Hi all!

Help me 吧？ I know this post may seem cry babyish, but I am having a really tough time trying to implement Skritter into my studies. I want to learn how to write, so one day I can leave cute love notes for my gf, and more importantly, I want to complete a masters in Chinese, and do the HSK 6 (by hand, with ink and paper (for ego reasons, obv- haha))! Thus stated, I am having a really difficult time staying motivated to Skritter. I mean my gf and I will talk for a few hours in Chinese, and then I'll read some dialogues, and listen to some intermediate Chinese pod, but then when it comes time to shred the review que, I just have no gas in the tank. But...

I've found that if I START my day off with a skritter shred review que, I end up lossing motivation for my other tasks (I don't even wanna speak Chinese to my gf, cause I get so sleepy. ANd since her English is not so good, I just under up avoiding her for the day (hahaha I am so evil....))So maybe I am burning out? Or maybe I am trying to accomplish too much in a given day?



I've tried equating Skritter to a job, in that if Skritter were a job, I'd just stay committed. But the thing is I LOVE teaching, so when I have to "work" I am actually just rocking out with kids!

I think I need to find a way to make Skritter addicting? Kootos to those who read this far! Any tips are greatly honoured :D.

Be well

勇氣

Hey

This reminds me of a psychology theory about self control. It basically says that self control is a bit like a battery or muscle. You recharge it when you sleep and use it up during the day for all the things you need some self control for. That's why a person trying to kick his drinking habit will never get up in the morning start it with a drink...he will struggle during the day and sometime later in the day will drink or people on a diet tend to break dieting rules later in the day.
It is also compared to a muscle because one can increase self control, one can train it. In one study they made people brush their teeth with their wrong hand for a few weeks and found that they had increased their self controll in contrast to a control group (I think in this case as measured by how long they could keep their hand in freezing water).
So based on this and other theory or two, here are a few things worth trying/considering:
- your self control will increase to some extent if you force yourself to study even if you don't feel like it. In other words, it will feel like less and less of an effort if you keep at it.
- studies have found that it is easier to keep motivated when you regularly remind yourself what your long term goal is
- if you are still doing other things that take a lot of self control (doing stuff you don't like doing), you might want to consider cutting back on those
- maybe you can find an equally effective but more enjoyable mode of studying. That will accomplish a bunch of things at the same time. For one it will cement your knowledge from a different angle. Second it will reduce the amount of control you need for studying that area, thus leaving more for other areas.
- being a woman would help, as women tend to be better at forcing themselves to do things they don't like. That's why women, in average, have better academic results, because they are better at forcing themselves to study (good grades mainly have to do with effort, not IQ)....but that's not something you can change:)

Hope this helps.

Regards
David

Truthfully I find Skritter to be REALLY motivating because I just love looking at that progress line going up.

The nice thing about Skritter, I find, is that it's not too difficult to do five minutes here and five minutes there when you're waiting for the bus or sitting on the bus or waiting in line at the grocery store -- do you have any spare moments like that in your day where you can feel like five minutes is an easily achievable goal?

The other thing I would suggest is, just for now, banning a lot of words that you find relatively hard, and keeping the ones that you find relatively easy -- it's motivating when you have more success, it's motivating when you can go faster, and you can re-add those words when you get your motivation back. How much time per day are you spending on reviews now? If you can do all your reviews in 15 minutes, that's just five minutes three times a day.

Also, if you want to write love notes to your gf, write love notes to your gf! Use a dictionary if you have to. It's good practice!

I have only a half-baked suggestion: try to increase the degree to which Skritter is reinforcing material that you are currently studying, since you seem to be doing some reading and listening to dialogs and don't have a motivation issue there. I say "half baked" because I dont' really know how to tell you to implement it. In its simplest form Skritter is a tool to make you remember everything you have ever studied. At the other extreme it can be used as a cram tool (not advising this, just noting it). What you want is probably some way to weave the words that you are currently working on into your queue but with higher frequency, so that you feel you are coming closer to mastery on something that you are currently focusing on already. I don't know if there is a way to work out this sort of compromise in Skritter. Maybe you could just put your current list into the queue and manually add words from it at a rapid clip, and then spend a few minutes doing a short cram session using only the new list after you finish whittling down the main queue.

Oh yes, by all means follow the advice above from emilyhorner to get started on those cute notes now. And any word that you need to look up in a dictionary while writing those notes you can add to your Skritter queue. I guarantee you will learn those words faster than average, and every time they pop up you may get a little smile on your face.

Another suggestion: make a habit out of it. Preferably do it every day at a certain time. I read that it takes about 3 weeks to form new habits, but afterward it will be easier to do it then not to.

In my experience it is best to review daily, including weekends. If you don’t feel like it on a particular day, *don’t* skip it, but make at least a lousy effort (e.g., 1 min) to reinforce the habit.

I think the others have already come up with some good suggestions and it certainly doesn't hurt trying them out and see if they work for you. One thing that hasn't been mentioned and that I feel is crucial is how much you're using Skritter and how that time is distributed. If you're trying to use Skritter for an hour straight before going to bed, it's sort of obivous that there will be trouble, but if you experience the same thing even though you only spend ten minutes, we're dealing with a completely different problem. My guess is that you're studying more than ten minutes per day, though.

My suggestion is to break things down. I have learnt a lot of characters and words using various programs, including Skritter, and what I find work bes is to never exceed ten minutes or so per session. Ideally, I review characters and words in intervals of just a few minutes while waiting for the bus, in the queue at the supermarket or while waiting for a slow website to load. Spread it out and you can cover at least 30 minutes per day without even thinking of it as studying!

I've written more about this several times, so feel free to check out the following articles if you're interested:

http://www.hackingchinese.com/vocabulary-in-your-pocket/
http://www.hackingchinese.com/diversified-learning-is-smart-learning/

Please report in a week or so and tell us how it's going!

You can also set mini-goals for yourself in each short study session. For example:

I'm going to Skritter until my review queue drops by X number of items (50, or 100 maybe).

I'm going to Skritter until the daily timer hits X (five minutes from current time, or up to a round number).

I'm going to Skritter until I get X prompts in a row correct. (10, 20, etc.)

For intensive study: I'm going to write an example sentence in my notebook for every time I write a character wrong on Skritter. Stop after X number of sentences.

Then once you hit your mini-goal, check your motivation level. Do you feel excited? Set another mini-goal! A different kind! Do you feel tired? Go do something else for a bit. But come back and do another short session when you finish that.