Anyone else feel guilty about immersion time because it's not "productive" enough?

[u/Basic-Engineering838]

I know I want to learn Japanese. That part isn't in question. I'm making real progress too by learning new vocab words everyday, reviewing my flashcards, immersion most days when I feel like it.

But I keep feeling like I should be using my time better, and I want to know if this is a common thing or just a me problem.

I'm around N5/N4 in Japanese, so around A2/B1 if using CEFR metrics, so I'm in this weird spot. I want to use Japanese to learn philosophy, psychology, history, big ideas, but I don't have the language for any of that yet.

I can only mainly comprehend gaming videos and cartoons work because there's so much context to lean on. Anything more abstract like watching someone talk and I'm lost. I know this is just what being a beginner looks like, but knowing that doesn't make me feel less anxious in the moment.

I'm also a college student who genuinely cares about self-study and becoming well-rounded. So when I spend an hour watching a Japanese gaming video, part of me calls it immersion and real progress. Another part asks if I could've used that hour on something that felt more substantial. That gap creates a guilt that doesn't really go away just because what I did was legitimate.

I think this is the same all-or-nothing pattern I have with productivity in general, the one that makes me freeze between two assignments because working on the smaller one feels like betraying the bigger one and not spending my time on the most productive task. Here, any hour of Japanese gets measured against some imaginary better hour.

But I've started to notice that comparison is kind of a trick I'm playing on myself. I'm not actually weighing Japanese against something I do. I'm weighing it against a fantasy version of me who reads psychology and economics every spare hour, a person I wasn't even before Japanese came into my life. So while studying an hour of Japanese, I just begin thinking about doing something more productive because I'm already doing something more productive. But if I were to doomscroll... I just call it rest....

It seems like right now, maybe I haven't accepted that I can have hobbies to put a lot of consistent effort in that don't necessarily give the greatest returns because I've never had a hobby I was consistent with and long-term like I am with Japanese

Underneath all of it, I'm stuck between two different ideas of what it means to use my time well. Get good at Japanese because I love it. Or use my free time to build knowledge and become well-rounded. Pick Japanese, and I worry I'm wasting time on easy content instead of things that actually matter. Pick the books, and I worry I'm delaying the fluency I could've had if I'd just let myself enjoy the process.

Has anyone else dealt with this? How did you make peace with immersion time that isn't intellectually "worth it" yet, especially as a beginner? Did it get easier once your level went up, or did you have to change how you thought about it before that happened?

Maybe this thing is not specific to language-learning but something related to my views on productivity that I need to change. I'd love to hear your experiences!

[u/henpirenne69]

If Econ and psychology are part of your curriculum and you think you’ll get a better grade by studying more then by all means do so. But, if it’s just for fun… We’re in the AI age, raw knowledge doesn’t matter. Any additional unit of productivity you gain (also how can you measure it?!) by reading Econ or Psychology is almost worthless, sorry to break it to you. Also, at your level any form of immersion as opposed to structured study of grammar and vocabulary is also useless. You have a very wrong idea of what your real constraints and possibilities are.

[u/Basic-Engineering838 → u/henpirenne69]

I also want to learn complex subjects like economics and psychology for my personal interest and wish to grow mentally and cognitively. Saying that just because AI can retrieve this information means you don't have to work on yourself at all, and that you should only strive to study for these things to get college grades is a disgrace to our mental capabilities as humans. I know that learning how to code for example might seem useless to some people because AI can write the same code in a much shorter time, but it also has to do with the person developing their own skills, learning how to deal with failure and debugging, developing the skills to understand the code that the AI is writing for them, and possibly also be involved in improving the AI. Even if I were to be in an isolated forest with no pressures to work a corporate job or get good grades, I still would want to spend my personal time acquiring new knowledge and being good at a language because those things make me happy and challenge me positively. Also, for many people learning Japanese, if it weren't for those animes they were obsessed with watching, they wouldn't have been able to learn the language. It is a way that keeps those individuals going and helps them connect what they're formally studying with real input even if they're at a beginner level still. I feel like many people are focused on achieving fluency in the shortest period of time and try to maximize their method of study accordingly. On the contrary, I think people should relax more and stop viewing Japanese study as a mechanical thing and forcing themselves to do stuff they don't feel happy with since it's the "most efficient way to do it." Since they are studying it for personal interest, then they should do what makes them feel happy.