Easy tips to being more efficient

WaniKani
#5

Yes, I started around the same time as you, with very similar feelings and motivations!

I came across a very useful tip right here in the forums and I’m thankful for it every day since then:
The idea is to do your lessons first thing in the morning. Say between 7 and 8 am. That way your first review will come at 11am and the second review at 7pm. Stick to these times and your whole WaniKani experience will become very consistent and predictable.

So this leaves me with a typical day of 30-45 mins first thing in the morning, 5-15 minutes at 11am, 5 to 15 mins at 7pm and around 45 minutes last thing at night (around 10:30pm)

I am on this pace by taking 5 Kanji lessons or 15 Vocab lessons per day. When I’m doing Kanji Lessons I take a good half hour to learn them. With vocab Lesson and Reviews, I don’t really try too hard, I’m happy to keep getting them wrong until I start getting them right.

I think the 1:3 Kanji to Vocab ratio is good. I play around with it a bit if I’m making good or bad progress, sometimes I do lessons in bunches of 6 and vocab in 18s, other times 5 Ks to 20 Vs.

5 Likes
#6

I feel like most the words i’ve learned to so far on wanikani aren’t that useful, and i won’t be able to understand much from any sentence with my vocab so far

I think the Tofugu guide says you should know 80% of the vocab being used when learning Grammar. At WK level 7 you should have 80% of the N5 kanji learned. I started Genki 1 around level 8 with very few issues.

Some people also saying grammar and learning books are largely unuseful

I think the consensus is that no one grammar book or course will definitively teach you everything you need, but for beginning grammar basically anything you can get will help you to form sentences and give context to vocab you’re learning even tae kim’s guide so don’t let that hold you back. When you have the basics down via whichever textbook you choose, you can always try another one or get more insight via YouTube or dedicated grammar blogs/dictionaries.

#7

thanks omeone! how did you start implementing this? did you start that scheduelle one morning? or did you wait till your next upcoming level?

#8

Yeah, I started it straight away. I’ll try to find the original post… (at the very least to give credit and thanks!)

Follow up edit: sorry, I was unable to find the original post :frowning:
One other thing I forgot to mention - when I hit the Radicals, I do them all at once.

1 Like
#9

Thank BM69. maybe i have misunderstood the 80 % understand of the vocab, and what its in relation to. Cus i definitly don’t understand 80% of the vocab being used in any sort of normal text. Would you recommend me start G1 now? like you did?

#10

Unsure if this is where you first read about it, but it’s outlined in this guide: My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK open_book ) in the guide linked at the start. :durtle_megane: There’s some more recent discussion about creating a schedule around the SRS intervals here: Is it okay to review only twice a day? How much would it slow you down??

Edit: yeah whoops thought I was in another thread, edited my post :caught_durtling:

3 Likes
#11

This is the one I referenced in the first post! And i recognized what oneone said aswell. I was just not quite clear on how to start this scheduelle when i read “my journey”. So it was good to have someone put very easy for me :joy:

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#12

No, definitely not :joy: I don’t read any posts about doing it in X days, I think they’re nuts! I LIKE learning Japanese, I don’t want to end up hating it!

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#13

7 day and 8 day schedule examples. didn’t do the math on the 8 day schedule one (feel free to correct me).

  • you can shift the times around but you have to do it with all lessons and reviews.
  • you only have to keep this schedule two times a week (for critical reviews and lessons), on another two days (a week) you’ll only have one critical review and the rest of the week you can do your reviews whenever you want.
  • install the userscripts from the guide, one of them should show critical reviews in your forecast on WK.

schedule

2 Likes
#14

I knew that my guide would bring value to every new user of WK, so I had to market it a bit to reach the most amount of people possible :stuck_out_tongue: In reality, the guide’s pillars are mostly about creating a routine, habit-building, and helping people with decision-making on WK. I do teach how to go beast mode, but that’s a small part of it :slight_smile:

5 Likes
#15

i’m sorry to be daft. but there’s so much info i’m trying to take in that sometime the most simple is hard to understand.

I have a few scipts setup from the guide. Which ones is you are talking about?

