That was not a successful month.
Period: April 14 - May 13, 2022.
What I did: 🔗
- ✅ Made it to Month 3.
- ✅ Grammar study - only a few times, but it happened.
- 😰 Slipped on my Streak around May 6 after 38 days. Didn’t recover.
- 😰 Slipped on Anki, almost immediately. On and off.
- ❌ Establish routines
Reflections: 🔗
Where to start…
Remaining consistent has felt like a chore. Completing both Duolingo and Anki each day is tiring. It wasn’t exciting. Even though it was only 30-45 mins of work, I ended exhausted and demotivated. There was no energy to do additional study. Not the feeling I want from this.
Where is this coming from?
- Trying to hit a daily streak on 2 different platforms - Duolingo and Anki. Duolingo often won (thanks to the guilt-tripping Owl), but felt less rewarding as I was just doing it to record the streak and didn’t fit with my general areas of curiosity. Anki on the other hand is entirely words I’ve chosen, so it’s entirely content I’ve selected. 👋 Duolingo, Anki has won.
- Overcommitment to low-reward activities. Vocab recall isn’t fun. I don’t wake up wanting to do flashcards, but I understand it’s necessary. On Anki, I felt a little overwhelmed and my recall was weak, so I got a lot of words wrong. Missing words made the sessions longer and more tiring, reducing the desire to do any additional study. I want to be able to spend 10-20 mins on vocab practice - enough to make progress, but not so much it’s a burden. I’m reducing the words on Anki (5 new per day, 100 reviews per day) which I can do in 10-15 mins. There’s also the bonus that I can choose to do “Custom Study” on Anki if i’m extra motivated.
- I haven’t established routines. I haven’t found a good time to do my Spanish study. This might be because of the dread, or time commitment. Either way, my hope is the shortened commitment will make it easier to fit in. During the Covid Lockdowns, I got into going for daily walks. I plan on doing 20-40 min morning walks, then doing my 10-20 min Anki right when I get home. I hope this works (Narrator: It did!).
Fingers crossed this brings back some excitement and motivation.
On a positive note - I quite enjoyed my three Grammar Study sessions. I’m working through “Complete Spanish Grammar”. The exercises are useful practice and it provides a lot of additional vocab for me to add to Anki. I’ve only made it through Chapter 1 so far.
I’ve already made some of these changes and feel better going into next month.
Plan for next month: 🔗
- Focus on Anki, get that daily streak.
- Tie in Anki to a daily walk to establish routine.
- Make time for more dedicated study sessions (on Grammar, or otherwise).
- Connect my different methods of study - my Anki and dedicated study should be related.
- Allow myself the space to explore topics interesting to me, not just the next chapter.
- (Bonus) Begin speaking practice via YouTube Videos or try an iTalki lesson.
Quantifying progress: 🔗
Forgot to record info
Read Part 3: Anki Simulator.