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The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/BattleFresh2870 on 2025-07-04 04:16:02+00:00.

I’ve been studying for about seven months now and although I know I’m still a newbie and progress is not linear, lately I’m feeling a bit stuck and I think that’s because of my routine. For reference, I’m currently doing the following basically every day:

• Read one NHK Easy news in the morning and one in the afternoon.
• Do all my Anki decks.
• Do shadowing for a short video, 2 to 5 minutes.
• One conjugation practice in the morning, one in the afternoon.
• One video of a Japanese course on YouTube (currently following the Cure Dolly course).
• Once a week, I have class with my brother who teaches Japanese.
• If I’m not too tired from work, I play a video game in Japanese for an hour or two.
• I also do a couple of lessons on Renshuu and Duolingo (more out of habit and to keep my streak than to get anything meaningful lol).

My issue is threefold: I feel I’m not progressing as fast as I’d like, I’m still having a lot of trouble understanding kind of simple sentences in NHK News and the games I play, and after a while this routine becomes kind of dull and repetitive to do every single day.

I don’t mean to speedrun Japanese and I’m loving the process of learning this language, but I’d like to know: what are others doing in the early stages of learning? Any routine you’ve found to be particularly effective? Anything fun to break the monotony of having a routine? When you found a routine you enjoyed, did you do the same things every day or focused in one core thing each day?

Arigatou in advance!