• もっと明るい読み物読まないとね（＾＾） #
• 極論ていうか過激思想に何であんなに魅力があるのかつーと、やっぱり美しいからね。過激思想って、理路整然で、簡潔で、ややこしい例外など無いよね。そりゃ魅了されるわ、人間として。 #
• The Japanese script for The Matrix « John Turningpin’s Mad Tokyo http://bit.ly/8jZCv1 #
• RT @spanishonly How to Immerse Yourself Without Losing Friends – http://su.pr/2ZmrxA #
• Don’t follow advice for the sake of following advice. No method is too good to be optimized to suit you and make it more effective #
• Sometimes you have to choose between success and being liked. Fortunately, when you choose success, you do tend to get new likers. #
• 今日も初心に帰った俺。・・・（笑）・・・どんだけ自己陶酔。 #