Do I need to slow down?

I’ve only been a member for about a month, but based on what I’ve been reading in the community center, I may be going too fast.

I complete everything that is available in a day, both lessons and reviews (usually with over 90% accuracy). Will this lead to an overflow later on? Should I slow down, and if so, how should I go about pacing myself? よろしくお願いいたします!! :blush:

If you use WaniKani Lesson Filter to complete your Radical and Kanji lessons immediately upon unlocking them, then you can space out your vocab lessons while waiting for new unlocks without slowing down the leveling process at all.

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Welcome to the community :sunflower:

I think it is not unusual to go faster during the first couple of levels. Parts of it since the SRS intervals are lower.

In case you want to slow down there are two basic limits you can set yourself:

  • daily number of lessons
  • number of items in the apprentice section

As an example, I usually do something between 12-20 lessons per day and try to have ~100 items (or less) in apprentice section. different durtles have different numbers though :slight_smile:

In case you haven’t read it already feel free to check out the ulitimate guide to WK.

In case you want to get a feeling how it will be in the higher levels when going full speed maybe check out the following study logs:

@l_l senpai also gave some feedback and advice in their level 60 post. @GolyBidoof senpai will do in a few days, I guess. Feel free to ask them directly in case you have more questions :slight_smile:

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There a different ways of pacing yourself. Most people do so by having a fixed amount of lessons they do each day. That will give you a steady flow of reviews. Which you then can focus on finishing each day.

How many lessons to do is up to you. It all about finding that sweet spot when you don’t feel overwhelmed. So, set a number and gradually increase it.

If it gets too much, then do fewer lessons.

When you’ve found a good pace for yourself, commit to it and stay with it. :slight_smile:

Good luck!

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I use a lesson ordering script as well, so that i can have a more even number of reviews, if you do 50 lessons on a day, then you’ll get to a point where those 50 always come back together and the days in between have almost no reviews. If that’s not going to annoy you, then I guess you don’t have to worry about it.

You’ll find out you’re going “too fast” when you have way too many reviews come up. If and when that happens, you can pick the number that seems manageable (100, 150, more?) and do that number, and then keep doing that per day until it evens out. And then you know :man_shrugging:

I don’t follow an exact rule about number of items in Apprentice, for example, because i have over 100 right now, and my review load is fine for me, and I’m still learning and moving things up, so if I’m 10 or 15 items over the “advised limit” then I’m fine with that.

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If you use a lesson ordering script, be mindful of how you’re pacing lessons. For example, if you have 80 total lessons and you do 10 lessons a day, you might not clear out all your lessons by the time you Guru your level’s kanji, which would lead to a buildup of lessons. That is to say, if you use such a script make sure that it’s spaced such that your lesson queue will be cleared out by the time your level’s kanji reach Guru.

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The first few levels go much faster because you don’t have a build up of any items that takes longer for you to memorize them and the items are easier to remember. You may or may not slow down as you approach the harder content.

Careful with the reorders. Many fall into the trap of never doing vocab lessons. You may level up faster, but you’re not getting the reinforcement from vocab, so long term retention may suffer. Plus, when you eventually do decide to do some vocab, you’ll have many hundreds of lessons backed up.

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Nah, that only happens if you have a high accuracy rate. If you miss a lot like I did, they tend to get spread out over time.

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Whether it’s too fast or not depends largely on you. Some people can manage doing all the lessons right away without issue. Others simply don’t have the time or energy to manage the workload that requires. I would think about how much time you want to spend on it per day and what you can handle over a long period. If you’re keeping up a high accuracy and don’t feel overwhelmed with the reviews and lessons then you can go as fast as it will let you. If you start feeling like it’s too much then slow down. I would still recommend pacing out the vocabulary lessons to spread out the workload though.

For example
Day 1 - Do Radicals and Kanji
Day 2 - Do half of the Vocabulary
Day 3 - Do rest of Vocabulary
Day 4 - Do Kanji that unlock from reaching Guru on Radicals
Day 5 - Do half of Vocabulary that unlock from reaching Guru on Kanji
Day 6 - Do other half of Vocabulary
Day 7 - Do any remaining lessons and start again when the next level unlocks

Something like this won’t slow down your leveling speed but it will help spread out the lessons so you aren’t overloading yourself with work on a single day.

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My recommendation is to keep going full speed until you’re having trouble completing the reviews. If you ever start feeling overwhelmed, stop doing lessons across whatever you use (Anki, Bunpro, Wani, Kitsun, etc) and only do reviews until that overwhelming feeling goes away, then you should have a decent feel for what your limit is. Unless your goal is to level as fast as possible, completing your reviews should always be the priority.

