How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

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thevagrant88
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How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby thevagrant88 » Sat Jul 31, 2021 2:35 am

Disclaimer: this is very much a rant/vent post so sorry if it comes off as a bit emotional.

So I first started learning Japanese over a year an a half ago. In the beggining I hit it hard but eventually hit a wall, maybe after just a few months. Since then, I keep finding myself putzing around with it so I don't loose what I've learned. I've made no meaningful progress in well over a year and regularly find myself reviewing what I've already done or making the most incremental of progress possible with new material. Sometimes, I'd get intense bouts of motivation but it fad almost as quickly as it came. Recently, I had a thought pop into my head that I honestly hadn't had before, "Why am I doing this?" I genuinly dislike or am apathetic to studying the language, I have no investment in the culture--not anymore at least, I don't know any Japanese people, I don't watch much anime and have never touched a manga book in my life, I do not enjoy learning to read it and find the ardent defenders of Kanji to be so grating and have the shallowest of arguments in its favor, etc. Yet still I'm just kinda, doing it. The only real reason I might be able to think of would be playing video games in Japanese, but that's a shit load (sorry for the language) of grueling drudgery to do something I can do in English or Spanish anyway.

I see this, I see how illogical it is, but I can't get over this "sunk cost" way of thinking. It's almost like I don't want Japanese to "win" but I'm losing so much in the process. You know what I'm not doing? Perfecting my Spanish, enjoying things in English, learning computer programming, getting back into playing music, or any million of other interests I could be exploring instead. Even now as I'm typing this, there's a part of me that doesn't want to make this post because I know it might actually lead to someone sharing thier experience of getting over this toxic thinking. That's kind of screwed up. I remember how obsessive I got in the early days of learning Spanish and I feel like with Japanese it's even worse. The final straw for me I think was that I recently realized that I think I really derive most of my language learning pleasure from using it. As an American living in a fairly major city, there are droves of other opprotunities to use language to make meaningful connections with people, opprotunities that I'm squandering because of my stubborness. Hell, even if my interests were entirely solitary, which is totally fine of course, I still have scores of other options I could be diving into. Even with other harder languages like Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Turkish, etc, I can at least use my keyboard to look up words without banging my head against the wall.

So this is where I'm at. I'm stuck in this viscious cycle and to be perfectly candid, it's making me uphappy. Even recognizing this, I still cannot definitively pull the plug. I've tried in the past, but I still find myself coming back, determind to crack Japanese and prove the naysayers wrong. I have no doubt, not even a little doubt, that I am not the only one who has dealt with this and I need to finally reach out to others for their experience. It's easy enough to put the book down, not picking it back up is where I need help. It's like Japanese is an abusive ex, I swear.

Thanks in advance.
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luke
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby luke » Sat Jul 31, 2021 2:54 am

thevagrant88 wrote:You know what I'm not doing? Perfecting my Spanish, enjoying things in English, learning computer programming, getting back into playing music, or any million of other interests I could be exploring instead.

Listen to your heart, my friend.

Keep your Japanese books or whatever you have. Who know, some years down the road you might become interested again and they'll be very helpful.

I once started learning the drums, which is a fairly simple instrument, compared to most. At least to get the some basics down. You don't even have to know pitch ;) If I had the book I used way all those years ago (about 30), it would be a bit easier to pick up again. I haven't had a real interest in doing it, but, I think that book of rhythms may be in the closet somewhere.

Same with language. If 10-20 years from now you want to learn Japanese again, you'll get up to speed much faster by reviewing that stuff that you already learned in the same format in which you learned it.

When I came back to Spanish after a 15 year lay-off, it didn't all come rushing back, but the old material is still familiar, instead of brand-new. There's comfort and consistency in that. Life makes more sense because there's some continuity to it.

Good luck!
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby devilyoudont » Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:25 am

I allow my wanderlust to guide me to potential new interests. I do not make large up front investments in new hobbies until I am sure I am sticking with them (after maybe a year of not dropping the hobby). Some of these things (crochet) turn out to be things I will be doing regularly for the foreseeable future. Some of these things (Korean, Spanish) are things I would like to return to but I don't have time for them in my life right now and I accept that I will need to relearn a lot/everything when I start them again. Some of these are things (Frisian, Origami) I am not ever going to return to, and I just appreciate the time I spent with them as an exploration. It is easier to do this if I allow myself to wander out just as I wandered in so that feelings of resentment do not start up. I like to explore. I don't need to set up a permanent home in every place I wander to.
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby smallwhite » Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:42 am

There was this colleague at work who everyone disliked because she was lazy and didn’t do what was expected of her. She was nice to me, though, and shared her wisdom with me: “I’m not not doing it; I’m just doing it later”. Now I say that to myself when I feel bad about not doing something. Works wonders.
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby Lisa » Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:24 am

There's a book, "What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite"... brains like ruts, ruts are comfy. It does sound like you should stop with the Japanese and find something that does either give you joy or has some value in your life, if working on Japanese really gives you neither. It might be something you have to make a firm resolution on... like quitting smoking or other bad habits....

