Heading into the painful levels. Going to try and maintain 7ish day pace but if it gets to be too much I’ll slow down and just try to stay consistent.
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I reset from levels 7 to 5 I think, which in hindsite was a mistake. Now I’m trying to speed up my level progress.
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Still finding my ideal rhythm and daily goals aside from “make your review counter go to zero”, but I am pretty happy with my progress. Some of the longer levels are longer because I dedicated more time to practicing grammar elsewhere (or just wasn’t feeling up to the grind as much- something everyone deserves the liberty of practicing).
I think my ideal pattern is to:
- keep track of when the previous level is about to end and let the final batch of Kanji reviews build up
- knock those out in the evening when I am feeling ready to progress
- immediately learn all the new radicals (and any of the new vocab I recognize from external studying and isn’t a challenge to add to my lineup)
- go to bed
- next morning and from that point on, add about 5 new Kanji (and 10-15 vocab words) into my lineup every day. The post-radical Kanji should unlock right around the time the immedately available ones dry up.
- Once all the new Kanji are in the lineup, just spend a few days adding vocabulary and doing reviews until the cycle is ready to repeat. I also make flash cards of the new Kanji at this point in time to practice writing and have another resource to use.
Serves me well, hope to continue it as long as it will serve me. Someday that bar graph will have 60 bars !
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I’ve been lurking the forums for a while, just thought I share my chart
While the chart might make it look like I reached level 60 in a somewhat speedy pace, I begun Wanikani in…2015 
I reached the mid 20’s (took about 3/4 of a year if I remember correctly) before life got busy and I forgot about learning Japanese. I decided to reset and try again in 2020 but life got in the way again.
Last year at the beginning of 2024, I decided to give it one more go. I reset my level to 3 and finally reached 60 yesterday. Definitely was a wild ride. It took me more than 9 years to reach level 60 but I’m glad I stuck with it even with the multiple breaks.
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おめでとう on your achievement and your persistence! 
You’ve gone at a pretty fast pace too.
I also have come back to Japanese and WK after several years - I appreciate the inspiration to stick with it this time.
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I really struggled to get started, but on my second trip to Japan I’ve decided to really buckle down and practice multiple times a day
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Thank you! I think still remembering kanji and vocab from the first 10 levels allowed me to go at a faster pace compared to my speed years ago. I just tried to keep the momentum going afterwards.
After several cycles of starting and stopping WK and Japanese over the years, I learned:
- Life will always get in the way. If you don’t have time for your hobbies, then make time for them. Be creative with your time management. (I’m an avid gym rat and I did not want to cut my gym time for study time so I started listening to beginner Japanese podcasts and Satori Reader chapters instead of music when working out so I can be productive with both hobbies at the same time). Some things, however, can be cut from my daily life such as doomscrolling.
- Speaking of which, I spent a lot of hours mindlessly scrolling on my phone when I could have been doing something productive; I felt myself losing focus throughout my daily life. I did not want to be complacent and continue on that downward trend. Learning Japanese and WK were ways to exercise my brain and not let it wither away. I like my brain haha. This was my most powerful motivator for not giving up. I didn’t have that when I tried WK years prior, I just thought it would be cool to know Japanese ( I still do
, but having more reasons to keep learning helped so much).
I’m sure I’ll still hit roadblocks on my learning journey but this is a lifelong journey. Whether I’m moving forward or at a standstill currently, the journey is still ongoing and eventually I’ll be further than where I was before. Sounds very cheesy but I think it’s true 
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