Consistency is one of the foundational pillars to growing your skills. It’s far better to study a little each day versus one big binge on the weekend. To that end, making your studies of Japanese a habit is a best-practice. Habits require no willpower and happen without conscious decision-making.
James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” is perhaps the best book on habit building ever written. There’s a reason it’s sold more than 15 million copies worldwide in more than 50 languages. Clear details the biology, psychology and neuroscience of habit formation and teaches how one can form new, good habits and break old, bad ones.
I strongly recommend you get this book (I even found a Japanese version on Audible 😀) but until such time, here are his four laws of building better habits and some sample strategies you can try.
The 1st Law: Make It Obvious
The brain is a prediction engine, constantly taking in information and analyzing it subconsciously. When you experience something repeatedly, your brain begins to notice what’s important and highlights the relevant cues that trigger the result.
A cue is the first step in the habit loop. The cue triggers a craving, which leads to an action (the habit) and a reward follows. Cues can take any number of forms, e.g. the “bing” of a phone notification, the smell of fresh baked cookies, and so on. The two most common cues in habits are time and location.
I’ve written previously about “implementation intention,” the plan you make beforehand detailing when and where to act. Just having this plan can double your probability of following through. Implementation intentions can leverage both time and location cues, by forming an “if-then” statement similar to “If situation X arises, I will perform response Y.” In my case, one of my Japanese implementation intentions is “While I drink my morning coffee, I’ll read my current Japanese resource (e.g. SatoriReader.com).”
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action.
James Clear
Your job to make the time and location for your studies so obvious that with enough repetition, you brain learns the cue and you’ll start getting the urge to study without even being consciously aware of the cue.
One easy way to do this is via “habit stacking” in which completion of an existing habit (e.g. pouring my morning coffee) becomes the cue to start the desired habit (e.g. reading Japanese). Make your own habit stacking formula of the form, “After I [current habit], I will [your Japanese study habit].”
The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
Simply put, the more attractive an action is, the more likely it is to become habit forming. Habits are all share the common biological signature of a dopamine spike and are, in fact, dopamine-driven feedback loops. An interesting fact about dopamine is that it’s released not only when you experience pleasure but when you anticipate pleasure. Thus, we need to make studying Japanese attractive, because it’s the expectation of a reward that motivates us to act.
Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.
James Clear
A tool to make studying (or any action) more attractive is via “temptation bundling,” where you pair the habit you need (study Japanese) with the habit you want (some reward you already enjoy). For example, if you’re using Anki to learn Heisig’s kanji keywords, you might create a temptation bundling formula such as, “After I review my Heisig flashcards, I’ll go for my morning swim.” (I’m talking to YOU, Mark 😁).
The 3rd Law: Make It Easy
A common question is, “How long does it take to form a habit?” But the question you should ask is, “How many does it take to form a habit?”
Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with that habit. This means that simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encoding a new habit.
James Clear
To that end, to reduce friction and get those reps in, you want to make it as easy as possible to habitually study Japanese. Do you have a designated location with your study resources readily available (e.g. a desk with nothing but your Japanese books on it, a separate screen on your iPhone that contains only your study apps and dictionaries, whatever)? If not, create such an environment that’s conducive to frictionless study.
Procrastination is another frequent blocker that can interfere with getting our desired habits started. Lots to say about this later, but for now, utilize the Two-Minute Rule to make it easy: if you feel yourself procrastinating, just tell yourself you only need to study for two minutes, then you are allowed to quit without guilt or shame. Odds are, once you hit your two minutes, whatever was causing you to procrastinate in the first place will fade away and you’ll just keep going. And if not? Just stop and start again later. For now, just master the habit of showing up.
The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying
The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop. But a key point is that we’re looking for immediate satisfaction.
The Cardinal Rule Of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
James Clear
For Japanese, this means you should choose activities that bring immediate rewards, not vague, far-off benefits like “fluency.” Have fun in the moment, while you’re studying. How, you ask? Consider some of the following:
- Find a tutor you like working with and get some one-on-one conversation practice;
- Watch a show or movie you like in Japanese;
- Find a Japanese language podcast on a topic you’re into;
- If manga or anime are your thing, work those into your studies.
The important part is find comprehensible input of some form on a topic you actually care about. I’m not into anime (sorry, fans), so I spend zero seconds watching it, but I do love me some “Atomic Habits” so I listen to the audiobook and read online blogs on such things, e.g. https://www.lifehacker.jp/.
One practical form of immediate satisfaction is using a habit tracker to visualize your progress. Any number of apps are available but something as simple as putting a big red “X” on a calendar can work wonders (just ask Jerry Seinfeld). Trackers provide a signal that we are moving forward, and that alone can make us more motivated to continue down that path. “Don’t break the chain,” as Seinfeld said about his calendar, can also be a powerful stimulus to keep us from skipping our study session.
Action Steps
- Write out your implementation intention(s) stating when and where you’ll study, possibly stacking it after an existing habit.
- Identify an existing pleasurable habit can you bundle with studying.
- Remove as much friction as possible by creating an environment (physical or virtual) that is conducive to studying. Use the Two-Minute Rule if procrastination rears its ugly head.
- Find comprehensible input on topics you care about.
- Use a tracker to visualize your progress.