Since starting to learn Japanese I’ve noticed a few parallels to learning in self development. It has come apparent to me making an effort everyday is critical for long term growth. This is for a few reasons.

1. Maintaining momentumIf you miss one day it can very easily become two and so on until you are only working on the area once a week if you are lucky.
2. Everything adds up When learning Kanji (Japanese characters) it is clear from the beginning that it is a huge task. It can be easy to not feel like learning some one day, but these days add up and one day you realise that if you had of just learnt a couple in the few minutes it takes then you would already know an extra 500.For personal development you never know when a minor breakthrough can occur and it always seems to happen when you have just forced yourself to do a little extra work when you didn’t feel like it.

Ensuring you Do Something Everyday

It’s always nice to have a process to make things happen so here are a few things you can do to ensure you do something.

1. Know some easy tasks that will move you even the tiniest bit in the direction you want to goPlan what you need to do in order to get where you want to be and then break things down until you have some small actions that you can always do for positive effect. Quick meditation, awareness walks, etc.
2. Set up a checkpoint time in your day Specify some point in time (maybe when you get home from work) where you can stop and evaluate what you have done so far. You want to set a time such that there is still time left in the day to do what you decide needs to be done. Some related information is in Plan and Reflect Daily.
3. Use a checklist/todolist As part of your daily checkup you may find it easier to have some list ready for you to tick off. You can set this up with paper, whiteboard or electronic solutions with repeating tasks such as offered by todoist.

To keep making progress towards those big goals you really need some sort of routine that ensures that you are always creeping closer.