[T-956] I'm trying to figure out why immersion feels like work

Dear Rine,

Despite my nifty automation that launches all the apps and windows I need, I still hesitate to start my active immersion sessions. It still feels too much like work. I think it’s for two reasons I’ll label like this:

  1. No glide path to SM
  2. Not hitting the desired difficulty sweet spot

No glide path to SM

I’m not diligent enough with importing new sentences into SM.

I tend to pile up a backlog of new sentences. What I should be doing is importing new ones immediately, while the memories are fresh.

This disconnect in my workflow diminishes the value of my immersion sessions, making me prone to avoid them.

The friction comes from all the clicking I need to do… I need to sync and close Anki on my mac OS… then switch to Windows and open and sync Anki there. Then export the deck to anki2sm folder, delete the apkg from the previous import… run the script… import into SM… add to final drill and memorize.

Also, once I import a batch of sentences into SM, I need to move those sentences from one Anki deck to another deck I call archive… so that I don’t keep importing the same sentences into SM over and over again.

I’m not a fan of so much clicking.

I tried to streamline this today just a little bit by moving anki2sm to Dropbox. That way I could export the deck from Mac OS instead of having to do it from Windows. But this attempt failed because it seems that Dropbox is doing something to the file constantly, preventing the Anki2SM script from running.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend any more time on attempting to automate the import process. I don’t want to sink into yet another rabbit hole because I need that time for actual immersion. For now, I’ll treat it as a maintenance chore to be performed each morning.

Which brings me to my second point.

Not hitting the desired difficulty sweet spot

I can’t get into the zone when doing active immersion because T+1 sentences don’t come often enough. This makes it hard to stay engaged. My mind drifts away. I’m neither sufficiently relaxed nor sufficiently focused,which puts me on the edge of boredom.

Or in Reflow lingo, my sessions fall somewhere between freeflow immersion and intensive immersion.

I have an idea how to remedy this, though. I remember watching how Matt used to do his active immersion. Seems like he wasn’t restricting himself to just the sentences that appeared within his source materials. Instead, if he ran into a line of dialogue in a TV show that contained multiple unknown words, he would search for said words in the dictionary… and import example sentences from there.

This way, the process is more active. You’re not just waiting for the just-right sentence to appear (in refold lingo this would be deemed freeflow immersion) you are actively trying to drag more words and sentences into T+1 territory by relying on multiple sources.

Maybe I’ll try something like that. I’ll let you know if it makes any difference.

What I did/planned today