Simply put, if you want to go faster, you just need to do all lessons and reviews the moment/hour they become available and make no mistakes. Whether or not that’s useful or a good thing to do just depends on your goals and your beliefs/philosophy on learning🙂.
Ultimately, what you’re trying to do is create some sort of positive feedback loop where you see something, think about it, get it right/wrong, review it, and then see it again. As you do this process over and over again, your brain slowly creates pathways to being correct, understanding something, and being better/faster at it.
There are many of these loops that you can come up with for yourself, Wanikani/SRS being one of them. Other examples could be studying/reviewing textbooks, doing practice JLPT questions, reading books/Manga, watching TV/Anime, playing video games, etc. The goal is to see the language, think about it, get it right/wrong, understand/review it, and then see it again.
One of the main components of SRS and Wanikani is essentially “idle” periods, where you basically don’t see something for awhile so that you forget it a little bit and then you see it again at the right time to try and remember it and reinforce that positive feedback loop.
In my opinion, this can be kind of a hit or miss because while you’re being idle, you’re kind of not doing anything. You might be working on your Wanikani loop but you could also be doing a different loop and benefiting even more. Plus, the more you learn, the harder it is to consistently review and practice all of it. So forgetting things and making mistakes just becomes a natural process of learning anyways, one which you don’t need a program to force an idle period on you for this to happen.
Overall, it just comes down to you. Are you happy with the Wanikani loop and the way you’re doing it? Do you want to do more or try several other loops simultaneously? Feel free to experiment and try many things. Don’t let one thing gatekeep you from trying something more or something else🙂.
