Any advice for getting back into it after a 5 month break?

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
1

Hello all,

Just as some context, I’m a college student and have been doing wanikani for about a year (non-intensively finishing about 1 level every 2-3 weeks) before I needed to take a serious break to focus on school. I hiked all the way up to level 14 at a pretty good pace and I was doing a really good job at retaining everything. Of course a little bit of burn out kicked in and I just needed to stop.

Fast forward 5-6 months and now I’m here trying to get back into the swing of things, but I’m finding myself so defeated. I barely even remember anything from the past 5-6 levels and I’m having serious problems catching up on all of my reviews (I have about 1900 to do).

Has anyone else been in my shoes before and if so how did you manage to not feel crippling defeat and get back on track?

FUTURE EDIT:

I just wanna come back in here and share my experience after actually tackling my reviews.

So since my original post, it took about another 2 months to get into it (i was finishing my last semester of school) and it was still looking really daunting. By the time I really got to it, I had 1950 reviews. I didn’t know what to do, obviously just chip away, but it was still really hard to get into it with the chaotic order of the review system (level 1 to level 13 to level 7 all in different SRS levels). I did some more research in the forum, chatted with some people, and I happened to find the Reorder Omega script for the WaniKani browser (found here >>> reorder omega - wanikani forum). This literally made my reviews night and day. I was able to order my reviews by radical/kanji/vocab and then also by level. This turned my reviews into more of a systematic refresh, going level by level. I was able to start with all my level 1 reviews and all the way up to level 6, was basically review. I had no problems. Then starting from 7 all the way to 13, I basically had to reteach myself the kanji, but using the built in self-study tool on the reorder omega, I was able to study my reviews items, without actually harming the SRS levels of my real reviews. Now i am up and away and kicking it in level 14, almost to 15.

It only took me about 10 days to actually finish all 1950 reviews, using this system.

A couple things i feel are important to mention are some rules that I have given myself in order to avoid another 7 month burn out.
I was on an absolute speed monster timeline before i took a break. Like 1 level complete per 8 days. And this led to serious burnout. So now I have a strict 100 apprentice item rule. If my apprentice items (kanji + radical + vocab) go over 100, i stop any new lessons and wait until it goes back down. This keeps reviews down and mental capacity up.
I am also not using the reoder omega filters anymore, as i think it is important to have some randomness in the reviews, in order to really see if I remember something. If i was just doing items level by level, a kanji might spoil my memory for a vocab word that’s only 4 reviews away.

I hope other people can learn from my experiences!

2

My advice is – start moving as soon as possible.
If you can just start tackling your pile of reviews right away and not worry too much about initial mistakes – then great.

But if you can’t – then it’s better to do a reset (not necessarily to level 1, but to the level you feel comfortable with; level 8 or 9 for example) and start moving again than to sit and try to muster the courage and willpower to return to studying.

Even if you reset to level one, you would be able to get back to your current level in a few months. On the other hand, I once spent nearly a year trying to force myself to return to doing reviews and ended up having to do a reset anyway…

In any case, whether you choose to do a reset or not, best of luck with your studies! wricat

P. S. Here is a great related video:

3

Do you mean completely reset the level?
I was thinking of that, but it feels like such a major set back

4

After I took a 5-month break, the first thing I did was to relax and check the doggo thread

5

I was in your situation last September. I got to around level 18 and took a 7 month break. Ended up restarting back to level 1 and I’m almost back to where I was which I’m very excited about. I was initially forgetting a lot of the Kanji, even the early ones, so I made the decision to reset all the way. But looking back, I don’t think it was the right call. I remembered a lot more than I thought I would and it just felt like a lot of review rather than “relearning” it because I forgot it entirely. Like, maybe you get a kanji wrong on your first review, but then all the old memories come back and you get it on your second try. It’s a little hard to forget entirely in my opinion even if you’ve taken a big break. So for that reason, unless its been like a multi year break, I’m anti-reset. 5 months isn’t so bad I don’t think. I think you’re better off just doing like 300 reviews a day or so until the queue becomes normal again and then you can continue doing lessons again. The SRS will work itself out eventually. You’ll probably have a super low % at first but I think you’ll catch back up faster than you expected. Best of luck to you

6

I would look at the full list of kanji/vocab on wkstats that you’ve already learned. Do a quick overview and write down the ones you don’t remember then get back to chipping away at the review pile.

7

As I’ve said, you don’t have to reset all the way to level 1, WaniKani allows you to choose the level to which to reset.
You’ve said you find it hard to remember items you’ve learned on the last 5-6 levels, so it might be a good idea to reset 5-6 levels back to level 8 or 9.

I quite agree that reset is a major setback, and if you can just start doing your reviews again without reset – it would certainly be preferable… But if you can’t – then it’s better to do a reset and start doing reviews again at once.

That depends on whether you would have been able to start studying again at that time without the reset.

I was in exactly this situation when I reached level 37 – and I didn’t want to do a reset either… And I ended up wasting nearly a year that way – not doing any studies, just waiting for some mental power up inside me… And then I realized that at that point I could only bring myself back to studying if I do a reset… And by that time it had to be to level 1, because after a year of not doing any studies I forgot pretty everything… Had I done a reset the moment I realized that I fell off – I could have reset to a higher level and I wouldn’t have wasted nearly a year…

This is a very good advice. Doing this quick overview would show you which items you remember and which you don’t. And based on that you can then decide whether you need a reset and if you do – then to which level.

Anyway, best of luck with your studies! wricat

8

This has happened to me before. I found it helpful to tackle reviews when I could, then change the settings to vacation mode. That way additional reviews stopped piling up. You’ll have to keep going in and turning vacation mode on and off but it’s not too annoying. If I noticed I had forgotten too many things in the reviews and that they were from recent levels, I just reset by a few levels and then continued the vacation mode strategy until I cleared the reviews. That’s why I’m on level 24 right now. I had been on level 25 but had to reset back to about level 22 because I had forgotten a lot of things in my most recent levels.

9

Glad to see this thread as it’s exactly the position I am in. I like the idea of reviewing all my words on wkstats before jumping back in.

10

While I wasn’t quite as high a level as some here, I was absolutely in the same boat of not having done any reviews in several months (on other platforms, too, where I was much higher level). I almost reset, but then decided to let the SRS system do its thing. Took a few weeks, but it wound up being pretty quick getting back into the swing of it and the review system gauged where I was at on its own. Got caught back up on reviews and pushed forward!

11

Hi :waving_hand:t2: I’m lower level but had this happen recently, too. Took a few month’s break and came back to ~800 reviews which felt overwhelming. To get back into it, I did reviews until I started to feel restless (150-250 reviews) one day then had a rest day (0 reviews or lessons) in between and did this 4 times. I went over incorrect reviews like they were lessons and put my thumb or a sticker over the score and remaining reviews when either number bothered me.

Now my heat map looks like a castle wall - it’s pretty cute. Yours might look like a checkerboard for a while with this method, which would be cool too. Just do whatever feels approachable and give yourself permission to stop when you’ve had enough for the day, even if that’s before you start. Doing 600 reviews a day catchup is an easy way to burn out immediately imo.

It’s not for forever and you might surprise yourself with how much you know. Good luck :four_leaf_clover:

12

Thank you. I watched part of the video. It’s not as if I didn’t know these things already. But, it is so, so easy to fall back into self-doubt. Sometimes I needed to be reminded more than once a day.