I'm trying to get a head start on this - if I get up to 3 hours after the first couple days (non-working days, so I've got some surplus time) then I might have the motivation to make it through 25 Skritter hours (at least 35 real hours) in 25 days, regardless of the fact that it's more than a fifth of my current total of Skritter time garnered in some 14 months...

Any suggestions from people who have done heavy studying before? Methods for getting through that much studying? Ways of staying motivated? Suggestions for keeping sane? I've already cleared something like 500 items from my rapidly-dwindling queue.

My thoughts at the outset are that I should turn adding down to slow (it's fast right now, hence the rapid queue evacuation), and maybe turn up retention rate as well - with the sheer hours of studying as compared to my previous daily study time I can still add a lot of stuff with those settings changed, while being forced to really crush the stuff into my gray matter, rather than just sprinkling it on top. Or should I just go for it: add some HSK lists and overextend myself to a ridiculous extent for 25 days?

Also, aside from HSK lists, does anyone have any recommendations for lists to add during this Skritter-motivated study binge? Aside from another couple hundred items in my queue (i.e. less than a hundred actual words) and a perennially paused New Practical Chinese Reader list, I've got nothing lined up.

An hour a day is not that hard in fact. For me it work best to do it in many smaller sessions. I start to do the first one while eating breakfast. I really need to to do something while eating. First thing at work is a 10 minutes session skritter. At lunch time around 20 minutes and then at home in the evening a few smaller ones. My peak time for learning is after 9 in the evening. Seems to be the most concentrated then. As for motivation, well I treat my self with my favorite candy after every 200 words done and "punish" my self with one round trip down and up the 22 stories to my apartment when doing to many errors. Works well for me. In fact, those breaks both gives me better concentration and reduces my calorie balance from the candy:-) As for settings, try to set retention to max to get more repetition. I also tend to add a lot of words form the popup for every character so my queue never stops growing. There is more than 3000 items in it already and growing with some 20 a day. As for list, well, i am a big fan of Chinesepod but then you need an account there. Besides that i guess that any of the textbooks will do. I feel that you need to have context to what you study so just study random words might be harder. One way is to read Chinese news and add the words in the articles you do not know. Then you get context and can read more and more for each iteration. Use the Skritter scriptlet, works very nice to add words fast to skritter.

Haha, context, that mythical study tool that I've largely neglected to actively seek for four years now... I justify my lazy, vocabulary-intensive study style with two reasons. Sorry, excuses: that it's a pain to get a decent Chinese teacher to come out where I live, and that I get context in everyday life living in China. Nevertheless, my actual Chinese usage is way behind my vocabulary development because of how I study, and probably at least a third, if not half of my Skritter vocabulary, is mysterious to me in terms of usage...

Overall, though, those are some good suggestions - getting regular with stuff like morning sessions and possibly lunch sessions would help bridge a lot of the gap, and beyond that, my regular evening study time with a little extra tacked on should get me there. We'll see - if I go ahead with my tentative plan to start going on morning bike rides again, I might just have to scrap the 25 in 25 challenge altogether, and it probably wouldn't be a bad thing...

so 25 hours in 25 consecutive days, does that mean that you have to study at least so much every day, like you could 30secs 1 day and then 1 hours 59 mins and 30 secs the next? or is it just 25 hours in 25 days? do you have to do at least a certain amount every day?

no, just the average time counts...

Yeah, I'm just going to be looking at your most intense 25-day period between May 1 and June 1, and seeing if there are 25 total hours in it. You could totally skip some days, like if you were traveling, and make up for them on other days.

One of the hardest parts of the challenge may be to find a good source for all the vocabulary you're going to learn. I would definitely recommend going out of your way to get a textbook or listen to ChinesePod or find some stories or whatever to read, because you may grievously injure yourself if you add that many words so quickly without real context.

And if you aren't planning to study this much after the challenge ends, then definitely turn off adding toward the end and do some overpracticing.

@Mandarinboy, when you use Chinesepod, is a premium account required to use the chinesepod vocab lists? Their site isn't very clear about this... I'm going through my one-week trial, and I like all the context I'm getting.

@dert no, a basic is enough. What you get extra for the premium is some on line tests, the PDF etc. To be able to import the vocab to skritter a basic should be enough. I alter between basic and premium and feel that the premium is not really worth the extra money. I rather spend the time at skritter for that time instead. To be able to import words on the the other hand is a major benefit. Chinesepod gives context and then I use skritter for the words. Works perfect for me.

