Recently got back on the grind and figured out a much better rhythm. Before, the only tool I used to learn Japanese was WaniKani - a total mistake on my part. It ended with me quitting WaniKani a total of 4 times over a period of about 7 years - I chose not to restart, and instead spent almost a month cleaning out my old 1000+ reviews in my queue.
Now, I attempt to consume as much media as I can in japanese, along with doing reviews thrice a day instead of only once. Wish someone had told me to do this almost 7 years ago, but better late than never!
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This will be my stopping point for now, so the journey ends here:
I only kept on until level 40 because its nice to stop at full 10s, felt since level 33 or 34 that there is not much more WK can show me for the time I have to invest.
Always tried to not spend more than 30-40 Minutes per day on here and even that now feels too long not doing better things with my time. 
It really did help with the goals I had though, so I don’t think that in the end my time was really wasted, especially until I passed level 30. Maybe one day I will rush through the last 20 levels, so will still do reviews until everything is at least enlightened.
Keep at it, it’s your personal journey after all and don’t forget: Tools are only just that, you don’t need to stress yourself out over SRS and you can always stop and look for something more effective for yourself! 
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I would, but then everyone will see how I get distracted with other things for Japanese. I took like 30 days each for the fifties because of that lol.
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At level 57, you’re still ahead of like 98% of people that have ever started Wanikani.
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What is the more effective stuff that you are using to learn?
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I am generally not a big fan of mass memorization of specific details in a language, so I don’t really have special learning apps besides WK (I think it does add value with its SRS because of the special case its built for). Anki is used very rarely and I never bothered trying to SRS grammar like bunpro and the like offer.
So I guess I don’t have any special stuff, I just spend time reading and listening to things that interest me. For me that is far more effective than deliberate study of out-of-context details and WK stole too much time from this after a while.
Edit: I guess you could call LingQ and Satori Reader apps, I use those and besides that play visual novels, read books, listen to yt content that interests me.
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ah well if you got to the point where you can confidently immerse it would make sense. All you need is probably to look something up here and there.
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What exactly is confidently immerse? It feels never comfy when you start, no matter how much knowledge you have acquired before. Starting to read will always be hard, even if you finish WK you won’t be magically able to.
It takes effort to start doing it and keeping at it until it becomes easier, it can be done from any stage of knowledge. Understanding everything right from the get-go is nigh impossible, we all need to learn that sometimes it’s okay to just get the general gist of texts/speech, that is already a huge accomplishment!
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It might be true on some levels, that looking up too many here and there might not be good for some kind of immersion. But at that point, it would be better to find easier materials that vocab are less of the problem. And Kanji would also be less of the problem.
Then, the real trouble would be grammar and sentence analysis.
Overthinking vocabularies can make it difficult to see the bottleneck sometimes. Maybe graded readers work on the same principle.
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this is beautiful. Way to keep at it! Awesome! No resets with the breaks? Used vacation mode?
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Time for another decadal check in. I decided not to slow down lol, but am going through grammar now at a chill pace. Got through N5 grammar in the last ten levels, and hopefully when I finish the 30s I’ll be mostly done with N4!
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This second decade definitely went slower than the first, and I very much felt the impact of summer travel. It’s just so much harder to learn and retain when I don’t have as much time to really lodge things in memory in the first place. And I’ve noticed my vocab is starting to lag, I’ve got a couple still unlearned from level 18! 
But I set myself the goal of finishing 20 in July, and gosh darn it, I made it.
Based partly on things I’ve seen on this forum, and also acknowledging my own weaknesses, I’m going to be slowing down and trying to shift to grammar and readers. It’s tough to branch out of the now familiar comfort of Wani’s process, but it’s gotta happen sometime. So my goal for finishing 30 is end of November.
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Yes, I used vacation mode sometimes, and sure had a big pause (several months) around the middle, where I then had later to catch up a lot. No idea how the time is measured, I’m not that diligently all the time and do reviews every day. (I try to stay within a reasonable frame, to not have too much reviews again, but can happen that I didn’t do WK for one or two days.)
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I’ve been a bit busy so this time I couldn’t be as fast as I’d been as of lately. But it’s OK. Gaman shite ganbaro e.
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After a few weeks of indecision, made the yearly commitment to the Crabigator! Trying to go slow and consistent. This old brain isn’t like it used to be 
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Life has got in the way of Wanikani once again, but it’s still a decent pace. I’m considering leaving a week or two without adding any new lessons every 5 or 10 levels to “clear” the review queue. That might help me keep the fast pace up until level 30. Anyway, I’m excited because level 13 is where the kanji I’d never seen begin to appear. Getting closer!
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Hey, just a heads up: I’m still alive. I got overwhelmed with reviews so I spent two or three weeks bringing the volume down. Now I’m back to 15 lessons a day, without reordering them. That way lessons take two weeks to finish, which is slower than I’d hoped for, but a much more reasonable pace. I’m OK with finishing in two years - my main goal is getting to level 30 and being able to take the training wheels off, so to speak.
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