“All failure comes from trying too hard.” / NAKATANI Akihiro

1 is bigger than 0.

Obvious, I know. Common sense, I know. But common sense isn’t common. Common sense is the least common of the senses, as other people have pointed out.

1 is bigger than 0. How often we forget this simple fact.

You know how it is. We all learn about mathematical concepts like negative numbers — which were probably considered a wild and crazy idea at one time, and perhaps for good reason — so we tend to think of 1 as only being slightly bigger than 0.

But it’s not. ¹

In RL ², 1 isn’t just slightly bigger than 0. 1 is infinitely bigger than 0. Because 1 is the start of everything. While 0 is the path to nothing. No matter how many 0′s you string together, you get nothing. But a bunch of 1′s adds up. A bunch of 1′s, multiplied by a bunch of time, adds up. And it doesn’t just add up — it even compounds, like interest.

0 is a white shirt. 1 is a blue stain. 100 is a red stain. 1 is much closer to 100 than it is to 0. No, 0 isn’t even a shirt. It’s a transparent Ziploc bag. No, it’s not even that. It’s a vacuum. 0 is the total absence of existence. Add 0 to anything and…you get the same anything. Add 0 (nothing) to 0 (nothing) and you get…nothing.

The current evidence from places like Swaziland suggests that humans have had math for some 35,000 years, give or take. Yet for most of human history, we didn’t have the number 0. Apparently, mathematicians in Greece and Egypt were like: “Dude, how the FXXX can nothing be something?!”. The entire Roman empire ³ started, rose, declined and fell all without the number 0. Engineers in ancient Rome implemented public works projects — roads, aqueducts, indoor plumbing, massive buildings — on a scale and to a standard that was not equaled in Europe until about last Tuesday ⁴…without 0. We’re talking about people who had to write the number “2347″ as ”MMCCCXLVII”.

Here — count to 0. Where’s your zero finger? 0 is a very weird number-slash-concept. It sits next to ⁵ 1 on the real number line ⁶, but the real number line, names notwithstanding, isn’t “real”. In content and character, 0 is nothing like 1 or any other number. 0 is not of this world; it is of the math world.

So when you do 0, you’re not just doing slightly less than 1. Doing nothing is of a fundamentally different character than doing something. And doing something is of a fundamentally different character than doing nothing. Something (1, etc.) and nothing (0) are not the same; they’re not friends; they’re not neighbors; they’re not cousins; they don’t know each other; they don’t even live in the same universe.

It’s not doing too little that kills you(r projects). It’s doing nothing. No need to hit home-runs. No need to hit 100. Go easy. Take it easy. No need to swing with all your might. Screw that. Just bunt it. Just do 1. Right here. Right now. No big deal. No fanfare. No parade.

Don’t listen to Japanese. Just play a Japanese song and turn up the volume.

Just do 1.

Hey guys! This is Andrew! Let me tell you a little bit about me: I’ve been fascinated with learning languages since I was 12 and got ahold of a Berlitz French book from the 1950s. Since then I’ve worked on, to varying degrees: German, Swedish, Japanese, Spanish, and now French (again). I’ve been mostly focused on Spanish over the last 4 years and about a year ago I decided to start a blog where I shared what I’d learned about how to teach yourself languages (I primarily focus on Spanish but a lot of what I post is applicable to any language) using mostly free online resources because it seemed like that’s what most people wanted to do but did not know how. You can check it out here.

You know the primary reason that most people who try to learn a new language fail?
They give up.

Weren’t expecting that, were you? Yeah, ok, but why did they give up? Primarily because they got bored, that’s why. It just didn’t interest them anymore, not enough to keep going anyway. A large part of this problem is the learning material they were using, trying to force themselves to plow through boring workbooks or courses or memorize words they didn’t want to or what-have-you. Now, I know that Khatzumoto’s explored this topic in depth many times before: use media (TV shows, music, movies, anime, whatever) that’s actually FUN. I want to make it clear that I’ve found precisely the same thing to be true, I completely agree with him, but I wanted to be a bit more specific right now and tell you why I personally really like using music videos to teach and learn Spanish and why you should consider using them to learn whatever language it is that you’re learning.