Also in terms i can see that at 0600 (i’m by no means up at this point btw) is blue i assume for radicals? and purple at ten for vocab, then orange and yellow i don’t know what is?

#16

really enjoyed you guide! i just had a hard understanding some of it.

Especially the part about setting up an efficient schedule - actually that is the reason for this post :smiley:

i uderstood the parts of why. just not the how. so i would abosolutely love some contextualized help if possible :joy:

1 Like
#17

Are you doing 2 lesson sessions a day? Or is it that the reviews are just coming at different times? Because technically 1 lesson session leads to 2 reviews sessions (+4h, +8h). Every other review that gets available outside of those 2 can be done during those 2 review sessions.

And don’t worry, tell me if there’s something you don’t understand and I’ll try making it clearer for you :slight_smile:

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#18

Totally get it, and I think your efforts and contributions are wonderful. There was a time when I would have been all over it, and maybe even made my own guide!

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#19

userscript → Forecast details [Userscript] Forecast details / critical reviews

  • colors don’t mean anything :slight_smile:
  • you don’t have to start 0600. you can change everything, the only thing you have to keep is the interval. if you want to start four hours later you shift the whole plan by four hours.
2 Likes
#20

well i’ll admit i’ve done it quite studpidly so far. What i have done was when i reached a new level and all the lessons came up i would do about half of them at once, and then go through them and get them wrong or right. i would do them a different times of day, and if not busy go through them as soon as say ten new reviews came up. or if i was busy i would do them once in the evening but have like 100+ reviews come up. which tbh hasn’t been bad. (so far)

I really just want to have a set way that understand how to do that makes sense. :smiley:

1 Like
#21

if you wan’t to be efficient, you should do your Radical and Kanji lessons as soon as they come up. Vocab is something you can and should split up.

so after a level up you do your Radical and Kanji lessons only for that day. you can split up your vocab over the next 2-4 days depending on how fast you want to go. but they are not critical for leveling up on WK tho.

after you start using a schedule for a little while you will notice most things yourself.

2 Likes
#22

WaniKani isn’t a race. It’s about building knowledge to get you to a goal. You found the pace and efficiency you need to keep you moving forward; slow, fast, medium doesn’t matter - you are moving ahead.

Could you boss rush this and be done in just over a year? Sure. But if you don’t have the time, aren’t comfortable with all the reviews that would pop in, and so on, go at the speed that works best for you. Even if it was 4 weeks a level instead of 2, as long as you are moving ahead you will get there.

In terms of making a schedule, I don’t know what your day looks like but what I find is that I have set a goal for myself to do WK no less than 3 times a day. First thing in the morning, noon, then again in the evening.

That said, I work from home and have a lot of leeway. I find I do my reviews first thing in the morning, then probably again mid-morning, then noon, mid afternoon, then evening, and as time permits, once or twice before going to bed. But I hit it at least 3 times a day without fail. And this is a schedule I need to have, as otherwise I would likely just not come to do any of the work because I am lazy… :smiley:

Hope that helps!

3 Likes
#23

Ha yes. I totally agree with this. However it’s actually not to race through i want to be more efficient. however to learn it better and as intended. It feels like the way i’m doing it i ain’t using the SRS as optimal as i could.

I have a lot free time and leeway at the moment aswell. however i would like to think corona and lockdown eases up before i’m done with WK, which means i have to back to a regular work, and woud be better equipped with having a good scheduele.

2 Likes
#24

I am actually working out a way to try to have all my vocab done between level ups and I may finally have crammed enough in to actually put it to better use.

I don’t do ALL of my kanji lessons on level up. I do all the Radicals right away. I then add on 5-10 of the newly opened Kanji. I level those up to Apprentice 3 or 4, then start in on the open vocab, doing 20-30 a day.

I do the remaining kanji the day before I complete my Radical SRS to Guru 1.

The reason I do my lessons and reviews this way is my brain absolutely freaks out when I level up in 7 days and get a big blow of 130 new lessons. When I see that, I put them off longer than I should, and because of that, if I attempt another 7-8 day level up, I can’t work through all the previous level’s vocab, which then hurts my brain in a different way.

Seems to be working but will see if I can maintain the 120-160 Apprentice items in my stable…