I used to use Chinesepod basic, but what I really wanted was to be able to download just the dialogues (without commentary). I'm not saying the commentary was bad, but I already knew most of the grammar/words and just wanted the extra listening practice. I'd probably still be a basic subscriber if I could only have the one extra feature. A $20 jump in price just for the ability to download the bare bone dialogue is way too much!

I wonder if they could be persuaded to make a special exception on this? haha

I'm doing Heisig RTK for Japanese Characters and the real time drain is adding the stories, for which no Skritter time is added. Today I spent about 2 hours addding about 60 stories and then to do an hour of actual Skrittering takes another 90 min more or less. Plus I am using the RTK Kanji Koohi website which adds about another 30-60 minutes a day. I'm not sure if this can work out for a month! Maybe, if nothing else, I might finally break the 1000 character mental barrier, then I'll buy myself my own mug!

FatDragon, I share your view regarding teacher, but I think, it's not an isolated problem of Wuhan, I made the same experience in Shanghai. Therefore, I had given up to use a teacher and am studying on my own. Because I was studying with different teachers beforehand and used different textbooks, I never completed any series. This lead to quite some gaps. So here is, what I do:
1) I have added HSK lists and let Skritter find out those words, which I haven't learnt so far.I did one list after the other, not all at the same time. I'm now almost at 3000 characters and have only recently started on HSK 6.
2) I have also added the list with the 3000 most commonly used characters. Whenever a new character is coming, I look up at Skritter the most commonly used words with this character and add these words also. This list will also give you a lot of characters, which are mainly used in names, I find this helpful, when reading newspaper etc.
3) I bought the series Short-term Spoken Chinese (from elementary onwards) and added the lists also. They contain quite a lot of vocabulary. I am reading then through, to practice reading (in context) and not only character and word recognition. At the same time, I'm reviewing grammar, which I might have forgotten.
4) When I read other stuff and come across unknown characters/words, I look them up in Pleco and add it to Pleco first, than later import them into Skritter.
I know, that a lot of people have a different view on character learning, but I like it this way and gives me also some better understanding about the meaning and usage of (some) words.

I've found the 1-1200 most common words list that I put up to be pretty useful. For me the earlier words that I just plain didn't know when I started keep JUMPING OUT and slapping me in the face whenever I pick up a newspaper these days.

I've also got a 1-6000 version of the list but, although I own the book that they come from, I used a scanned optical character recognition electronic version for making that list and it has at least two errors that I know of.

YueMeigui, do you mean the list has a problem or the book?

I've been doing the extreme challenge for several days now and feel it's been very helpful, but I have mixed emotions.

I'm going to feel a little bit guilty if I manage to reach 25 hours; I'm planning on choosing the Wacom to replace my own ancient tablet, and I'm sure that's the most expensive of the possible prizes. But I guess the Skritter guys wouldn't have offered it if they couldn't afford it.

Although it's gotten me off my butt to study a lot more, I think that, in the long run, giving a specific reward for studying a specific amount is probably counter-productive. There are numerous studies that show that, when people or animals are rewarded for a certain behavior in a completely predictable way (one action = one reward), the behavior quickly dies out when you stop giving the reward. I think it would be more helpful for developing Skritter addiction (which I mean in the most positive possible way) if they were to use a variable reinforcement schedule, i.e. give rewards out randomly to those who are working hard, ideally using a variable ratio schedule. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Effects_of_different_types_of_simple_schedules if you're not familiar with what I'm talking about.

James

While that's a good point about the reward intervals, James, I'm guessing the biggest effect will be on those who are doing it to win the Wacom tablet. Hopefully the added glee of having the sweet new tablet will overcome the negative effect of having gotten an extrinsic motivation once. We are hoping the bigger reward will be people seeing huge progress on their language abilities, which should be more of an intrinsic motivation thing.

That said, when we get to the leaderboards and such, it'll make it easier for us to implement other forms of rewards, since all the tracking will be built.

Good luck to everyone doing this.

But don't get this extreme challenge confused with this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXC

Personally, I'm looking forward to some Skritter swag. Sure, I could get a new Wacom and pass my current one, which is rubbed so raw where I Skritter that I've taken to using it in left-hand mode, on to a friend so he can use it on Skritter, but if I'm hell-bent on doing something like that, I can buy it myself, whereas the only way to get Skritter swag is to win it on the field of battle.

No guilt here. My progress, pathetic though it remains, is about 3x better as a result of trying to keep up with the challenge. That is quite rewarding. But now I'm torn; I was going for the Wacom, but if I see some guy at the beach in a Skritter T Shirt I'm going to feel like the little guy in the Charles Atlas ads.