How to Supercharge Your Japanese by Setting Goals

Today we are going to talk about something that is often overlooked but extremely valuable:

goal setting.

First we will discuss a little bit about the importance of goal setting and then we will look at some specific goals you can choose to focus on in order to improve your Japanese.

It’s coming up to the New Year and you probably will make some New Year’s resolutions.

Resolutions are great and exciting but why do so many people set them and yet fail to keep them?

Many people set the goal of losing weight and you will see gyms reaching their fullest capacity during January. But by the middle of February, most of those newcomers are gone.

This is the same for anything from learning a language to quitting smoking. People set a goal but soon abandon it.

This happens because most people don’t really have goals. They have dreams without any plan in place to make them reality.

Napoleon Hill said that ‘a goal is a dream with a deadline’.

In other words, be specific.

Replace ‘I want to lose weight’ with ‘I want to lose 20 pounds by June 1^st’.

Instead of ‘I want to make money’ try ‘I want to make $100 a day by December 1^st’.

Most people who want to learn Japanese will say something like ‘I want to be fluent in Japanese’.

What does that mean? How do you define fluency? When do you want it by?

I would define fluency as being able to understand and contribute to 95 % of everyday conversations. If you can discuss the same subjects you do in your native language, and your speaking doesn’t significantly slow down the conversation, I would say you are fluent.

The simple act of setting goals will turbocharge your progress in learning Japanese.

A big reason for why most people do not achieve their goals is because they are not truly committed to their goals.

There is a quote that goes like this:

Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.

In order to become committed to doing something, you should make it a habit.

Just as it is difficult to break an old habit, it is difficult to make a new habit.

Some people say it takes 21 days to make a new habit stick.

Others say 30. And some other people say more or less.

Who knows if there is a specific period of time.

What I do know is that you can significantly speed up the rate, and the ease, of which you acquire a new habit by doing two things:

1. Anchoring
2. Planning

Anchoring

I mentioned this briefly in the article about supercharging your Japanese with Anki.

I made studying my Japanese vocabulary a habit by reviewing my flashcards every morning while eating breakfast. I was able to make this a habit by anchoring the new habit to an old, already ingrained habit.

If you do what I did, pretty soon you will have conditioned your mind to expect to review vocabulary when you make your breakfast.

Other ways to anchor new habits to old habits include:

• Listening to a Japanese podcast/audiobook whenever you get in the car. Have the tapes loaded and ready to go. You want to condition your mind to associate driving with listening to Japanese.
• Reviewing your flashcards when you go to the gym. Do you sit on an exercise bike for long periods of time? Download some flashcards to your phone, or carry around handmade ones, and review them whenever you start cycling.
• Watching Japanese TV whenever you watch TV in your own language. Make a commitment that for every hour you watch TV in English, you will watch an hour of Japanese TV. Pick some awesome anime and condition yourself to put it on whenever you find yourself reaching for the remote.
• Whenever you have to wait for something, review your flashcards. We spend a lot of our time waiting around for stuff. Waiting for transport, for meetings, for people to arrive, for things to begin. Make it a habit to fill that time with useful stuff.

Planning

We need to plan ahead and break our goals down into smaller goals.

A big reason why many people fail to achieve their goals is because they get overwhelmed.

Just look at this goal: learn to speak Japanese.

That is just too overwhelming.

You need to break it down and set sub-goals and each of these sub-goals has its own deadline.

Make sure that each sub-goal has your full commitment. Most people can’t multitask. Successful people don’t multitask. Focus on each goal and give it the time it deserves. Once you have achieved it, you can move on to the next goal

It’s much better to give your complete commitment and focus to just one or two goals at a time. Once you finish them you can move on to something else.

You will find that if you are only focusing on one goal at a time you will achieve it faster anyway.

If you have a job or go to school, you shouldn’t juggle too many things at once anyway.

Break your goals down like this:

Year goal

Monthly goal

Daily goal

 Setting goals and achieving them is fun.

