Comments on: Processes Not Results, Or: Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned Washing Dishes

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Potheads, Planners and Players

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:15:07 +0000

[...] On the player’s path, each of those points/forks/choices is a chance to change the future — to alter reality itself in a small way. Be a player. I’m not saying “abandon all thought of goals” — never let ideology get in the way of something truly useful — but I am saying let it go; leave well enough alone; it’s not helping like you think it is. Stop massaging these great big “mission statements”; that **** is nothing but empty prose. Stop getting aroused, confused and intimidated by all these “goalistic rituals” that are taking over our society and start poking tiny, pin-sized holes into reality. No one fails for lack of a goal, only for a lack of dots. Dot, dot, dot, dot………… [...]

By: Feeling overwhelmed? Stop trying so damn hard!

Feeling overwhelmed? Stop trying so damn hard! — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:56:27 +0000

[...] importance of small, incremental, accumulated action, rather than big, difficult steps. His post on washing dishes, and the importance of process over results, is particularly good. As usual, he’s put [...]

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » When Will I Get Funny?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:40:35 +0000

[...] on native-like process, rather than native-like results. The results will come from the process. Gosh, I get tense just reading your email [...]

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Motivation For Cynical People

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:42:45 +0000

[...] is “re-interpreted” slightly, but I never liked his original voice anyway) while washing dishes, and I have Chinese comics in the restroom, and Chinese newspapers pasted all over my walls, and [...]

By: Kanji-lish and Rikaichan, 2 plugins a installer!!! « la mimizone

Kanji-lish and Rikaichan, 2 plugins a installer!!! « la mimizone — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:21:50 +0000

[...] dans la liste de votre choix (ex: Heisig bien sur). Voila a quoi ca ressemble sur une phrase prise de AJATT (le plugin vient avec la liste Heisig en anglais, d’ou cet [...]

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Aim to Fail

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:17:45 +0000

[...] dislike or fail to recognize the success you had worked for. My personal solution is to largely ignore the immediate failure-point at hand, and get excited about the overall process-function [of failing massively]; that’s how I stay excited and keep going. Individual failure-points [...]

By: cb4960

cb4960 — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:26:09 +0000

Kanji-lish is quite an interesting plugin.

I put together a Kanji-lish profile that contains keywords from both RTK 1 and RTK 3:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?0xjxwmmj42z

By: frauleingunderson

frauleingunderson — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:38:06 +0000

Off topic but,
Holy f-ing shiz.. KANJI-LISH IS AWESOME. Install it people.
Thanks for the recommendation on twitter, person who runs this blog!

By: Saleem

Saleem — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:12:41 +0000

Hey Khatz,

Found a site you might like on learning

http://brainaudit.com/blog/

Also a couple of people discuss goals here:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/15/ready_aim____fail/?page=full

How did your Victory (um, I can’t remember what it was called, map? Calendar?) thing turn out?

By: Alyks

Alyks — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:51:14 +0000

This is so on topic:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/フェミニズム#.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E3.81.AE.E3.83.95.E3.82.A7.E3.83.9F.E3.83.8B.E3.82.BA.E3.83.A0

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:48:45 +0000

off topic but awesome:

http://www.2pacjapan.net/lyric/all1_12.html

learn japanese from tupac!

By: isharabash

isharabash — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:20:44 +0000

Hi Khatz,

Thanks for the site… although I’m finding I’m spending a lot of time here as well as studying…

Anyway, a question I had that has probably been asked a ton of times, if you don’t know how to say a kanji, how do you learn to speak?

But I am trying the listening thing and… it actually is working.

By: きのこ

きのこ — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:56:17 +0000

Khatz, thanks for twittering Kato Lomb’s book. It was very interesting indeed. A bit sketchy on the details, but I still came away thinking “Oh yeah, can totally do this!” so it’s all good.

By: beneficii

beneficii — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:31:27 +0000

Another good resource for input is nicovideo.jp, which is like YouTube, but more suited to the Japanese audience. They do not discriminate against people outside of Japan, and you can register a username for free anywhere in the world to be able to watch videos. One really cool feature they have that YouTube lacks is that comments are always attached to a certain time on the video and when you get to the time that a comment is attached to on the video, the comment scrolls across the video. It’s really cool and lets you see more closely how Japanese people are reacting to things, I think.

nicovideo.jp

By: TheOtaku

TheOtaku — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:06:08 +0000

@Forrest Thank you for putting that tweet here <3

By: Johann

Johann — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:03:15 +0000

So, about that Twitter message…
>I’m thinking TV commercials have immense untapped power as a language-learning tool.
Not sure what you mean with the “untapped” part Khatz, but this is definitely true. Commercials contain piles words you hardly encounter anywhere else when you don’t happen to live in the country where they speak the language. Movies and video games are great for learning foreign languages, but you don’t ever see anyone talk of everyday stuff like doing the laundry in them.
Plus, commercials nowadays are usually funny, well-thought out and extremely polished pieces of entertainment rather than boring announcements. I’ve learned tons of new English words just through browsing Youtube for funny commercials.
Too bad most TV networks still insist on ignoring the internet as an international distribution medium, DVDs and illegal rips don’t come with ads (other than that “LOL U BAWT HOUR DVD, UR A PIRATE!!!1!” ****)

By: kerubin

kerubin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:58:33 +0000

@ Forrest

——————-
Kanji-lish: you have simply GOT to get this Firefox plugin. No, really… Really… http://tinyurl.com/5j5zxn
——————-

Hey, thanks for flagging up this plugin – just installed it and it works great. I no longer have to feel so guilty when i’m reading stuff in English i.e on this website.

