does anyone ever get bored skrittering? I usually have music on but have been struggling to get my time in as of late... still enjoy learning though, but a bit fatigued..:S

Are you seeing a lot of words you know well, and not many new items? You could try marking things you feel bored with as "too easy", and depending on your retention rate set the word adding frequency to fast.

I know a guy who swears by Skrittering while walking (on a treadmill) and doesn't enjoy it while stationary.

I do the same as Malaili, several smaller sessions each day keeps boredom away and increases my retention rate. I am also one of those dangerous persons that Skritter while walking, watching TV, on trains/buses/planes, at the breakfast table etc. More or less when ever I have a chance.

To stop the mental fatigue I study max intervals of 20mins, the two I cannot skip are just after waking up and before sleeping.
During the day I add new words from my textbooks and daily life.
**Don't spend too much time reading sample sentences, try to focus on getting the word into your brain first then context will appear while bumping these words in articles, news, conversations, etc...

@ all, thanks for the responses... I think I am certainly going to try and study in more short burts... anything more than 20 minutes is too much for me! I'll soon be commuting to work by train so this could be an ideal opportunity for two bursts of study a day. Good luck with all your studies everyone.

xiaomei5, I am mostly skrittering during my commute. Works really well.

I have ADD so I can only do this for five minutes at most, but scatter this throughout the day.

Boredom is often the result of doing an activity that is either too easy or too hard.

However, it seems to me that you have a low amount of Skrittering endurance: 20 minutes of writing in your native language is just a warm-up! That's probably the culprit here. If you can increase your endurance your boredom should decrease.

I don't agree with adding many new words. I personally get a headache whenever I try to amp up the difficulty. Short bursts might be "efficient" but they are analogous to sprinting. It's a different type of studying from simply reviewing and maintaining what you already know. As an example, I speak Japanese for hours a day (all words I know by heart) with no problem. I tried playing Pokemon today and got a headache after just a few minutes! New words, for me, leads to pain.

I try not to do more than 10-15 min max of Skritter at a time.

Then intersperse that with checking Chinese language Facebook, reading manga, YouTube, Youku, listening to podcasts or mandopop, whatever....

Drilling sentences in Anki is also a decent change of pace.

Just practicing characters can get crazy boring if I don't spend an even greater amount of time trying to use them.

Yeah, it helps to have a youtube video or a good podcast going at the same time.

I always Skritter while watching TV or movies; try to Skritter without concentrating on it. This way the characters take a shortcut to your subconscious.