6WC 6 Week Challenge - February 2016

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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tangleweeds
Green Belt
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 7:09 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Languages: English (N)
beginner: Irish
clearing cobwebs: Japanese
on the shelf: French, Latin
wanderlust: Norwegian, Vietnamese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=705
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Re: 6WC 6 Week Challenge - February 2016

Postby tangleweeds » Thu Mar 17, 2016 8:54 am

Finishing where I did was pretty satisfying, though each time I got sick for a week or so and lost a point in the rankings I was grumpy about it. But vowing to work harder was surprisingly unsuccessful. I seemed to have a certain amount of study stamina per day and that's that. If that gets overspent, my brain informs me it's napping as soon as I park the body someplace horizontal, and initiates a countdown toward system deactivation. I do a lot of learning consolidation and problem solving in my sleep, though.

I may have accidentally been cheating most of the way through, because I didn't tweet my times in a timely manner. With too many weird hours worked as a baker, my sense of yesterday vs today vs tomorrow is pretty lax. At what deadlines was I supposed to be reporting in? I looked a few times but couldn't find a complete description of the rules -- but I've also missed many things in plain sight.
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Brun Ugle
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
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Re: 6WC 6 Week Challenge - February 2016

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Mar 17, 2016 10:05 am

There is no real rule about when you have to tweet your times. Some people like to wait a few days and then tweet for several days at a time, others like to tweet each thing as soon as they finish it. The only real difference it makes is on your own individual graphs. I like to know how much I do each day and what kind of study I did, so I like to use a lot of tags and tweet daily. Other people only care about the main ranking and don't bother to be so exact in when they tweet and some don't bother with extra tags at all. I messed up too one day because I forgot to tweet about my binge-watching that day and ended up tweeting it the next day so that it looks like I did almost nothing one day and loads the next.

I also find there is a limit to how much studying I can do in a day, though that limit varies according to my health and stress level. There doesn't seem to be much limit on how much TV I can watch though and that's how I ended up in third place.

I'm semi-satisfied with my own results. I binge-watched far too much TV and got too far behind on everything else, so my times are pretty good, but I would have liked to do more real study. The next 6WC will overlap with the Polyglot Gathering, so I don't know how that will go. Maybe I'll get in some lectures on various languages and a bit of lunchtime conversation in some of my target languages.
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tangleweeds
Green Belt
Posts: 448
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 7:09 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Languages: English (N)
beginner: Irish
clearing cobwebs: Japanese
on the shelf: French, Latin
wanderlust: Norwegian, Vietnamese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=705
x 1223

Re: 6WC 6 Week Challenge - February 2016

Postby tangleweeds » Thu Mar 17, 2016 8:20 pm

Honestly, I've been having kind of a post-challenge letdown, though. Activities with less intrinsic interest were easier to motivate when starting the time logger on my phone meant accumulating study minutes. This seems like a habit to cultivate and leverage momentum from, but so far I haven't figured out anything as effective as the bot plus companionship. So suggestions are welcome, but meanwhile, thanks everyone! It was my first 6WC and it turned out to be a great experience.
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Brun Ugle
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Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
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Re: 6WC 6 Week Challenge - February 2016

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Mar 18, 2016 6:21 am

tangleweeds wrote:Honestly, I've been having kind of a post-challenge letdown, though. Activities with less intrinsic interest were easier to motivate when starting the time logger on my phone meant accumulating study minutes. This seems like a habit to cultivate and leverage momentum from, but so far I haven't figured out anything as effective as the bot plus companionship. So suggestions are welcome, but meanwhile, thanks everyone! It was my first 6WC and it turned out to be a great experience.


I find the same thing happens after every 6WC. I use the first days mostly to do things that I've been neglecting during the 6 weeks, and then try to get back to ordinary study. For each language, I have a list of activities that I like to try to do, and I try to check the off a certain number of them each day. I used to try to keep track of time, but now I feel like it's better for me to have periods of greater flexibility when I don't worry about time, but just about getting certain things done.

To get the boring activities done, maybe you can try making a rule where you do the boring thing first and then you can do a more fun activity like watching TV or listening to music. As for companionship, we're all still here with our logs and study groups, we're just not tweeting our minutes for the next 6 weeks.
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