Is it a good method to clear all the critical items before starting a new lesson?
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I wouldn’t do that, it seems a good way to take 10 years to get to level 60 haha. Jokes aside, do whatever works best for you, but don’t get obsessed about learning every single thing perfectly. You’ll reinforce what truly matters by reading and using the language.
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If you have a gigantic amount of critical items you should show down a bit, but normally you can do more lessons.
Spaced repetition works by showing you the critical items again and again until you finally remember them, so the problem is: how many reviews per day can you stand? You can control the number of reviews (in the mid-term) by adjusting the number of lessons you do per day. More critical items (or more apprentice items) → less lessons.
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Agreed. If I waited to clear all criticals before starting new lessons, I’d never do a lesson again.
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Hello hello, welcome!
To add to what @acm2010 said, a lot of people look at their number of Apprentice items, rather than critical items.
If you limit your Apprentice count to max 100, you usually cap out at 150-175 reviews a day. At least, that’s what it was for me for the majority of WK. I did not do my lessons in bulk, so people that do probably have their reviews spread differently.
If that number of reviews is too high for you, then maybe experiment with 75 or 50 Apprentice items. 1 item at Apprentice 1 accounts for 4 reviews in a 72 hour period, so high App numbers mean many reviews. 
Best of luck!
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I just work with the single rule, that I’m not allowed to do any lessons as long as I have open reviews (and I don’t use any reorder scripts to bypass non-level-up-critical reviews).
So far I didn’t have any problems motivation- or review-wise, but I feel like that rule would automatically force me to slow down as soon as I hit my first major bump.
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It is certainly good practice to finish reviews before new lessons, however if you don’t limit the lessons in any way you’ll find yourself with a lot of reviews by the time the firsts burn reviews arrive. It is feasible and many people did it, however the risk is that you’ll end up devoting too much time to wanikani and won’t have time to study grammar and read or listen to Japanese content. It all depends on your lifestyle and how much spare time you have. If you work or study full time I don’t think there is enough time left to do wanikani full speed plus other things, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend doing only wanikani if you actually want to learn Japanese.
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That’s actually a really good point. I’m lucky in that I’m currently live in Japan to study engineering and I literally devote all of my free time to studying. Even being out and about in the city doing groceries is language practice.
Back when I tried studying in Germany I had lots of trouble in just getting done basic daily vocabulary reviews between work study and friends. Right now I find that I’m probably spending 1-2 hours each day just doing Wanikani, more on level up days.
Back to the topic - I really don’t think the way critical condition items are set up is a helpful way of limiting your study speed. As mentioned, setting a limit to apprentice items sounds like a good idea. It also will motivate you to actively squash leeches to get some more apprentice slots open for new lessons.
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Thanks guys, it was a bit hard the end of the level one with all the lower to get lower rise and raise, after starting level 2 that there are lots of radicals it sounds much easier to follow your advice
Cheers
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