How could you be bored?

You’re listening to music you like–you better be, whatever your tastes it’s just about guaranteed that you can find an endless supply of music videos in that genre for free online–so it’s interesting and pleasant for you, and the fact that you’ve got an artist you like performing in a music video for you is even better, you can see their mouth moving as they speak, you can see their facial expressions and body language, and all of these things not only add context to the words that you might not have gotten from just the audio track alone, but it also serves to entertain you and make it that much more fun.

When I started my blog about how to learn Spanish I got a little bit of interest from people, I did good research and was good at explaining things, but it was a couple months of just sort of…meh. I just felt like I really wasn’t saying anything insightful or bringing any type of new value to the table that you couldn’t get elsewhere. It was only when I did my first post on learning Spanish with Shakira where I used one of her music videos to teach people Spanish that I really got honest excitement from people in response to what I was writing, I mean people just went nuts over that one, it exploded. Which, of course, resulted in me doing another 5 such posts and I’ve got another one I’ve had in the works for a while that I need to finish and will be putting up shortly. This was when I realized just how much of a difference using something fun and interesting made to people.

A single song has more useful information in it than anything else of similar size

A MAJOR plus of using music videos is that you can almost always get a precise transcript for every single thing said and you can frequently get some backstory-type information on what the song was about so you can get even more context to learn from. No guessing about what was said (as in a TV show or movie that you can’t get a transcript or the script for), no misunderstandings or misinterpreting one word for the other.

In addition to this, musical lyrics tend to be very heavy on slang, idioms, and colloquial sayings which is precisely what you want to learn if you want to be able to talk to a native speaker like a native speaker (and you do if you’re here), plus that sort of stuff is so much more memorable than “days of the week” or “how to say you’re allergic to shellfish”, isn’t it? It’s fun and cool and interesting and…therefore: really easy to learn. Why? Because you’re enjoying it, because you want to.

Speaking practice is fun!

You sing. You sing a song you enjoy, after an artist you like, how could that not be fun? Look, I didn’t say you had to do this in front of people. Also, you’ll get the pronunciation down pat by doing this and you’ll never forget what you learned, you can’t really ‘forget’ a song that you once learned how to sing.

A few quick tips…

1. Check to see if you can turn on English subtitles, on a lot of music videos on YouTube now you can do this and they’re almost always correct, this is the easiest way.
2. If you can’t do 1, then google “[song name] english translation” and “[song name] english lyrics”, I don’t have a favorite lyrics site I use (people have asked me this) I just do what I described above, go through the top 5 results or so, and pick the best one.

3. If you have any questions on what a particular expression means and Google can’t tell you, just get on a language learning forum and ask someone, a native speaker will gladly tell you and you’ll have an answer in short order, that’s really the easiest way to do it.

4. When it gets old, when it’s no longer fun, DITCH IT. Go on to the next one. “But I haven’t figured out what everything means, I haven’t learned everything I could from it!”: doesn’t matter, you’re far better off in the long run just going on to the next one because if you don’t and you keep forcing yourself to grind through every single little thing in that video until you’ve got it all then guess what? You get sick of it eventually and give up. Remember what I said at the beginning? Don’t let that happen.

I really hoped this has helped some of you, please let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,

Andrew

The tortoise mindset has been good to Michael Johnson

Rest follows every race. Purge follows every binge. Binge on kanji now, and you might end up having to take a break from them for the rest of your life.

And all for what? For a 0 duecount on Anki? Is that what your life has come to? Suffering in order to game some stats?

What gets measured gets managed. You want to milk that Hawthorne effect for all it’s worth.
So don’t get me wrong: gaming stats is a good thing.
Until it stops being a game.

