Advice on Restarting (help me learn from your mistakes instead of my own)

[KT-EB]

So I’m resuming WaniKani again after another long undesired but unavoidable hiatus. I initially used scripts to do my reviews by SRS order so I could quickly establish what I still remembered and bring my reviews down into smaller numbers and more manageable chunks, but now I’m at a point where part of me wants to start my lessons again while the other part of me is scared of making the mistake I made last time of resuming lessons too early before I had truly found out how many Enlightened items had dropped back down to Apprentice in my memory. I figure I’m probably not alone in having to resume WaniKani after a long break, so I’m asking the more experienced learners: anything I should look out for number-wise or pattern-wise? My numbers: Apprentice: 100 | Guru: 211 | Master: 293 | Enlightened: 935 | Burned: 280. In the next few days I have about 120 Enlightened and 60 Master items to review among a smattering of Apprentice and Guru items. I have 95 Level 12 lessons available and I’ve unlocked some but not all of the radicals and kanji for Level 12.

I know that everyone learns differently and has different amounts of time available, so I don’t necessarily expect a full lesson plan, but does anyone have any advice as to what some good indicators might be that it’s time to resume my lessons or that I need to wait a bit longer? Advice on whether or not to introduce lessons slowly into my reviews or wait until I’m caught up to my old memory before resuming all my lessons at once?

Thanks in advance! It’s good to be back.

[Saruko]

Since you’re eager for lessons, what if you just try adding some in very slowly (like one to three per day) and see how it goes? You can always take a break from lessons again if you find that your apprentice count gets too high or you feel like you’re going to be overwhelmed.

[Omun]

Welcome back!

Keeping your Apprentice pile around 100 seems like a fine strategy to attempt. App level items are the biggest cause for bloated review numbers.

If you’re struggling to remember old items, they’ll end back in App or Guru. So a bloat in App items can be a good sign to potentially hang back on lessons for a bit, since you’ve likely hit a patch of old stuff that needs more time to be relearned.

And keeping App items subject to a max cap also means there is a finite amount of reviews coming your way, which can help stave off burnout.

Depending on how you can schedule your day, I also like doing lessons in the morning and the evening. Mostly to avoid having that tedious review spike that you get from doing lessons in the same time slot.

Hope that makes sense, and good luck finding your stride again!