Keep in mind, though… these aren’t really good “long term” techniques, but if they get you going in the right direction them I’m all for it. Go ahead and try these on other things besides Japanese study too. You’ll find they work just about anywhere where motivation is a concern. Let’s do this thing.

Imagine the Finished Product

One particularly neat (and easy) brain trick is to simply just imagine the finished product before you start. Say you’re learning a set of kanji. As you sit down to get started, imagine yourself being able to read all of the kanji and associated vocab words. Imagine how you’ll feel when you get done. Feels good, doesn’t it? Ahhh, those feel-good brain chemicals are being released now. Ooh, that’s encouraging me to want to study so I can reach this end goal and be happy, finally!

This won’t work if you do it all the time, but it’s nice in a pinch. Creating those good feelings that we get from finishing something we don’t necessarily want to do can create a nice association with the actions. If you don’t normally like studying kanji, doing this will slowly but surely turn you into someone who kind of enjoys studying kanji. Them chemicals are teaching you to like it, whether you like it or not.

Try it out the next time you have to study something you don’t want to. Imagine a nice outcome, and enjoy the feeling of having learned something new. You can read all these kanji that you couldn’t read before! How amazing is that? Oh, wait, now it’s actually time to study them. Strangely, I feel good about it now. Hmmm.

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing

You should give this one a try. Might be hard with past goals that you already have, but with future goals it might be worth a shot. You can even come up with some small goals to try this out on. Maybe your goal is to learn these next 100 kanji? Cool, don’t let anyone know you’re doing it. It’s our little secretsesessss, precious.

I don’t think this works for everyone, but it’s not going to hurt if you do it a few times to see if it’s effective with you. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t follow through with your goals (aren’t we all?) then this might be for you. On the other hand, maybe you should be setting higher stakes, instead. Mix and match and see how it goes.

Take Studying Away When You Want It Most

Photo by thecrazyfilmgirl

I’ve written about this before, but I thought it was worth mentioning again. When you’re at the point in your study session where you want to continue… stop. Take the candy away from the baby while the baby still wants the candy (not when she’s asleep). This idea actually came from a Haruki Murakami Book (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running). He said that he would stop writing when he wanted to continue, so that way when he woke up in the morning he’d want to keep writing, and then motivation wasn’t an issue.

You can use this idea on just about anything else, too, including learning Japanese. Essentially, you’re using reverse psychology on yourself even though you know you’re using reverse psychology on yourself (does that make it double reverse psychology?). If you do this you’ll put down your Japanese studies, then be able to jump right back into it next time, motivation already ready to go. So give it a try sometime. It might be a little painful but it’s worth it if it works, I think. Let me know how it goes for you!

Other Ways To Trick Your Brain

There are plenty of other ways to trick your brain into wanting to study. Some are:

• Try changing your environment. If you find that your computer area makes you prone to distractions, go someplace completely different where that trigger does not exist. Move away from bad triggers and you’re left with more motivation to do the thing you want to do.
• Try changing the temperature to 77°F (25° C). This is supposedly the ideal temperature for being able to focus.
• Natural light and sun supposedly make you more productive as well. Try to get some sun to get those motivational juices flowing. Don’t get too much, though, that would make you sleepy.
• Take a nap. Sure, you spend 20 minutes taking a nap (don’t take a longer one, you’ll be groggy), but it’s amazing how much this helps with willpower and therefore motivation. I sometimes find myself staring at my computer screen, hardly doing anything. Then, I take a nap and magically I’m a magic productivity guru once again.

There are many more brain tricks you can do to help your motivation, I’m sure, so if you know any of them be sure to share them in the comments! We can all use a little more help when it comes to motivation at times (unless you’re a robot. Are you a robot?), so I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with! :)

This idea is one of those things. I think it works pretty well… sometimes, and it probably won’t work for everyone. The idea is simple: When studying Japanese (or doing anything else), you should stop when you least want to (i.e. when you want to keep studying). Sounds counter intuitive, right? Here’s why it works.

Where It Came From

I learned this idea from Haruki Murakami’s non-fiction book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” which is the only book of his that I’ve read. I liked it. It was inspiring and fun to peer into his mind a bit (and even got me to consider running… hasn’t really worked that well though, I’m more into sitting). In his book, he said that he stops writing when he most wants to continue writing. What!? That’s crazy. Shouldn’t you take advantage of that motivation to keep going and keep writing? Murakami didn’t think so, and I think he’s on to something.

I’m paraphrasing, but he said that the reason he stops writing when he’s most motivated to continue writing is because that means he knows he’s going to be excited to write some more the next day. Since he stopped when he didn’t want to stop, he’s going to look forward to starting up again the next day and won’t waste any time doing so.

That’s genius.

For the last week, I’ve been trying that with work. When I feel like I want to keep going, I stop. Because I want to keep going, I wake up earlier the next day than I normally would, and am able to jump right back into work, whereas normally it might take some time to get settled in and figure out what I want to do. That right there is wasted time, and this solves it.

Why It Works

The reason this works is because of the way our brains deal with motivation. When it comes down to it, we don’t want to do the things we’re supposed to and we want to do the things we’re not supposed to. By using this “stop when you’re motivated” method, you can flip this on its head. By telling yourself and making yourself not do something, it becomes more desirable, and you’ll want to do it even more.

On top of this, we’re also canceling out the most difficult part of doing any type of work or study (Japanese, of course)… Getting started. How many times have you said “I have to study my Japanese,” and then you just sat there putting it off or doing something else. Once you get started, though, it’s easy to get in the zone and zero in your concentration. The hard part, as you all know, is getting to that point. There’s something about “getting started” that’s daunting, but by stopping right in the middle of something, you know exactly where to start, and you’re even excited to start.

It’s kind of like when your parents used to read you books. They’d stop somewhere exciting, and the next night, you’d know exactly where to start up again (and you looked forward to it all day long).

Applying This To Your Japanese Studies

I’m going to talk about applying this to your Japanese studies, but of course you can apply this almost anywhere else in your life as well. Give it a try for at least a little while, and if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work.

When you’re studying Japanese, get yourself a timer and have it go off every five minutes. At each five minute interval, write down on a piece of paper how much you want to continue. You can even come up with some kind of ranking scale (three out of six batwings?) to help you gauge things. As you go through, keep track of your excitement / motivation levels. Once your ranking scale gets up to somewhere between 80-100%, immediately stop what you’re doing, whether it’s in the middle of a kanji deck or in the middle of writing a sentence. All that’s important is that you’re honest with yourself in terms of how motivated you are to continue, and that you stop when you’re supposed to stop.

It won’t feel good to stop, sure, but that’s the point. You’re giving yourself something to really look forward to, which ends up leading to much more consistent Japanese studies, which is way way better in the long run.

So, give it a shot! Tell me how it works for you in the comments (or why you think this is totally bogus).

I’m continuing to experiment with this even as