There is no happiness on the other side of that kanji binge. No gumdrops and rainbows. Only burnout and bitterness. You will hate yourself. You will hate the kanji.

So play the game, but be the tortoise rather than the hare. Even just 5 new kanji a day comes to almost 2000 kanji a year. Time and mathematics are on your side; they will work for you if you’ll just make friends with them.

Pheidippides. He binge-ran. From Marathon to Athens. His body needed to rest, needed to purge. Forever. He died. Ran to death.

Are you going to run your kanji self to death? Or are you going to be sensible and take breaks? Take it from a man like Tony Schwartz. He calls modern sprinters “Greek gods“. Because they run themselves to death, right? No, because they look sharp. Because they sprint. Short bursts. Short sprint and long rest.

Are you going to be a chump like Pheidippides? Or are you going to be divine? Your call.

@ajatt Why dubbed movies? Why don’t you watch real Japanese movies?

Coz real Japanese people watch dubs. Local movies are for NIMRODS!!!! Wait, no…no…lol…Coz it’s fun and easy and educational.

This is your captain speaking.

So it appears as though there was a bit of a holdup in the Surusu background processing queue. That means, for example, that MCDs that were supposed to be being made haven’t been made yet.

BUT FEAR NOT!

They’re safely in the queue and the queue is back up and running again. You should see all the cards you had made/requested out in your decks within the next 72 hours or so. You’ll also get confirmation messages in your registered email box. So. Yeah. All is well (if a little late ) .

Thank you for choosing Surusu. Please continue to enjoy your SRS life.

SPARKING!!

This is how I've been learning Japanese. What about it?

Hey, it’s part something-or-other of the Best of AJATT+ Forum series.

Today’s post comes from アンソニー, who comes to us with a confession. He learned Japanese the wrong way.

Through out the last three years of my Japanese project I…

watched 100 episodes of One Piece subbed in English,
spent way too much time thinking and worrying, and not enough doing,
spent too much time studying Japanese per day,
spent too little time studying Japanese per day,
saw the glass as half empty and thought pessimistically,
did things in Japanese that were too boring,
attended a Japanese class in college,
ditched Japanese class in college,
occasionally listened to English music or watched a movie in English,
spoke English to my Japanese friends,
allowed them to speak English to me,
I even read an entire manga series in English once,
DUDE, I’m not kidding, I read the entire series of Death Note in English, while doing All Japanese All the Time,
gave up studying Japanese,
spent to much time reading English,
probably read more English than Japanese the past few years,
tried to speak Japanese before I was ready (without enough input first),
held myself back from speaking by making the excuse “I’m not ready yet”,
contradicted myself countless times,
took AJATT.com too seriously,
did things in English when I knew darn well I could have done them in Japanese,
am writing this post when I SHOULD be doing my reps,
and used a bilingual dictionary (and still use sometimes).

That’s quite a list.

But アンソニー isn’t coming to beg forgiveness. He has an epiphany to share.

Despite the many mistakes and ‘wrong’ attitudes of learning Japanese I used, I can now…

hang out with my Japanese friends and function pretty well using only Japanese,
use only Japanese with my girlfriend,
watch anime, movies, television in Japanese with no English subs, and understand anywhere between 60 – 90 % of the dialogue, depending on the material,
use a monolingual dictionary, no prob,
I don’t use English subs anymore!

my girlfriend, who was born and raised in Japan, sometimes asks me how to write a word in Kanji,
easily use a Japanese operating system on my computer (I’ve been using one since day one of this project),
read and produce 2268 kanjis from memory,
read manga and comprehend enough to follow the plot without a dictionary,
sometimes read complicated wiki entries and science articles in Japanese, with the occasional aid of Rikaichan,
listen to children’s podcasts like Fantajikan, and follow the story around 80% upon first hearing,
understand adult level comedy podcasts, like Junk Podcasts and get the gist of what they’re talking about,
I just watched 茶の味, no subs, and followed it and the dialogue pretty easy,
I learned a ship ton of time management skills, goal attainment attitudes, and mindsets to increase productivity,

