~ 150 hours, and getting back on the train
Well, it's been a long time. The last update almost 2 months ago wasn't very impressive, and this one will be even less so. I've gotten a little over 30 hours in since then, which if you do the math is much less than an hour per day. I've let my "daily" activities slip by many days.
So what happened? Well, you know, you know... I got distracted by some stuff going on with my other interests towards the middle of August, and once you drop Anki for a day or two, it becomes overwhelming to return to it because of all the built-up reviews. Soon after, some changes to my school schedule made it so I'm suddenly busy doing other things and I've been having trouble getting back into the habit. All of this is just excuses though. Truth is, I have trouble sticking to things in general so any small trouble is hard to recover from.
But recovering I am! Barely. I missed a couple days this week, but on the whole the past couple weeks have gone a lot better than previously. I finished the book Начинаем читать по-русски, am still plugging away at Anki, started 101 Conversations in Easy Russian, and have made some progress in both Assimil books. Now that Начинаем читать по-русски is done, I'll be adding in Short Stories for Russian Learners on the next rotation. If I can keep up this rate, I should finish these four books, plus the intermediate Short Stories reader, by the end of the year. And that's taking into account how terrible the past month has been. If I can get back into a habit, I can perhaps finish by Thanksgiving.
I had planned on finishing these books by hour 225, but I don't think that will happen, especially if I do manage to fix my habits and get my hour+ in a day. That's okay, because I've been considering pushing back my next goalpost to 300 anyway. The hours go by fast when I'm actually on the ball, and, predictably, I'm not learning new things as fast as I was at the very start.
I've been considering how to get back on track on a more permanent basis, and it comes down to a few things:
Try to do things around the same time every day. Doing things at the same hour is going to be impossible because of my schedule, but I'm at least trying to associate certain activities with doing certain language activities. For example, four days a week I take a bus to school, but not at the same time every day. I'm going to try and finish my daily anki on that bus ride (I'll have to come up with something similar for the other three days). I'm also trying to watch a CI video or two while preparing and eating lunch everyday. I do my reading as soon as I get home from work/school for the night. That is, except for one day, when I get home from my second shift way too late. On that day I have to do reading earlier, when I get home from my first shift.
Turning down Anki. It's true that I can handle 20/day just fine still, if I am keeping up, but the instant I miss a day it becomes a big source of demotivation. I'll be moving down to 10 per day. This is fine-- I feel like I need time for all the cards I've seen so far to sink in anyway.
Finding useful activities that I can do whenever and where-ever. Instead of relying entirely on my book readers for getting my daily reading in, I've started using the app "Russian Readers," which I can quickly pull up whenever I have a few minutes. I'd been using Duolingo in these moments before, but reading feels more productive, and it can replace my book rotation as my reading check-off if I run out of time for a proper session at my desk. I own the Kindle editions of 101 Conversations and the Short and Intermediate Short Stories and those may also work for this purpose, though the audiobook isn't built in, which means they'll have a bit more of a set-up no matter what.
I do think that eventually it'll be easier to find time during the day to do something. There's a lot of time when I can only do things without audio input (such as at work), or things without visual input (such as when driving, doing chores, and walking places). I'm still mostly uncomfortable reading without audio input out of uncertainty that I'm pronouncing the words correctly in my head, and easy podcast episodes are still only very comprehensible to me with full attention. I hope that by the New Year or so, I'll be more comfortable with both activities.
Anyway, that's all for now. See you in 2 weeks! Hopefully with 14 day study streak :)