A level in a month sounds way too long. The longest I had was 15 days per level.
The key is doing reviews at a regular time. Best is to do reviews at least twice a day with a ~7 hour gap in-between, e.g.: during a lunch break and then before going to bed.
And of course you need to do lessons regularly. It’s best to do a fixed number of items every day than doing them all at once. Many people do 10-20 per day.
Thanks, d-hermit. I’m in the process of getting my reviews down from 200+ every day, to something more sustainable. I’m letting my Level 14 lessons sit for the past 36 hours. Now that I’ve got my apprentice items down below 100 again, I’ll do 10-20 lessons, as suggested (instead of doing all 98 like I would have done, which would just get me back on the treadmill at the high speed setting!).
200+ a day is pretty rough. I’d usually get ~150.
I thought I’d provide a bit more reasoning for doing 10-20 lessons per day:
Each wk level has up to ~200 items. It also takes ~4 days to guru an item. So your expected leveling speed is 200 / (lessons per day) + 4.
If lessons per day is 20, then you’ll level up every 2 weeks.
Your minimum is ~7 days but that’s much less sustainable because of high workload.
According to wkstats my typical level up is 22 days. I had been doing my reviews before work and in the evening but I never get enough time in the morning anymore so end up only doing my reviews in the evening which is probably part of the problem.
Because the reviews are so out of control I’ve barely been able to learn any new words or particles as I keep skipping days due to the overwhelm and finding it hard to juggle things.
I like your approach of doing it in the morning and before pm to ensure the last batch of reviews will land around 9pm. Think I may try something similar, thank you!
I often take a month, but sometimes much longer to level. My guess is that most fast-levelers have pre-knowledge, likely meaning and pronunciation and just have to learn the kanji itself. I think it is misleading to compare someone who does not have a lot of exposure and does some studying as a hobby with someone who has some command of the language and uses this site for (admittedly) it’s original purpose, learning kanji.
Thanks for your comment! I had been doing my reviews throughout the day, but on the mornings where I am unable to, it causes a build up which makes me feel overwhelmed so I then start to avoid the reviews altogether. I guess I struggle with being disciplined in the mornings, almost always rushing to work 
Thanks for your comment 
According to wkstats my typical level up time is actually 22 days which isn’t too far off from that I suppose. Although I’ve been on my current level for a whooping 97 days… Would it be better for me to do a small amount a day so I can get my reviews down? I have just over 200 reviews at the moment. Before I fell off the wagon, I had been doing reviews in the morning and night. Though I’ll definitely try and break it down throughout the day instead, seems a little more sustainable.
if it’s painful, reset down to a few levels. This way you will be faster and feel better.
it works for me.
I’ve pretty much stopped learning any new items in an attempt to lower the overall reviews. I have the app too, which I had been using in the morning and evening as I can’t on my lunch since it’s only half an hour, so don’t usually have time to do anything other than eat.
I’ll definitely try using vacation mode when I need a break, never thought of doing that before so thanks for the suggestion.
Would it be worth me getting through the pile then moving forward doing my reviews bit by bit? Or starting bit by bit with my current pile of 200 reviews?
Thank you cute gif ^^
I’d say to try to clear them all and then chip away at what’s left over.
Hopefully, you know many of your items well, and you can promote them so they increase in SRS duration and you won’t see them again for a while. That will relieve some of the pressure.
Then you’ll just be left with items you’re more shaky on, and you can clear them more quickly.
One of the issues with having a big review backlog, and only doing reviews bit by bit, is there may be items you’re really shaky on and need to see regularly to learn better. If you don’t clear your review queue, you may not actually see those items as often as the SRS intends and it will be hard to get them in your memory.
So, I’d try to go through the pile entirely and then spend a few days trying to clear your review pile to zero each day. After a few days, your review load should go down a lot, provided you’re holding off on lessons until things quiet down.
Scheduling reviews to maximize the SRS benefit can be hard if you have a very structured day.
When you have caught up a bit and are ready to start doing lessons again, if you have a device something like this might work:
Hopefully you will have kicked at least some of your morning lessons up a notch by the time you get to your evening reviews. But, getting to a review of the morning lessons sometime during the day is helpful for me.
My guess is that most fast-levelers have pre-knowledge
I have been at this 20 years and never took Kanji seriously until earlier this year. I can pronounce the language but outside of about 100 Kanji that I only knew the definition for, I didn’t know readings with the exception of maybe 15 I learned over a decade ago.
I can barely speak. I can’t really read. I can understand a lot of spoken which I think may be part of the pre-knowledge. When I read the word or hear the reading and it’s something I know, like kiwotsukete (be careful) I just know what it means. This helps mainly on vocab.
So yeah… at first I though no, I am not as fast as I am because I have pre-knowledge but thinking it through, I guess I do OK at this speed because I can understand spoken Japanese at a 4th or 5th grade level. By the time I hit level 20 will I be able to maintain this speed? Maybe not.
The key is the same though for any learner; find something the learner is comfortable with and stick to it. Don’t be a slerched (that’s me) and take 20 years to take Kanji seriously.
Keep at it.
If you become demotivated, stop into the community here and we will help cheer you on, console you, or kick you in the butt to help get you back to learning!
Just don’t give up.
I don’t really have any more to add outside of, whatever you do, don’t give up.
Once you figure out how to get it back to manageable and figure out a good process for yourself, keep at it. If you get back to a point of feeling like you aren’t moving ahead, stop on in and we can help motivate you! 
It’s usually just time commitment.
I do three sessions a day: morning, noon, evening.
I keep Apprentice items around 100 and do at most 20 lessons per day. That leads to around 150 reviews per day.
With all that I’m at 10-11 days per level.
If you can only do one session per day, that means that it will take you at least 4 days to get to apprentice 4 rather than 2 so you should have a level up of around 15+ days.
Sweet, sweet summer child…
If you’re not doing new lessons, you’ll stay at your current level. You level when you get a certain number of the new kanji to guru level - which means you have to learn it and review it correctly a number of times.
My leveling speed was atrocious for a while because I was so focused on just doing reviews and didn’t do any new lessons for days.
You’re always going to have reviews (unless you get everything to Enlighted, in which case you’ll have nothing to do). 100 reviews a day is not crazy. Just focus on what you can do, if that’s not clearing out your reviews to zero, that’s normal. Try to add even 5-10 new lessons every day. You probably won’t see that crazy of an increase in the number of reviews.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, give yourself permission to not do all the reviews at once.
You’ll probably make better progress if you stop at 100 (or 50 or whatever is your limit) every night – rather than trying to do the whole pile in one day, then avoiding it for 3 days, then trying to do another pile, then avoiding again…
Very true, will definitely try incorporating this moving forward. Thank you
Yeah you’re right. I’ve totally put learning new items on the back-burner. After seeing this I went ahead and learned some new items, which weren’t so bad because they were words rather than particles. I find that once I get to the word bit, I’m usually ok as it helps me remember the individual characters. So thanks for mentioning that will be trying to learn at least 5 items a day now!
Thank you, writing this post and receiving so many comments has definitely motivated me to shovel through. Cleared out my reviews last night, learned about 20 new items this morning and trying to remain consistent on reviewing throughout the day