I can sing many Japanese songs word for word,
I have around 5000 MCDS and sentence cards in my srs, not including my RTK deck,
I just recently went to Japan on vacation, first time ever setting foot in the country, and I was able to use only Japanese with virtually every interaction while I was there!
When my Japanese friend asks me if I know what チンカス　means in attempt to mess with me, I’m all “yeah, what about it?” with a straight face,
I can shadow native speakers on podcasts effortlessly,
I’ve improved in many other ways I’m not thinking of right now.

Had アンソニー held himself to a standard of perfection, he would have given up.

But his goal is not to learn Japanese perfectly. His goal is to learn Japanese.

And to do that, he knows he needs to move forward. If he finds that he’s stopped moving, he doesn’t say to himself, “gee, I’m not very good at moving forward. I should just stop trying to move.” Instead… he just starts moving again. And again. And again. All his sprints and spurts add up, bringing him to the awesomeness he is today.

Or, as アンソニー puts it:

Stuff just works out with acceptance and time.

Indeed.

Are you learning Japanese the wrong way? Don’t sweat it. Just keep moving.

Original post.

Yeah…no.

Here’s some reading to help you calm the heck down and stay off the resolution bandwagon:

• Potheads, Planners and Players | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/9aRfCL
• Automated Discipline: How To Stay On Track All The Time | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time http://j.mp/9iWIaw
• Making Yourself Happy
  

  “New Year’s Resolutions are behaviorally unsound. In order to keep doing something, we need periodic reinforcement, like recognition or reward. That is lacking with New Year’s Resolutions. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are too grandiose, like: I’m going to get myself fit this year. Or, I’m going to finish my MBA this year. Too much for most of us.In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It is like playing tennis with someone close to your skill.”

  j.mp/h5Z3RO

• ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way’ by Robert Maurer j.mp/sxynqf
• “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy j.mp/tllC6a

January
Stop Trying Hard. Try Easy.
“In the long run, (in)convenience almost always triumphs over the human will. Don’t master your will. Don’t become a better person. Master convenience….change what it is that’s convenient to do and/or not do.”

February
Don’t Plan Your Day, Plan Your Environment
“the only Japanese that really matters is the Japanese you’ve done in the past few minutes…The only Japanese that can help you is the Japanese you’re doing right now. ”

March
The Fun Algorithm
“Boredom is pain. Pain makes you stupid. Stop getting hurt. Start getting addicted. Experiment. Reject. Accept.”

April
Max Out The Cause Card: The Omnipotence of Precursors
“You can’t fully control when exactly you’ll become awesome at Japanese…not in an immediate, satisfying way. But you can control how much and how often you expose yourself to Japanese. That’s more than enough. You can’t control the results, but you can control the things that produce the results.”

May
When To Start Getting Used To Japanese
“The longer a thing takes to do, the sooner it must be started on.”

June
Top 10 Japanese Documentary Shows I Have Loved: 1991~2011
“爆笑問題のニッポンの教養 (Bakushoumondai’s Education for the Nation): One hour, one thought leader (usually a Nobel-level college professor), one field of expertise, two comedians taking the mickey. Pretty sweet.”

July
How To Enjoy Movies You Don’t Understand, Like A Kid
“Observe. It’s like you’re an ethnographer, method actor and stalker-voyeur. All rolled into one. Linguist? Not so much, actually . ”

August
Don’t Compare, Don’t Despair
“The…only…people in the world you should ever compare yourself to: (1) Yourself in the past. (2) Yourself in the future.”

September
Not Nothing
“two wrongs don’t make a right, but two halves make a whole”

October
The AJATT 7-Step Victory Formula
“Have no good intentions whatsoever. Just pick a good direction. No intentions.”

