明けましておめでとうございます!
It’s 2023, which means that it’s time for your New Year’s resolutions to make contact with reality. If you’re like most people, the goals you enthusiastically set in 2022 to read more, get fitter, and learn a language are now being tested. And if you’re most people, your New Year’s resolutions will not survive even through January. Sticking with New Year’s resolutions requires creating new habits. And creating new habits is just plain hard. If learning a language is one of your goals for 2023, here are a few tips on making resilient habits.
Stagger New Habits.
Creating new habits is exhausting in a measurable way. It also has a fancy name: ego depletion. The gist is that your willpower to create new habits is finite, so trying to create heaps of new habits all at once dramatically decreases the chance of any one new habit from sticking. Instead of giving up on the multiple habits you want to create, stagger the introduction of new habits by two weeks. Once you form a new habit, the ego-depletion for maintaining it goes down considerably. This then allows you to effectively focus your willpower on adding your next new habit. If your goal this year is to floss your teeth every day and learn the 常用漢字, then try flossing your teeth for the first two weeks before beginning your 漢字-studying habit. Don’t let the new habits overwhelm you all at once. Stagger, and you will succeed.
Get Specific.
If your goals for 2023 are to “get healthier” or “get more fluent”, those New Year’s resolutions will be DOA unless you have a specific plan. The more you can articulate exactly what you will do, and when and where you will do it, the easier it is to focus your willpower. And the easier it is to focus your willpower, the easier it is to successfully form a sustainable new habit. A goal of exercising once a week is worse than a goal of exercising every Wednesday for thirty minutes. But even that is not specific enough. Your goal needs to be as specific as “running on the treadmill every Wednesday at 6:00 am for thirty minutes at the gym that is half a mile from your home.” Without specificity, your willpower will be dispersed and ineffective. Get specific.
Design to Remind.
Once you have specific, staggered goals, the last major obstacle to forming a new habit is remembering to do it consistently. Don’t just “try to remember” and get disappointed when you forget. Instead, design your life so that you cannot avoid being reminded of your new habit. If your goal is to exercise each morning, sleep in your workout clothes. If your goal is to bring your own lunch to work, put your keys on the meal you prepped to take to work. If you want to read a few pages of a book in Japanese each day before you sleep, put the book on your bed when you wake up. Whatever your habit may be, design your life so you can’t avoid it.
A Habit for Learning to Read Japanese Fluently.
If your goal is to read Japanese fluently, I will give you the habit that worked for me. Choose a manga you are excited to read, and read it every day until you have looked up three words. Yes, three words. Do this first thing in the morning, right after you wake up and before anything, while drinking your first cup of coffee. You might not get past a couple of sentences the first few times you do this. But if you keep this habit up, by June you will be enjoying multiple pages or even chapters of your favorite manga before you look up your third word.
And if you’re not at a level where you can begin reading manga, consider using an SRS like Ashiba every day to build the vocab and 漢字 foundation to get there. 頑張って！