Best way to catch up?

WaniKani
1

HI, I went on a month-long vacation and forgot to use vacation mode. Im behind by 540 something kanji. what is the best way to go about catching up? Do it all in one go? Pace myself somehow? Start over?

2

Stop doing lessons and chip away at reviews. Pace yourself. Even better if you use Anki mode as well.

4 Likes
3

I definitely agree with that advice. I just cleared out a backlog of ~1500 over the last few days, working through it at a pace at which I was comfortable. So, you can do it! (Just don’t overdo it. :wink:)

4

Just my two cents here
 :slight_smile:

First of all, I wouldn’t reset unless I felt really unhappy with the success rate while catching up. The success rate will improve over time.

Secondly, as @VegasVed and @DelvinWolf said, I wouldn’t take new lessons until this backlog is cleared up and the items in Apprentice are below 100ish (or something close to that, YMMV)

And then: I wouldn’t do it all in one go or else everything would come back at you on their next SRS round – even if they do start to space out due to hits and misses. I’d do batches of 100 at most (again, YMMV) and space Reviews by 4h between them.

I’ve been using this method and it has been working pretty well with me so far! Hope this helps!! :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

I had a >400 backlog after a week vacation back in August. I did do some reviews during that time (30-40 a day), but the backlog was still pretty huge. My method was the following:

  1. Don’t do new lessons! You’ll just end up missing your review deadlines and they’ll just slow you down.
  2. Try to set reasonable goals for whittling it down. I used a “must be 50 less than yesterday’s minimum sometime today” rubric. This meant it took about week to bring it back down. It was actually a bit less, because some days I reduced it more than that.
  3. Use the reorder script to do reviews by WK level. Generally, I don’t recommend the reorder script because it can lead to bad habits. I actively uninstalled it after I finished my pile reduction. But in a case like this, it’s more important to get back on track than worry about process purity. :wink:
    • Using WK levels means you’ll get things you introduced longer ago first. This means things you probably know a bit better and things that are at higher confidence. Getting the easy (-ier?) stuff out of the way allows you to concentrate on the harder stuff.
    • Also, as you get new reviews added to the pile, they’re probably from stuff you studied awhile ago, so you won’t be delaying them any more than necessary.
    • Alternatively, you can review things by rank (Apprentice, Guru, etc), in which case, I’d do higher ranks first to get the things you know better out of the way and keep from falling even further behind as those items enter the review pile.
  4. After getting your review pile down, focus on your apprentice queue. There will likely be a huge number of apprentice reviews due to wrong answers. That’s ok. Just try to keep up with them until the numbers decrease down to a reasonable number before starting new lessons.
  5. If possible do your reviews several times each day in small bursts to avoid burnout and reduce future review spikes.

Depending on your non-overwhelmed process, some or all of these might not be applicable to you. Knowing your process when things are going smoothly is probably the most important thing as a goal. You’ll know you’ve conquered the review pile when you’re back to it. :wink:

Good luck!

1 Like
6

Do your reviews :wink:.

7

That’s just training for the fast levels yo. :crabigator:

8

540 reviews sounds manageable by just brute forcing it: do enough reviews every day that you’re pending reviews are significantly lower than the day before.

if your pile gets significantly bigger, my advice would be to use a script which re-orders your reviews by SRS level. i’ve been having very good succcess working through a 1500 review pile like this. best aspect of this method is that it doesn’t require any heroic effort to get rid of the pile, you can just chip at it at your usual speed.

9

do 250 in the morning and then 250 at night and no new lessons.

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