November
Luxurious Worries, Or: So Effing What If You Sound Like An Anime?!
“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

December
Do “Wide Standards” Apply To Immersion?: High Achievement Despite Low=Wide Standards
“it’s not “no English“, it’s…”no convenient English“. It’s not “no English”, it’s “no unaccompanied English””.

“Silverspoon has done more to get me learning Japanese again than anything else I have tried in the last 8 years and honestly works a lot better than any of the classes I took in high school or college.”

tokyostyle (Current SilverSpooner):

“…people paying for SS don’t consider it a significant amount of money. I pay 200yen a day for it. I guess maybe I could enjoy an extra Aquarias every day or even most of a HUB happy hour cocktail … but ultimately I don’t miss the money. The current price is 500yen a day. How is this a significant amount of money?

What I wish I had back is the $2500 I spent on one semester of tuition to learn a few hundred kanji, a few grammar points, and some vocab. I’m still pretty bitter about that.”

mark95427 (AJATTier):

I’m certain I would never have gained my current proficiency in Japanese without Khatz’s [free] ideas.

アーロン (Current SilverSpooner):

“…I love Silver Spoon like a fat kid loves cake. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to enhance my mental faculties, while at the same time retarding my social skills by essentially making me into a hermit.”

tokyostyle (Current SilverSpooner):

“you get exactly what it says there in the “What You Do Get” section.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“What’s particularly amazing about SilverSpoon is that it’s all bottled up and packaged for you. You just buy it, un-wrap it, and eat! You don’t have to worry about if you are doing the write or wrong thing or if you decrypted Khatz’s cryptic blog posts correctly.”

Danchan (AJATT Plus Sempai Member):

“…the reason many people fail at learning a foreign language is because they have never really learned about how to take on any kind of large project and see it through, thanks in part to the passiveness fostered by modern schooling…

…I studied Japanese for many years, including a year of exchange, but it wasn’t until I found AJATT and really carried out Khatz’s advice as best I could that I really became fluent. This is only my experience. Everybody is different. But nobody, certainly not Khatz, is claiming that his way is the -only- way. But it is -a- way (and a damn site better than what is typically offered to people setting out to learn a foreign language).”

Zyaga (Current SilverSpooner):

“Too many times I have lost focus, pushed myself too hard, or just simply slacked off. With the SilverSpoon program, I actually let Khatz do the worrying for me. I trust his judgment, but I also can see exactly where he is coming from and why he tells us to do the things he does.”

Aubergine (AJATT Plus Member):

“…when Khatz releases products like SS it’s in response to demand. Notice how SS came a short while after a post about “what was my daily routine”. People have been asking and asking and asking for specifics and for so long he’s resisted giving specifics. Finally he relented, some people just want the external motivation. I think paying for SS helps provide motivation, too. No-one likes to waste money. It’s easy to ignore free advice, but advice you need to pay for is more likely to be implemented. Especially when it comes every day.”

Jeremy (Prospective Spooner):

“I think there’s a real need for something that is a simple unstructured structure. ”

ケイちゃん (Current SilverSpooner, First Gen):

“I just want to let you know that I’m loving SS and I’m very grateful to you for making this available. I love the way I’m progressing–I love the results I’m getting. Even though I’ll admit that I haven’t picked up a book in awhile, yesterday I was blown away by being able to read a few sentences of the subs that came up during one of my favorite shows while they were up on screen.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“With SilverSpoon, it builds your Japanese slowly and steadily until you reach fluency. Don’t expect some 「miracle」 to occur, after 1 day, or even 2 weeks of Silverspoon. Yes, I might come off as rude and sorry if it offends you but it’s the truth. But I can tell you one thing, if you keep at it, you will surely reach your destination…”

Aubergine (again!):

“For the price, it’s good value”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“I just tried Decremental Timeboxing and I love it. It makes doing [reps] a lot easier. I can take out a…chunk of my [reps] and take a break…with Decremental Timeboxing, I get more…done and don’t feel bad about taking a break.”

