Burned out, now back

[whammm]

I burned out months ago around the time the radical changes came, and my reviews currently looks like this.

Not sure how much I remember and have forgotten. Should I reset or try to chip away at this mountain?

What do?

[jprspereira]

Read chapter 11 of my Guide to Wanikani It’s exactly the answer you’re looking for.

I came back to WK and now I have an insane amount of reviews: what should I do?

My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK )

The Ultimate Guide to Wanikani Become the best version of your Wanikanian self. For newbies: Please read the WaniKani User Guide first before reading this. WK’s User Guide teaches you the very basics. My Guide turns you from a newbie with basic knowledge to a master. However, first, you need the basics. This Guide is really longgggggggg. You can read it all in one go, but there’s no need to if you don’t want to. Think of it as the place to come to when in doubt/need of help. Thanks …

[irrelephant]

Use the Reorder Script and go through reviews level by level. This allows you 2 things: it allows you to measure your progress in another way other than total number of reviews (ex: yay I finally did all reviews from level 10 to 20 \o/), and it helps controlling the amount of reviews that will come back at you while you’re still murdering the pile.

Nice advice. Like you wrote, it is nothing I would be doing in general but makes a lot of sense in this specific case when you don’t want to reset.

I might start doing this for the next few weeks…

[jprspereira]

@irrelephant

Nice advice. Like you wrote, it is nothing I would be doing in general but makes a lot of sense in this specific case when you don’t want to reset.

I might start doing this for the next few weeks…

A different (and slightly better approach) would be using this script:

WaniKani SRS Reorder Button

I have written a lightweight script for reordering reviews by SRS level so feel free to use it if you like. Download: WaniKani SRS Reorder Button I was too lazy to create user interface for it, so it’s just a small button at the bottom of the page, but you can edit some settings in the script itself. Available features: ordering by SRS level (ascending or descending), ordering by item type (rad->kan->voc, reversed or random), deciding which ordering has higher priority, forcing meaning and r…

It allows you to order by SRS level instead. So you still get the feeling of “yay I finally did all Guru reviews \o/” and you get a better management of when the reviews you just did will actually come back to you.

PS: I don’t advise using these scripts on a daily basis. They will hurt your learning. This is just for an emergency thing (like having to do Apprentice 1/2 reviews in the few mins you have available or OP’s situation).

[whammm]

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you think I should learn the “new” radicals before starting on the reviews?

[jprspereira]

@whammm

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you think I should learn the “new” radicals before starting on the reviews?

I mean, learning radicals is pretty acessible for most, so it won’t be a problem adding them to the reviews pile. If you want to feel like you’re still progressing by learning new content while you kill those reviews, why not Just don’t get them lost in that huge pile of reviews As long as you’re able to kill those reviews and you’re seeing that everything is going back to normal, it’s fine.

[ipeeepay]

This is a very relatable problem. The suggestions about using some type of reorder and either working through your reviews or resetting a few levels are good. Here are some of my experiences that might help you weigh the options.

After long periods off from WK and Japanese in general, I would only have item accuracy in the 40 to 70% range. Under those conditions, I would only have enough attention to do 20 or 30 reviews per session versus the typical 100+. That is because I would be pausing to see what I got wrong and to read the lesson information to relearn each of these missed items. At that rate, it is a very long slog to try to get through the 2000+ review pile. Because my accuracy level had been so low during these recovery periods, when I do finally get reviews to near zero, as a reward I am usually left with a very large amount of apprentice and tentatively guru’ed items (that usually make it back to apprentice). That amounts to a few more days or weeks of high numbers of reviews, which typically go a bit faster because you should be getting higher accuracy. Once the apprentice items are down below 200 (or preferably below 120), I’d start new lessons.

If you stopped for a while from burnout, chipping away at the mountain may not be a great way to recover from burnout. Monitor your accuracy and if it is low like mine was you may want to set back 5 or 10 levels to make recovery easier. If you took a long break from Japanese entirely, you can take a look at your burned and enlightened items and see if you still know most of them. If you have a low accuracy on burned items, consider setting the level back really low or restarting. I reset from level 34 to level 1 because of this issue (many completely forgotten items from pre level 16 due to a long break from Japanese reading). As painful as that sounds, WK is much more enjoyable when you are actually remembering a high percentage of the reviews. When not enjoying WK, it is more likely that the large review pile will build back up. Lessons also go much more quickly the second time through.

頑張ってください！

[jerseytom]

2855 reviews. Figure two sides to every card, maybe 10 seconds each on average knowing there will be some mistakes, that’ll only take ya… about 16 hours straight!

[Kuvshinova]

If you order your reviews by level it’ll also give you an idea of where your recollection drops beyond a point which you deem “too much” - if you want to reset and do lessons again for the items you absolutely cannot remember, you can use it as damage control to only reset the minimum amount you deem necessary, reducing the setback.

[whammm]

Thanks for the replies. I’ll see what I can do.

[whammm]

Is there a way to order the lessons so the radicals come first?

[jprspereira]

@whammm

Is there a way to order the lessons so the radicals come first?

I recommend this script

[Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Filter

This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely. What is it? This script lets you specify the number of lessons of each type you want to do in a given session, while maintaining WaniKani’s intended lesson order. This means that if you use this script with the Ascending level then subject setting, you will get the radicals, kanji, and vocab that WaniKani wants …

[whammm]

Thanks again!