I'd like to start with a story from "Art & Fear". It pretty much sums up why this workbook works so well.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

That's what 4500 Japanese Sentences is all about. Quantity, and lots of it. Not just any quantity, though, useful quantity. But you can leave that part to us. The sentences are based off of common words. Useful words, ordered by frequency of use.

When you translate these sentences, don't spend a lot of time on each one. Quantity > Quality, remember? If you're stuck and can't figure out the solution quickly, move on. If you're too confused, move on. Your goal is to translate anything that's at your current ability level or slightly above it. Your increments of improvement should be +1 at a time, not +10. If you do this, you'll make constant steady progress. +1 +1 + 1 +1 +1. Over and over again. Quality holds you back, but this workbook gives you permission to throw all that away and release yourself. Don't worry about making mistakes. Don't worry about not finishing. Just get it all done.

So go take the challenge. See if you can finish 500 in a month. Then 500 more the next month. Keep going until you're done. When you look back at the first sentences, especially the ones that gave you some trouble, and you'll see all the progress you've made.

Note: There are no translations for these sentences. That would make it easy to cheat as well as focus too much on getting things perfect, which is what we're trying to avoid. The idea is to be fast and move on quickly, getting those +1 pieces of progress in quick succession. If you really need a translation, you can use a service like HiNative or Lang-8 to help you.