E Dub Kendo (AJATTier Extraordinaire):

“…a course at your local community college, a boring course where you’d probably learn the kana, a handful of words, and a bunch of useless grammar, such a course would cost you MULTIPLE TIMES what SilverSpooners are paying Khatz for this new service. The biggest difference, though, Khatz has GUARANTEED you fluency. I can guarantee you just as assuredly that after two semesters of college Japanese you will NOT be fluent. Not even close. I took 3 years of Japanese at uni and I learned more in two months of AJATT than during all that time.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“SilverSpoon has already helped me immensely and I’ve lived in Japan for five years now and speak Japanese every day…Yet I’ve never been able to get into a pattern where my Japanese level was steadily improving until now. I’ve never been able to get into a pattern where my Japanese level was steadily improving until now.”

Cranks (AJATTier)

“…my consistent enjoyment of [AJATT.com] has given me some of the best ideas I’ve ever had.”

sesshomaru (AJATTier, former skeptic)

“I don’t see much difference between Khatz and Heisig in promoting unorthodox methods that yield results.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“Sentences are retaining in my head much better, despite me not trying to memorise…anything. All I do are the reps and it slowly sticks into my mind. I really do encourage everyone to try MCD’s…”

lisbet (Current SilverSpooner):

“[Khatz has] got the best grasp of language pedagogy I think I’ve ever seen.”

Not everyone is a good fit for SilverSpoon and not everybody can get it in. Find out if you qualify for a place:

SilverSpoon: Structure Without Stricture.

With AJATT, your body learns to play the sport.

Try not to have opinions. Opinions are for politicians and voters. Try not to have beliefs. Beliefs are for religions.

You’re an engineer. You’re a tinkerer. Tink. Tink. Tink. You have tools. You use tools to construct inevitable fluency — engineered inevitability.

There is nothing to believe in or opine about. Not in this game. If you want to believe, join a major religion. If you want to opine, go to a town hall meeting. If you want to have arguments, join a debate club.

And if you want to get used to a language, gather and play with tools. Tinker. Mix and match. Throw some away. Pick them up again. Change them. Mod them. Share them. Sell them.

Kids often ask me “Khatz, what’s your opinion on X?”. “What about this app?”
F### my opinion. My opinion can eat a dionions. Onions. Raw. Arngh. Bite into them like apples.
Either the tool works or it doesn’t. I’m handsome, but I’m not G-d. I’m not the Buddha. No, wait, no use being humble: I am the Buddha…’s younger brother, who stayed at home, in the palace, with the hookers and blow. Nirvana? I already live there. It’s called: “the palace” .

My buddhacial status notwithstanding, my opinion is just so much verbal flatulence, at the end of the day. And so is yours. All we have are the facts. Either the tool works or it doesn’t. Try it or don’t try it. Use it or don’t use it. Facts speak for themselves. There is nothing to believe in. Don’t be a believer. Don’t be a debater. Be a tinkerer.

Here’s my point. I’ve finally got the off-color religious humor out of my system. So here’s my point: you’re going to, at some point, run into an idea that people around you will think is crazy. One of these ideas might literally change the world of getting-used-to-languages. At the very least, it could change your life. But you’re not going to get to see this change if you’re always running to some authority to ask their opinion. I’ll give you my opinion, but…

Just…don’t be obsequious. Don’t be humble. Be courteous, but…inside, in your heart of hearts, don’t be humble. And this why I hate the JLPT.  I hate the attitude people. have toward it. I actually like tests; I (almost) love tests. But I don’t value tests above myself. I don’t think tests tell me anything about who I am. Indeed, tests are a better learning tool than an evaluation tool. Tests are just tools. Tools are not to be worshipped.

• Don’t learn: get used to.
• Don’t improve: suck less.
• Don’t binge: nibble often.