This. I don’t know what it it is with the whole “You have to go fast, and level up in the fastest way possible, and stay consistent etc”. I joined here and went in with that mantra, even though I really appreciate the reorder scripts and timeline to get all the radicals and kanjis out of the way so I can have a lot of focus on the vocab! It’s also nice to be able to do a lower stack of vocabs at the time instead of sitting through 100+ items at the get-go at every level.
But on the other hand, I got a bit obsessed with going as fast as I could since I saw people that could level up in 6 days (or maybe even less sometimes), but suddenly I just felt overwhelmed with items since I had trouble learning a lot of vocabs, and that began to show when my apprentice items skyrocketed and I still had a lot of lessons to do. So, don’t go as fast as you can just because there are people out there that can handle it (Maybe they know a lot more Japanese in the first place, or even a lot more words that will help them remember the vocabs a lot easier, or they do it because they are gonna have a test soon etc.)
Just go with the pace that you feel suits you, and don’t care about anyone else. This is not a competition, the only competition you have is with yourself. I went in with a “I can keep this up as fast as them!” but in the end, it just hurt me because I didn’t have the requirerements to do so. So I settled down a bit, and stayed a little while longer just so I could practice on the vocabs that I was weak on - and at the same time lower my apprentice count before getting on with the new lessons, and then level up.
So, take it in the pace that you feel you can handle or your motivation will drop like a rock (it did for me for a while, until I realized that I have to step it down a notch).
Also as said, the leeches were one of the problem for me too when it come to the speed I went for at first. So try and put more study into the once that you can see is “falling behind” in comparison to the rest. This is something I neglected at first, but is slowly picking up, and it works a lot better to keep the apprentice count lower. I would suggest using the WK Statistics to see which items that are falling behind