Holy moly that’s a lot of reviews! To put it in perspective, I’m at ~142k total reviews.
Quick question: how do you treat the mnemonics that are given to you?
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I only buckle down on those if I don’t feel confident I wouldn’t be able to remember it. That’s a foolish choice given if I come across a similar looking kanji down the road, I won’t have the mnemonics to help me pick out the radical. That’s only a small part of my problem as there isn’t that many similiar looking kanji in my reviews, I just can’t seem to knock them out but when the mnemonics have treated me well when I gave them the necessary attention
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If that’s the case, I would really recommend you focus on the mnemonics. Actually imagine it in your head what the mnemonics are describing to you and make that mental connection to the meanings (and readings).
Based on your stats, your radicals are very shaky. This is a huge problem with respect to the learning philosophy WaniKani uses, which is “+1 learning”. The way WaniKani organizes its levels and lessons is to build on what it has taught you previously. As you progress, WaniKani assumes you know the prerequisite knowledge well enough (Guru+) and teaches you a small new thing on top of that. Think of it like building a house of cards, if your foundation is weak then your house will come crumbling down as you try to build higher and higher. Radicals are that foundation.
First, I’d suggest retroactively learning the mnemonics for your leeches and see if you are making any progress, focusing on the radicals. If not, you may be better off in the long run to reset down to what you think is appropriate, also focusing on the radicals.
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I honestly wonder whether you should do a full reset to level 1 – depending on how fast you go, level 60 should be reachable with around 200k-300k reviews. You’re just wasting time spinning your wheels right now.
I think your main problem is that you aren’t using the mnemonics. When you reset, make sure to learn every mnemonic. If a mnemonic isn’t sticking for you, replace it with your own. Here’s my process for making sure things stick:
- After a lesson, review every item in the “end of lesson” screen. Make sure you can recall the meaning, reading, and mnemonic.
- For the first few (apprentice-level) reviews, make sure you remember the mnemonic for every item, even if you didn’t need it to recall the meaning and reading – you want to make sure the mnemonic is sticking because you’ll need it later.
- If you consistently get an item wrong, you probably forgot the mnemonic. Open the item page, and study it.
If you start over and stick with this method, I think your accuracy will be consistently much higher, and you’ll start making progress again instead of treading water.
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I came in with a suggestion and came out with solutions to the problems I personally face. I’m grateful
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Just raising a hand here to say I have a very similar problem. I neglected my reviews for a couple of weeks back in February due to travel and sickness and I forgot to switch on vacay mode. I did that once I realised and only got back into kanji a couple of weeks ago. I started on 540+ reviews which I’ve whittled down to sub 400 in a week and a half, but I have 450+ apprentice items and can’t see much of a way out.
My strategy at the moment is to have 2x 30 minutes slots every day where I try and do as many as I can and then switch on vacay mode overnight so the reviews don’t pile up in my sleep.
I’ve considered resetting, but not sure where I could reset to. Plus there’s a bit of a sunk-cost dilemma with the amount of time I’ve spent learning levels only to throw them in the bin vs the time spent getting 35% success rate on reviews for kanji I can’t even remember.
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I’m on lv 37 and the reviews are overwhelming. Been staying up until 1am to finish them all then waking up at 5:30am to get a head start on the ones that accumulated over night . I fell asleep last night with 165 to go and woke up with over 300. I’m done with trying to keep up. I’ll do a couple here and there but forget trying get the current 470 down to 0 anymore. It actually became stressful. Every hour waiting for the next lot to drop and I couldn’t really do anything else.
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Oosh, that’s not going to help your retention at all! You need a good nights sleep to consolidate everything into long term memory. I’d probably reset and take it more slowly I were you…
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Well that’s what happens when you have nearly 600 Apprentice items… that means you probably have 400+ daily reviews. That’s enough to overwhelm anyone.
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Yep. 583…I just checked. Been doing this for over a year and I’m embarrassed to admit, I still don’t know how it all works. I’m still unclear if it’s possible to throttle down reviews. I’ve just been cranking through it and the past 2-3 months been getting stressed out about it lol
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One thing to think about, especially among the ones here who are getting overwhelmed by WK reviews is to remember WK (and other SRS maybe) are a supplement (or at least only a part of) to your Japanese learning. You could maybe go as far to think that using WK you are not really learning Japanese, if that helps you. The main bulk of your learning has to come from some other activity, be it textbooks, classes or grammar videos. And afterwards native material. I’d say it’s paramount to interleave your other studies in a way that the whole package is sustainable every day. If you just cram SRS and WK for two years it’s not gonna work.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had periods where I only did WK and it was amazing in keeping me in contact with the language but it’s ultimately an add-on activity.
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To add to this awesome advice, you already have lifetime, so I think you’d really benefit from resetting at least to some lower point. Resetting is really not a bad thing! It feels bad because it feels as if you wasted all the previous time spent on those items, but that’s not the case. The items before were just not learned well enough. This happens to many users at some point, and instread of forcing yourself to continue, it could be really refreshing to take a step back and start from a lower level.
I reset back a bit when I reached level 30. Before that I kept going even though I hadn’t learned the items of level 20-30 well enough. It took more energy to review those than it should, my accuracy went down, and my motivation too. After resetting I felt like I made a new start and as if I was actually learning again.
