Learning Mandarin - the hardest thing I've ever done

It has already been two months since I started my HSK Level 4 Chinese deck and it is tough. 

I had it easy with HSK1-3 since I'm quite familiar with most of the words and I only need to memorize and recognize the characters. 

But moving into HSK4, I am encountering words I am not familiar with. I have reduced the number of new cards per day from 30 to just 6! Every word and sentence card in Anki comes with 2 flashcards, and that means I'm only learning or reading 3 new cards per day, down from 15 with HSK1-3. 

But I'm still finding it tough. I keep forgetting some of the words.  I also keep mixing them up and I am not able to tell the difference between similar looking characters. With that, I have switched off the daily introduction of new cards. 

So I am now at zero new cards per day. And it will stay that way until I feel a bit more comfortable with it. 

I took time today to view the words in my StickyStudy list and I'm quite surprised I have actually done 179 words out of the 600 in HSK4!

I may have put them in the green bucket but I have yet to fully recognize them all. I will give myself one week to get further acquainted with them in Anki and I will evaluate and see if I will be ready to go back to my 6 new cards per day arrangement. 

Learning Mandarin is the hardest thing I've ever done but I hope I will still stick to it or the work and effort I have put in for the past 6 months would have been wasted. 

加油！

pearlie