The only sort of experience that might apply is with a nonprofit once... I stayed on even after I realized the group was badly run, not heading towards the goals, and the people were unfriendly. Yes, I'd made a commitment, but that was to what I thought the group was, and the reality ended up being different. If I'd only accepted the reality in front of my eyes (inexplicable as it was) and let go of the hopes and promise and the dreams... well, I'd have spared myself a lot of heartache.
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby luke » Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:52 am

Lisa wrote:If I'd only accepted the reality in front of my eyes (inexplicable as it was) and let go of the hopes and promise and the dreams... well, I'd have spared myself a lot of heartache.

You mean you kept on and that caused the heartache?

Sort of like in a relationship or job or something when there are questions in your head about whether to continue or look for something new or just quit looking? (and some of these questions don't have easy answers).

I think it's important to be gentle with ourselves too. We make decisions, sometimes good, sometimes less so, based on our understanding of a situation. Sometimes the situation changes, sometimes we change, sometimes our assessment of the situation changes. So many things.

There's a lyric from a song Against the wind by Bob Seger. I was thinking it was, "wish I knew now what I didn't know then". The internet tells me the words are different. But both what I thought was the lyric and what the internet says are the lyrics are pretty profound. (when you add it all up).
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby gsbod » Sat Jul 31, 2021 12:01 pm

After all the craziness of the last 18 months or so, I've come to think that the doctrine of delayed gratification, of working hard to achieve great things, is rather overrated. I'm not about to give in to a life of hedonistic excess or anything (don't have the constitution for it, to be honest). Rather, you've got to do what you need to do to earn a living, but when it comes to your leisure time I'm now of the view that the rewards need to manifest fairly quickly (if I clean the house, I get to enjoy a clean house straight away), or the activity needs to be satisfying in and of itself (I ride my bike because it's fun, it just happens that it's also good for me). If something is neither rewarding, nor satisfying, and it's not necessary to keep the wolves from the door, no need to beat yourself up about not wanting to do it any more!

Japanese is hard, especially if you don't have solid experience with other languages which use Chinese characters. But regardless of relative difficulty, getting to an advanced level in any language requires you to have regular contact with it. On the other hand, if you don't have regular contact with the language, what is the point learning a language to an advanced level anyway?

In terms of sunk costs and all that, given that you've been working on Japanese for several months, there will be a lot of stuff you couldn't forget now even if you wanted to. As for the rest, if a more suitable time for Japanese crops up later on in your life, it will be a lot easier for you to reactivate it than it was to learn it first time around. You'll also probably find yourself making new connections as you relearn things which will strengthen your knowledge further and in unexpected ways.

So, if you need permission to quit, permission granted!

(Here is my story: I studied Japanese several years ago, went through the obsessive Japanese phase which I think is common to a lot of us Japanese learners and passed JLPT N2 after about 4 years. I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of people to speak to face to face, the difficulty accessing mainstream TV and radio shows without resorting to piracy (no interest in anime aimed at the teenage boy market), and the fact that although it's relatively easy for me to get hold of the kind of Japanese books I might want to read, actually reading them is still really hard. So I stopped learning Japanese and picked up German from scratch. Once I reached a B1-ish level, I found people to speak to face to face, easy access to TV shows and radio shows I want to watch/listen to, and plenty of books I want to read that were within my grasp, and found myself catapulted to the dizzy heights of C1, which is now self sustaining. No regrets about learning Japanese, but I'm also very glad I switched to German.)
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 31, 2021 12:07 pm

I will be devils advocate. Your issue with Japanese doesn't appear to be the language but rather the perception that what you have learned has not given you pleasure. As you say, no investment in the culture or contact with native speakers. So before you throw away the time spent why not stop learning the language for one month and spend that time working on investment in the culture and people. If you live in a large city there is bound to be a Japanese expatriate club, or even try learning to play Go.

Perhaps investment in gaining a reason to learn the language is more profitable than just binning it completely. If you cannot find anything then dumping it is still an option.
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:40 pm

Life is too short for endless struggles that bear little fruit - unless, unless it's something that is important enough to make a difference. Like curing cancer or working out the mechanism for natural selection or reviving Cornish. If something is not returning any value to your life and is relatively unimportant (since Japanese is not going to disappear if you stop learning it) and has no real use for you, then just set it aside.
The central question I would ask myself is: am I doing it for actual functional reasons, or because of a vague dream? The latter associated with visions of 'being like all those people who learned Japanese and then could go about at parties saying: "Oh, yes...I also speak fluent Japanese."

There are also the terrible feelings you mention of both having potentially 'failed' and wasted time. Well, time that has passed has passed and can't be recovered, but you have control over the present and potentially the future for what you do now with Japanese. It's the chance to take control and spare yourself any further misery. I have regret at having stopped Cantonese, but it became hard and I ran out of opportunities to use it, so it wasn't practical. Of course I could have said: 'Right, I love Cantonese so much I'm going to move to Hong Kong and conquer this thing.' But I didn't because I couldn't and I was more devoted to other things like finishing university and playing in a brass band and attempting to marry my then girlfriend. It wasn't failure, it was a meaningful and practical choice.
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Re: How do/did you overcome your own sunk cost fallacy in language learning?

Postby tungemål » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:50 pm

Advantages of having tried to learn Japanese but not succeded:

- it is a general exercise for the brain, which will benefit you elsewhere. Some people solve sudokus, others study kanji
- now it looks really easy to learn German or Spanish
- and by the way, even if you only learned a few kanji it is fun to recognise them. For instance on tea boxes - you can say "yeah, that kanji means "tea". Works for chinese and japanese tea.
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