Hello all,

I've been having a crazy schedule this semester. As a result, I realize that I am giving little to no time to practice my hanzi... although I get speaking practice nearly every day.

However I am pretty sure some out there are way busier than I am. What are your tips to finding time to get on your computer, tablet, and practice for a sufficient amount of time?

Thank you all :)

Stop all attempts at having a social life/keeping your residence clean.

Make a daily goal for Skritter time and do not let yourself go to bed until you have met it.

Put a low priority on things like seeing friends, cleaning, cooking, TV, and browsing the internet. You can only be motivated if you see your progress so keep checking the progress section. Realize that external motivators will not bring you happiness (my mom/teacher/etc. is making me do it). Tell yourself you enjoy studying, learning new things and you are doing it for you. Set short term achievable goals (no longer than 3 months). Listen to some motivational songs before studying, I like the ROCKY soundtrack and Transformers the animated movie soundtrack. Set aside a specefic time for studying every day. Try to keep the time consistant (ex: 1 hour every day not 3 hours on Monday and 4 on Friday) and don't cram.

Get a GALAXY Tab or equivalent mobile device for studying when you have free time on the go.

Well studying is definitely something I love as I want to make chinese my major. However since I need to complete lower division courses first, work, take care of family and girlfriend, things are quite hard to manage!

Getting a tablet would indeed help... sucks they're out of budget for me :)

I scritter while watching TV/a movie. That way I get my movie fix while maintaing my studies

Make sure the skritter website/practice page is a really obvious bookmark. Just open the page every time you get on your computer, or habitually, like every time you check your e-mail, then open Skritter.

You won't necessarily practice every time, but over the course of the day little sessions can build up to 10 or 15 minutes, and it doesn't feel like a slog.

Try doing it first thing in the morning. Wake up ten minutes early and skritter for some minutes before doing anything else. This will insure a few minutes per day, not much but it adds up and keeps you in practice.

You could pay someone to beat you up if you haven't done your Skrittering.

You also might try giving up Skritter for a while then when you realize how many characters you've forgotten you'll have some motivation for the future.

Punish your self by blocking yourself from something enjoyable/less important till you hit your goal. I personally love playing 三國志XI but it gets in the way of skitter time as its excessively time consuming and addictive. I try to punish myself by not allowing my self to play until I hit one hour of skitter. Some days I can't fit skritter in but those days I don't have leisure time anyways. Also if I break the rule and play, then don't get my hour, I might ground myself for the next day from the game and TV.

Scheduling a time of day works wonders too. I can't motivate myself to study a book but when I scheduled lessons with a tutor I kinda force myself to study by planning ahead. Think of a way that you can schedule it in. You might lower your target rate to 87% so you can get through more characters on less time as well.

Helixness, I can relate to the challenges you are experiencing. I'll offer my thoughts, below.

There have been some suggestions here to punish, beat, and force yourself into Skritter by neglecting other parts of your life. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach. Skritter does require a great deal of commitment, as you probably already know. But in the long-run, if you are going to learn thousands of characters, over several years (probably), then brutalizing yourself probably isn't going to work (for most of us). You'll just burn yourself out and give up.

Why are you Skrittering? Unless it's just to cram for a test, you're probably in this for the long haul. One thought that vexes me is that Skritter may never end--at least, not for the foreseeable future, until I memorize all the characters I need to be literate in Chinese. If I give up before that, it was wasted investment.

Make Skritter a sustainable part of your life. Somebody recommended finding time early in the morning to do some, and this works for me. I spend 10-20 minutes at it, in the morning before work, while listening to the news and having coffee. After work, I try to find time to put another 20-60 minutes into it, depending on the day. On some days, where I have no time or energy for Skrittering, I make up for it the next day. And sometimes a few days go by when I neglect my Skritter responsibilities, and I spend a greater amount of time on the weekends in order to catch up.

It helps to remember why you're doing it--to read and write Chinese. How many people can claim to do that (outside of China, of course!). Another reason not to become a Skritter hermit, and to maintain other hobbies/pursuits--to keep that outside perspective that allows you to understand what an accomplishment it is to know even a hundred characters. I also think it's a good idea--perhaps necessary--to supplement Skritter with other language learning techniques. If you aren't feeling as though you're making progress speaking and using the language, you may start to wonder what value simply memorizing characters is.

Motivation becomes even more important later on, I find, as the tiem it takes to review what you have learned eats up the time you have available to make new progress. Because of this, there is something of a "diminishing rate of return" that can only be made up for with more time and effort.

Take these reflections for what they're worth. As I said, it's all been on my mind recently, as I have tried to maintain my commitment after over a year of daily Skrittering. I've learned a great deal of characters, but find myself in a difficult "hump" phase, where I dont' quite know enough to read anything substantial, and am still looking at a long road ahead before I feel like this investment has really paid off with a useable skill.

Regards,
James

I have two tips for making sure that you get some time to practice every day (assuming you can use Skritter on a mobile device):
1. public transport
2. toilet

Obviously, no. 1 won't work if you walk or drive to the school, and you may have problems with no. 2 if you have a Chinese-style squat toilet. :)

Actually, in my experience, no.2 is easier with a squat toilet. ;)

James, I'm a bit afraid to ask, but how come?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/number+two

That's nice that in addition to Chinese I can improve my English here too, and find funny puns in my own writing. :)

Say no. It helps alot;)

@IamMiky I'm sorry, but after reading this I can't help but imagine you helping a giant furry beast:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

I know that when I stop skittering for some time it will be even harder (and painful!) to work off the huge backlog that you'll have, so that keeps me going to spend at least half an hour every day. Actually　ｒｅｇｒｅｔ　ｔｈａｔ　Ｉ　ｈａｄ　ｓｔｏｐｐｅｄ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｓｋｒｉｔｔｅｒ　ｆｏｒ　ｌｉｋｅ　ａ　ｙｅａｒ，　Ｉ　ｃｏｕｌｄ　ｂｅ　ｍｕｃｈ　ｆｕｒｔｈｅｒ　ｎｏｗ　Ｉ　ｇｕｅｓｓ．

Plus I usually skritter when I watch TV/movies (without subtitles) that aren't ugely challenging and based on dialogues.

@jww1066 It looks like "Please stop!" could be an even more effective alternative then;)

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/please-stop.html

Great page, thanks "alot" ! B-)

Best, Miky

<- @Toilet

Regularity is the main thing for me. There's a kind of vicious circle in which you don't practice for a day or two, your backlog goes through the roof, you lose motivation, etc. etc. But if I have a regular slot, then this helps. I think the long view is important, too. My Skritter progress graph looks like the himalayas at the moment (and I'm not sure if I'm ascending them or descending them...), but the trick seems to be not to get frustrated with the inevitable forgetting. I find it both alarming and reassuring when Chinese 留学生 friends here in the UK themselves forget the writing of characters.

If internet distraction is a problem, use Self Control for mac -http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/ - or a windows/linux equivalent. I use this to stop me checking work email at the weekends, so freeing up time to use Skritter.