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You can stop doing lessons to move the items through Apprentice and into Guru. I usually do this every few levels to catch up. Try to split your reviews between days if you can as well. Having 600 Guru isn’t too bad if they’re spaced out across a few months, but Apprentice really should be down around 100-150.
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This! A few months ago, I saw someone say this, and it has changed my life. Now I try to be in the 90-100 Apprentice range. It’s amazing. I do like 20-30 minutes when I first wake up and 10-20 minutes after dinner. I’m still progressing and retaining. It’s not optimal or fast, but it’s sooo much more manageable. 
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@Aarix While I have never been in your situation, I have been doing particular things regarding leeches to keep me out of such a position:
- Study leeches after every review session, using either the leeches component of the Self-Study Quiz or using the ‘10 oldest Apprentices’ button in BishBashBosh.
- Using the previously-mentioned Prioritise Overdue Reviews script anytime I know I will not get my reviews down to 0 in any given review session.
As long as you are not doing lessons, and you keep chipping away using this 1-2 combo (even if it is only in batches of 10 by using the Wrap Up button), you should be able to steadily move those leeches out of Apprentice and so dramatically decrease your daily workload.
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The good news is that the sunk cost for learning a language isn’t completely “sunk”. You will have some retention no matter what, so resetting isn’t always a bad thing.
Set a day, stop doing lessons, and then just knock out as many as you can per day. I crawled back from a backlog of 1400+ items so it’s doable, just painful. 
That whole experience is what made me settle on the limit of 100 Apprentice and 500-600 Guru. With these numbers my daily load is kept manageable but I’ll also delay starting levels if I need to lower those numbers.
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Wait! How do you do this? Sorry, I really don’t know what I’m doing lol
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Holy crap 600 apprentice items? Dude you must have done like a few hundred lessons at once are something? Or you just have a butt ton of leeches? Going to bed at 1am and waking up 5:30 just for that is so not worth. I have to ask… do you even know the srs intervals? I swear, understanding that will change your life. You should really read the beginner’s guide. My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK 📖 ) - #2 by jprspereira
Just to let you know I’m only doing ~20 lessons a day and levelling up once a week. The max DAILY reviews I get are ~200, yours just sound insane.
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Ok, let’s start with the SRS Intervals for reference:
Apprentice 1 → 4 hours → Apprentice 2
Apprentice 2 → 8 hours → Apprentice 3
Apprentice 3 → 1 day → Apprentice 4
Apprentice 4 → 2 days → Guru 1
Guru 1 → 1 week → Guru 2
Guru 2 → 2 weeks → Master
Master → 1 month → Enlightened
Enlightened → 4 months → Burned
Here’s the plan:
- Set a day to start. Let’s say Monday. Take the weekend to have a stress-free break from WK. It’s stree-free because even though you’re not doing any reviews, you have a plan to do something about it. So there’s no guilt.
- On Monday, do 20-30 reviews and keep an eye on your percentage. If it’s 80-90% or more you can add another 10-15. If you can get through 100-200 that would be ideal, but don’t sweat it too much.
- Check how much your Apprentice count has fallen. This is the number of items that have moved to Guru and won’t show up again until next week. Remember, no lessons until you get that Apprentice count down near 100.
- The next day, do the same thing again. You’ll see items that you reviewed the day before, and that’s ok. Reinforce your memory and go through them.
- Again, check your Apprentice count and make sure you’re steadily moving items through that to Guru.
The goal is to move items through Apprentice and into Guru. Week 2 is when we’ll have to deal with those, but we’re staggering our daily lessons so that they don’t all come back at once. We want to clear the queue as much as possible that first week but we also don’t want to overload any single day.
- At the start of Week 2, check how many upcoming items you have for the day. Your Guru items from the past week are going to start coming through now so reduce the number of reviews you’re doing if you have to but make sure to clear as many as you can deal with.
- Check your Guru count. You’ll have moved Apprentice items into Guru and move Guru items into Enlightened over the past week, so see if there was a net gain or loss.
- A net gain means you moved more items out of Apprentice into Guru then you moved from Guru into enlightened. This is a good sign and it means you’re starting to get your Apprentice items under control, but it should be accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the number of Apprentice items.
The 2nd week is where you want to reevaluate and see how your progress is. You may have to hold off doing lessons for a month, but that’s ok if it let’s you keep your daily items under control.
Once you’ve come out the other side, here’s how I structure my levels now:
- Levels start on Monday, no exceptions. I’ll stay on a level longer before starting the next one if I have to.
- Do 20 lessons per day until you clear the pending ones for that level. You should be done by Friday.
- You should have unlocked the next set of lessons by the following Monday. Again, 20 lessons per day until you clear the queue.
- You should be clearing levels in about 10-14 days at this rate. The main thing to be aware of is the rebound from that backlog that you cleared, so keep an eye on the number of items for the upcoming days. You may have to delay levels longer to deal with those items from your backlog when they come around again since the SRS interval for Enlightened is 1 month.
Hope that helps.
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It’s brutal lately. I’m a stay at home dad and with all the free time I have I still can’t get through it all. So am I understanding it right, I just do reviews every other day and the algorithm figures things out? Missed 1 day and my count is currently 545. I would blow through about 150-200 an hour but not even going to try and touch 545
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