When you set goals for yourself, set a deadline that is longer than you think you need to complete it.

For example, you can probably learn the kana on a weekend. But set the goal of a week just to make sure.

So, if your goal is to become fluent in Japanese by the end of the year, you need to make it your number one goal. Then you need to break it down into lots of smaller, achievable goals and make them your number one goal.

It takes baby steps to become a giant.

If you’re at a loss for what sub-goals to pick/what to focus on, I have listed some below that you could consider.

Pick one of these goals to give your primary focus.

Learn the Kana – Hiragana and Katakana – 2 Weeks

If you’ve just started out learning Japanese, this is where your time is best spent.

Learn how to write and read Japanese.

You don’t want to rely on romaji.

Trust me, learning the kana as early on as possible will give you the biggest bang for your buck and set you on the right course.

You can spend 1 week learning hiragana and the 2nd week learning katakana.

It shouldn’t even take you that long. You can learn both of them in a weekend. Especially with great free resources like Japanese Ammo’s ultimate guides to learning hiragana and katakana. We’ve even developed some flashcards for you to make the process super fun and super kawaii.

So, if you’re a beginner, start by learning the kana in your first two weeks. Enjoy the process. Get it done and move on.

Once you’re done with this goal, you will always be able to maintain it as long as you keep learning and reading Japanese.

Learn Kanji ~ 4 Months

This looks like a scary one.

But it’s just like anything. Break it down and learn it bit by bit. Kanji by kanji.

You can get away with not knowing kanji for a long time. There are many examples of foreigners who speak adequate Japanese but cannot read the newspaper or a book because of all the kanji. Don’t be that person though.

Once you can hold a conversation in Japanese – and maybe a bit before that – start learning kanji.

You only need to know the Jōyō Kanji: 2,136 characters that are in standard use.

You can make your job easier through mnemonics and learning radicals.

There will come a time when Japanese Ammo will release a guide for making the learning of Kanji super easy – not to mention, super kawaii – so we’ve got your back in the future. We will talk about how to make that a reality, and how to win a free guide, very soon.

If you don’t learn the kanji like Japanese schoolchildren – through rote repetition – you could have the Jōyō Kanji committed to memory in 4 months.

All you need to do is study approximately 20 new kanji a day while reviewing the old ones with Anki, and you will have the kanji you need to know in 4 months.

You could give yourself some breathing room to set the goal at 5 months.

Once you’ve learned the main kanji, you will win bragging rights among all fellow Japanese learners. Just kidding. Who learns Japanese just to show off? (Shifty face)

Jump Up a Speaking Level – This takes as long as it takes

We don’t have to put a time deadline on this one.

If your number one goal is to move up a level in Japanese ability, just keep going until you accomplish it.

You can judge your level and see what skills you need to achieve the next one by consulting the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

This is what people mean when they talk about languages in terms of A1 or A2 or B1 or C2, etc.

If you are A1, you are a complete beginner. If you are C2, you have a native ability.

How long it will take for you to jump up a level is completely dependent on you, your commitment, and your level.

The learning curve is not linear. It might feel easy to jump from A1 to A2 but jumping from C1 to C2 might be a real struggle. Who knows? Just stick with this goal until you have achieved it.

To accomplish this goal, you just need lots of exposure to the language. Book lessons for at least three days a week for many weeks to come. You can find cheap deals and effective teachers on iTalki.

Final Thoughts

Learning a language is one of the best things you can do but so many people fail because the goal is too big.

Break down your language learning goal into lots of smaller goals and celebrate every time you accomplish one of them.

I wish you all the best in your fight for fluency, young samurai.

Benjamin Franklin said: ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’

So, make sure you prepare. Set your goals, conquer them, relish in the victory, and move on.

If you would like to see more articles like this/articles discussing the psychology of language learning, please let me know in the comments below.

Have you found success in learning anything by breaking it down into small manageable goals? Let us know in the comments.

Ganbatte ne!