What helped me was dropping the idea that studying had to be super structured. Every time I tried to follow a strict plan, I burned out pretty quickly.

Now I just mix things depending on how I’m feeling that day. Sometimes I watch YouTube, sometimes I do a bit of Anki if I have the energy. I’ve also tried tools like LingQ and HayaiLearn at different points, mostly to make watching videos feel a little more active. None of these are perfect on their own, but rotating between them made it much easier to stick with learning.

The biggest change for me was treating it like something I casually fit into my day instead of a task I had to mentally prepare for.

While 15 minutes a day is better than nothing, if you can shoot for something a little more substantial, like 30-60 minutes, that leaves you time for both reviewing previously learned content and introducing new material. Especially in the beginning phases where the learning curve in Japanese is so high, spending just a little extra time on vocab and kanji review (via flashcards, etc.) helps you move what you’ve learned from short to long term memory faster, enabling you spend more of your “processing power” and time on inputting/outputting meaningful content.

I also think structure in the form of mini goals is important. For example, I would introduce n new vocabulary words a day using flashcards, and n kanji a week using a separate app for writing (with its own built-in deck following my textbook). Just having little goals like that will keep you engaged; you don’t have to rely on gamified apps like Duolingo to stay motivated.

In my experience, I need to stick to just one resource. Like, one textbook, and I only do that textbook until I'm done, nothing else. Or an online course, nothing else. It's annoying, but if I start doing multiple things like both textbook, youtube videos, reading books, etc. even though that in theory would accelerate my learning by doing multiple things... I end up doing none of them, because I can't decide which one to start with, and I end up delegating less time to each, and then I get nowhere with it, progress is slow, and my motivation dies off. Lol so for me, only do one thing at a time. Basically, don't stretch yourself too thin

Just make daily habits, ideally structured around a curriculum or syllabus so you can know how to proceed.

Also if your goal is to get better, there’s really no two ways about it; large study sessions are necessary to optimize your retention and progress. Some people refer to this as ‘momentum’ and it’s very important.

You can think of the efficiency of your study as a curve that ramps up, reaches inflection, plateau’s, then slowly trails off. Your goal during study should be to, as frequently as possible, reach that plateau and then study as long as you can afterwards. Short 10-15 minute sessions are not good for learning, they’re mostly good for just preventing you from regressing.

So to make a long story short; try your best to get a longer study session, I would say at least 2-3 hours, every week or so at minimum to ensure you progress. Weekends are good for this, and then on weekdays you can do shorter sessions for review and practice.

good luck. honestly the best advice i can give is to ignore streaks. they are toxic for language learning because one missed day ruins the momentum. i switched to tracking consistency percentage instead (aiming for 90%). using stellarhabit for this right now

I'd say the thing that helped me stick with it longterm, was thinking of it as a serious hobby, that I do for fun, as much as learning a skill.

Early on, I was trying lots of stuff, studying grammar, doing multiple SRS's, learning through reading manga, watching anime, and eventually novels. That was pretty challenging and a lot of time, but I had the energy from starting out so I pushed through for several months.

Eventually though, I feel into a rhythm, mostly cut down to reading novels as my main thing, and remembering vocab with Anki. I'd finished some grammar guides by that point and my listening at the time was better than my reading, so focusing on reading made sense. But I started reading all kinds of books that I really, really enjoyed and so at this point I'm like 50% motivated to study Japanese and 50% to just read more books.

Study topics you're passionate about.

If your thing is let's say woodcarving, now it's woodcarving in Japanese, read it all, watch it all about it, practice Japanese woodcarving techniques, make friends with Japanese people sharing your passion and talk with them, and so on. It'll help learning every day Japanese by the way.

While majoring in Japanese Studies, that's what our professors told us when reaching 2nd year (Intermediate level / 500-1000 kanji).

Best way to motivate you and keep you on track when Japanese studies may start becoming tedious and eventually boring.

You got this!!

Yessss you can do it 👏

Honestly when it comes to me I made it a habit. Something that I have to do every single day regardless of the mood. So it's good that you're focusing on consistency 👌 and as you mentioned, 10-15 minutes at least is enough and much better than nothing.

Check Comprehensible Japanese website (they also have a YouTube channel). Nihongo Con Teppei and Japanese Super Immersion are the best channels for beginners and super beginners, you won't feel the time! Lately I've been using Satori Reader app and I found it super useful.