I’m just starting out at level 3, and it feels like my workload is not even at all. I do my lessons immediately once they’re available, and it means that for 2 days in a row I have basically no reviews and then all of a sudden 100 reviews.
I searched in the community and people recommend a method that uses the reordering script. For now I’d like to avoid that because I enjoy the random nature of lessons and reviews.
Without using the reordering script, are there any tips to have an even workload? Does it happen naturally once I get into higher levels because I’ll have so many guru/enlightened/etc popping up? Should I spread out my lessons over a few days? Ideally I’d like to have a decent amount of reviews each day.
It’s ideal to spread your lessons over several days to avoid being hit with massive amounts of reviews at once. It may still be slow at your level but once you get to 5+, reviews will be consistently pouring in. Doing so doesn’t require scripts, although the use of scripts makes it more convenient since you can choose whether you want to clear out your vocab, etc. You can monitor your Apprentice and Guru numbers to determine what your workload will be like. Many people like to stick to 100 Apprentice or fewer.
So as long as I keep my apprentice below 100, I should see an even workload in the future? I’ve been doing that, but doing all my lessons at once still keeps me at roughly 100 apprentice numbers.
Before long you get comfortable 200ish reviews per day so dont worry about it too much. Just pick up pace that suits you. I try to keep apprentice pile around 120 but sometimes it likes to creep up to 150 if I decide fail some reviews
Any tips for not burning out? Right now I’m excited every day to practice my kanji and be able to read more and more without a dictionary, but I understand this won’t last forever.
Pace yourself. If it starts to get too much slow down and catch up. Practice grammar. A lot. You can only get so far with Kanji knowledge. Wanikani will keep up your kanji learning speed faster than you may possibly be able to learn with grammar. The more media you take in the better. Immersion is always a good. idea. Immerse as much as possible.
(Forgive the rambling. Bad headache. Hopefully the ideas are clear.)
It really depends on your definition of “even workload.” If you do ~100 lessons at once, then that’s obviously going to result in a huge chunk of reviews hitting you within a very short time frame, followed by a large gap. If you do 10-20 lessons a day, you’re going to have a more even spread of reviews, and your Apprentice count will likely still hover around 100, depending on your accuracy. Level 3 doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of what your future workload will be like, but the pace really does pick up even with doing a smaller number of lessons per day.
Without using scripts, it might be hard to hit max speed (if that’s what you’re aiming for), but you can definitely stretch out your lessons without impacting your speed too much.
What I used to do, was divide the level’s total number of lessons (for example, level 4 has 176 lessons), and divide that by 7 (the fastest number of days you can level up in), and do about that many lessons per day. So 176/7 = about 25, so I’d do 25 lessons a day. To spread out reviews more evenly (between morning and night) I’d split my lessons into two sessions a day. Of course, to maximum your speed you’d need to use scripts to make sure you’re doing the radicals right away.
And as many have mentioned, go at your own pace. Some people use apprentice numbers as an indicator…otherwise you could just change the amount of lessons you do per day…
Either way, I’d highly recommend not doing all lessons at once. It might be manageable for now, but as you go on, it’ll pile up considerably.
Honestly, don’t spend all your time on WK. It helps you learn kanji and some vocab, but you need to study grammar to see progression beyond that. It’s easy to become fixated on reaching a certain WK level, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t know actual sentence structure. And tons of people burn out on WK and are forced to reset, which I’m sure you don’t want.
Oh I’m not! This is just to learn Kanji because I want to be able to read books. I feel that my kanji comprehension is far lagging my ability to understand a sentence, mainly because I’ve learned Japanese through conversations and classroom exercises.
As the others said, if you do 100 things at once you will get 100 reviews.
But in addition it may be helpful for you to consider what happens in the SRS system. The first steps are 4, 8 hours, and then the intervals are in days/weeks. So if you do a lesson at 8am all reviews after the first will be at 8pm, forever (if you don’t mess it up to Apprentice 1 or 2 again). *(You also get bonus hours (intervals end in 23h/day), and hours are “rounded down” (6:59 → 6:00))
This means that
Eventually previous levels will pop up at your usual time, 100 at a time
If you want fast speed you should really look at when you do the lessons because their reviews are shifted by 12 hours. For example if you unlock at 8pm and do the lessons, be ready to also do the first review at midnight. After this one exceptional time all other reviews will be at 8am again. You can control this by doing only “time critical lessons” like radicals, with reorder.
Spreading your lessons is good, and this doesn’t slow you down in terms of WK levels
Also, looking twice/thrice at WK a day is enough for reviews usually, if you don’t get too many items wrong.