By: Jonny

Jonny — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:56:42 +0000

I like that you talked about process vs. outcome. I’ve always tried to focus on the process, rather than the outcome of the process. Most of life is a process. If we only get happiness from the outcomes, moments of happiness will be far and few between. So it’s only logical to try gain happiness from the process, as well as the outcome. I’m somewhat of a perfectionist, so it kind of came naturally for me. However, in some parts of my life this has hindered me far more than benefited me. A perfect example of this is programming. I have never finished a (hobby) project in all the 7 years I have been programming. There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is that I focus more on means, rather than the end. Practically speaking, code is simply a means to an end. For me, the code is an end itself. This is a good thing, because it has motivated me to learn programming to level that I am now completely on my own. But it is also a bad thing, because I have nothing to show for it.

But the point there is that I gained more happiness from learning how to program, than I would have from gained from finishing a project. Okay, well, that’s not entirely true, for one because I don’t know how I’d feel from finishing a project because it’s never happened, and two, I’m pretty sure it would make me very, very happy. So the _real_ point is that the reason why I got to where I am in my programming skills is because I enjoyed creating my programming skills. I enjoy gaining knowledge. I enjoyed the process _as well_ as the outcome (and perhaps you could say I enjoy the process _too_ much).

Another example of this, perhaps less significant, but an example nonetheless, is video games. A video game is simply another skill to master. Everything in a video game is just a bunch of little skills we can get good at. Video games are supposed to be fun, but for many people, they are a huge source of frustration as well. If you can’t beat a boss, you become angry and through the controller against the wall. If that’s your reaction, then to me, it seems like you don’t want to play that video game, you want to _beat_ that video game. Playing is the process which eventually results in the completion of the game. There are, of course, bosses and sub bosses, which offer intermediate victories, but people don’t want to fight the boss, they want to _beat_ the boss. And when they don’t, they become frustrated, and they might even stop playing the game completely! This doesn’t make sense to me (not saying it hasn’t happened to me). Losing is part of the game. You aren’t supposed to succeed at first, because then the game would be too easy. But you can take it a step further, at least that’s what I try to do. When I play a video game, I like to master it, not just beat it. And even if I never do master it, what that does is shift my attention away from my progressing through the storyline, and moves it more towards actually playing the game. When you are learning a skill, you can gain so much more from failure than you can from success. Failure becomes a good thing, and because of that, you can’t really call it failure anymore, because it no longer impedes success, it actually accelerates it. If I’m fighting a boss, and I die, if I can pinpoint the reason why I died then I have learned valuable information, information that I could not have learned any other way. I might actually try to recreate the exact same situation, just so I can study it more!

Basically what I have done is created a situation where I can’t fail unless I stop playing for a long time, or I get brain damage. Playing the game can only result in success, and thus can only bring me happiness. And recently I’ve tried to take it a step further. After I realized that most of the skills I’m learning in video games are pretty much useless outside the video game. After realizing that, I gained less happiness from building those skills. So what I decided is that I’m going to get better at getting better itself, which may or may not be possible, but I’m inclined to think it is. In fact, that’s what you have to do when you want to teach yourself a new skill. Before you can do that, you have to learn _how_ to teach yourself. And if I learn how to teach myself enough different skills, soon I become better at learning how to learn! And that, to me, is very exciting. Life becomes a bunch of different skills for me to master.

Anyways, great article!

By: quendidil

quendidil — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:56:42 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve commented here, but I remember someone once commenting that while he expected French to be a piece of cake after Japanese, it really is quite different and he found it difficult.

Well, personally, despite the absence of kanji in Europe, I have to say that I think Latin roots fulfill a very similar function. Going through Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata by Hans Orberg made Romance languages very transparent to me along with some basic reading on the pronouns and verb conjugations. If you’re not interested in Latin, maybe a list of Latin roots in English would be helpful as well.

By: Forrest

Forrest — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:24:57 +0000

I just have to comment on one of your tweets:

——————-
Kanji-lish: you have simply GOT to get this Firefox plugin. No, really… Really… http://tinyurl.com/5j5zxn
——————-

^– That one! OMG I love this plugin! Just felt the need to call extra attention to it in case anyone here isn’t reading that side of your site… lol