Fear, Pain, and Boredom

There are three major obstacles that will try to prevent you from reading Japanese fluently. All three obstacles are deadly in their own way, and each arrives at different times.

Fear is the first obstacle you will face. Fear tells you that you aren’t good enough to understand the content fully, you aren’t learning fast enough, and you’ll never get there. Fear will try to protect you from wasted time or disappointment by stopping you before you start. But that’s exactly the reason not to listen to fear—it’s all lies. Fear tells you what isn’t true to prevent a future disappointment that will only occur with certainty … if you listen to fear. Don’t let fear drag you down. Keep moving and the clamoring voice of fear will die down.

But just as fear recedes, your next obstacle arrives—pain. Pain is not getting a sentence that you read five times. Pain is looking up every other word. Pain makes the interesting content unpleasant. But no pain, no gain. The trick with pain is to know when to tap out. Early on it may be one sentence in. Two months later, it may be one paragraph in. Don’t push past your limit, but recognize the small pains are where the learning takes place.

Once you’ve controlled your pain level and have a sustainable habit, boredom will rear its ugly head. Boredom arrives because you aren’t reading Japanese in the wild and instead are sticking to textbook sentences. Boredom is trying to read the newspaper in Japanese because wouldn’t that be impressive? Boredom will cause you to lose interest in your endeavor altogether, sapping you of all motivation. Boredom wins if you are not reading the content that got you interested in Japanese in the first place. Ditch the news, and open up your manga app.