Like my title says, do you do reviews as soon as you can, or just use a schedule? For example, I’m only on level 2, but I have a small set of reviews at 11am, 2pm and 3pm. And since I’m in the early levels, I’m trying to progress at a decent rate, so I plan on doing them as soon as they are available. But I think once I hit a certain point I’m going to start following advice I see here at lot and just do enough lessons every morning to keep my Apprentice at ~100-150 and do maybe 1 or 2 review sessions a day at set times. So how does everybody else tackle their review/lesson timings?
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Whenever I can, I do reviews as soon as they appear thru the day. I prefer smaller batches. I average ~160-180 reviews recently, so getting them done in three sessions would be too taxing. I’m at my computer all day anyway.
There are also “critical” reviews - the ones that affect level-up timing (radicals and kanji of current level). Those you usually want to do right away.
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I used to do them throughout the day but have become lazier and do them in one batch. Personally doing them in intervals helped my memory a lot more and I will be going back to that method
If I open WaniKani and see any reviews I just do them. But I’m not checking every hour so they tend to clump up anyways.
I try to do mine at 7PM when I wake up and 7AM when I get home from work. I’ll sometimes try and do some during lunch, but I take 30 minute lunches so I don’t have time everyday.
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I have 2 main review times every day 7AM and 7PM plus 11AM for first review of new items.
I recommend checking this wonderful guide as it contains a lot of useful advice.
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Same as above for me, morning, midday, and night. Works best to work around my work schedule too as I can’t really get away at other points necessarily as I’m often teaching/training (remotely) or in meetings most of my work day.
Thanks, I’ll definitely check out that post!
i’m tending towards a bunch in the morning and a bunch in the evening, with an added bunch 4 hours later if i had lessons at the time. the timing lines up nicely, and WK doesn’t consume my whole day ^^
For the earlier levels, it’s probably for the best to do them when they become available, since you don’t have too many to begin with.
For the last 10+ levels I’ve been doing my reviews once when I wake up and once before I go to sleep + some other times throughout the day.
A mix of both. I try to do the reviews for the items I learned that morning on time, (but I’m often an hour or two off on the first review). I want to hit the appr3 reviews for those before 9/10pm if I can help it. The other reviews I don’t mind if I don’t get to them on time. They’re often less than 10, if more less than 50 aside from the new Apprentice items, anyway. My reviews are concentrated in the evening, where I do try to finish all before I go to sleep. Rarely I’ll leave late reviews (10/11pm/midnight reviews) til the next morning.
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I keep my apprentice items between 90 and 100 (usually 90) so I’ll only add lessons if I dip below that. This keeps my review count in numbers that are comfortable for me throughout the days. Find the sweet spot for you on the apprentice count and how that trends towards daily reviews so that they don’t become a crazy chore wall to knock them out.
As for doing reviews, I do them three times a day at set times. Morning (8am), afternoon (1pm) and evening (6pm). Nice and structured so I know that during those times is when I focus on WaniKani, and don’t worry about it the rest of the time.
I do a max of 20 per hour, prioritizing apprentice to make sure I’m not slowing those down. This way I don’t hit large patches of reviews anymore.
In the morning around 7-8 am and in the evening around 7 pm. Sometimes also during the day if I have a break.
I second this. Then you don’t have to wait as long for the next batch and can level up faster 
. Then again, I’m just a tiny turtle 
.
If I think to get on. I get on. If I have review I do reviews. If I feel like it, I do lessons. That works for me. I have some friends who can do ridiculous things like plan their days out in 15 minute intervals and follow it to exactness. Honestly it comes down to whatever works for you. If you want to plan review times, then do that, If that doesn’t work, try something else.
I do at least one batch of reviews daily. However, it is SUPER IMPORTANT for me to do same day apprentice reviews for any lessons I do in the morning, otherwise I won’t remember them the next day. Sometimes if I have a few minutes I’ll do a few reviews during the day to lighten next day’s load a bit.
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I agree, 100 apprentice items feels like the sweet spot 
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I’ve tried a couple different ways of doing things. For a while I had a timer on my phone set to 4 hours so that I’d be able to hit my new items as soon as they became available. That worked pretty well, but now I’m kind of playing around with the idea of limiting my reviews to 20 items each and setting an hourly timer on my phone to keep the chunks smaller and more frequent. Either way it seems the best way to retain stuff is to do it consistently. I can watch my accuracy drop when I decide that I’m too lazy to follow the timer rule.
As for the apprentice number, I keep that around 100 now, but in the single digit levels, it was more like 150 since I didn’t have to deal with as much guru and master items. Just have to know to slow down when it begins to be too much.
You can make that happen even with scheduling. Since the reviews come back to you according to the SRS schedule, whether they’re many or few. So, make it your own call.
There are charts for the different SRS intervals that you might wanna review, but overall, it’s your call.
My everyday life allows me to do them more spread out during the day. Most people just regulate it. They seem fine doing so. You can regulate it to your liking really.
It’s a bit hard to explain really. Try stuff out. And after a couple of levels you’ll get the hand of it.
= (what works good for you! <3 )
Big ol’ batch after breakfast. Coffee with the crabigator.
Boring details
When I’m busy:
-Only reviews after breakfast
-maybe 5 lessons
When I feel like really going at it:
-reviews
-20 lessons
-one or two more sets of reviews.