Like someone else mentioned, I try to keep my apprentice items below 100-120 otherwise I know the reviews will start becoming too much for me.

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I wanted to reply ‘yes’, because that’s usually the answer indeed.

But in your case, no you’re fine. 90% accuracy is very good, sounds like you can handle your pace.

Just keep in mind:

  • don’t get hung up on your current pace. It’s okay to do some levels slower than others.
  • when you want to slow down, slow down by keeping lessons on the queue, but keep doing your reviews.

It’s not a sprint, it’s a journey, and if you need to walk for a bit, go walk. Just don’t go sit on the sofa too long without enabling vacation mode.

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The pace is entirely up to the individual. If you aren’t struggling and have the time to devote to it and your accuracy isn’t terrible, keep at it.

Just be aware that if you SRS bump 50 items into Enlightened today, you will get 50 lessons 4 months later. Not so bad when you aren’t getting Burns with your reviews, but doing 50 Burns on top of 200 reviews means you get 250 lessons, 50 of which you may or may not have anticipated.

When I started, I went like mad. My brain is STARVING to learn kanji properly. I would do all my lessons within two days of them dropping and I would routinely have 200+ Apprentice items. The first morning I woke up with 180 reviews to do, having completed all the reviews I had in queue the night before, was a punch in the face, the gut, and also the private bits. It was BRUTAL to get through. And that left me with another 100 reviews throughout the day.

I stopped in here, read other’s recommendations and the big one was, keep your Apprentice items at, around, or below 100 to try to keep things manageable. I have mostly followed this, though yesterday I braved 150 to push my lessons to 100, but only because looking at my review schedule this weekend won’t be terrible and extra reviews won’t kill me over it.

But that’s me and my pace. There are others here that just hammer away and level up as fast as possible and don’t mind 300+ reviews a day. Just remember that if you do 300 a day, you need to be able to sustain that pace. Miss a day and that 300 can become 450-600.

At 100-120 Apprentice items and let’s call it a 90% accuracy, I am still leveling up in 7-10 days and that keeps me on track for my goal of Level 60 by Dec 2021 (really targeting end of Oct 2021 but playing it safe and keeping my goal with some fudge room).

No matter what you do, keep up studying, if you ever feel overwhelmed and want to vent, or want advice, we are all happy to help! Stop on by!

Hey hey @MaceWinduHugs, level 59 desu :grinning:

The answer to “Do I need to slow down” almost always is “yes” in my opinion, but you’re free to completely disregard this piece of advice and keep going really fast anyway :upside_down_face:

Heck, even 20 lessons a day in some contexts can be “too much” and around level 50 you’ll go with 150 lessons on a level up. Good luck trying to nail them down in a single lesson session!

I made a terrible mistake of thinking I can always do lessons as soon as they show up and getting items to Guru as soon as it’s possible and and on January 7th I went through 725 reviews as a result of this :cold_sweat:

I can still keep up, but that’s simply because for the time being I prioritize WaniKani over my actual job, which probably reflects itself on my performance at work too. What I can say is that if you’re going through 200+ reviews a day, or 100+ reviews in a single session, which is something I do almost daily, you start to autopilot and pretty often you just write in “cape” and press enter and never once even ask yourself if this is a cape like the one that superhero has or a geographical concept of a cape by itself.

EDIT: To give you the context of what I mean by “prioritizing WaniKani over actual job”, I wake up at 6.00am on Thursdays just to do lessons and reviews and barely make it in time before I start work at 9. I spend 6+ hours each Thursday and Sunday to get through the walls of items that and level up. I’m incredibly drained at the end of each day like that, but damn isn’t it rewarding :upside_down_face:

Not to mention putting the words in actual sentences. I know what 飽くまでも means, I don’t know how to use it in a context. I don’t have enough time to look it up, give me a break xd

Here’s the initial post of when I stopped being able to cope with reviews:
651 reviews in a day. About to become a norm. About to scream - WaniKani - WaniKani Community

Regardless of how many reviews I’m going through, I need to go through them because I can’t sleep with clear conscience knowing that there’s a review or two still waiting for me out there ;___; xd

The other advice in this thread, especially the one by @Rihn, appears pretty sound and I’d listen to his advice on that, what I could say is that Japanese is more than writing a few characters at a time and pressing enter each time you’re satisfied with an answer, try Bunpro, play video games, get yourself immersed, and most of all - remember to have fun along the way!

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Thank you everyone for your advice! I am sure I will be revisiting this 糸 soon for advice!

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