First burned items + efforts to avoid burnout

[iwew]

I hit my first burned item Friday, I believe, and I’ve been getting a steady trickle of burn reviews since then. Honestly, it’s kind of reinvigorated some of my flagging motivation, because for the first time in a while I have a reason to be excited about making progress!

Keeping that motivation has been a struggle… I should pull up my level up chart from wkstats too…

It’s gone from around 10 days per level to somewhere around the month range, and I don’t see it changing any time soon (having problems with my hand again, plus starting a fulltime job next week). The thing that’s been keeping me going was the fact that if I give up now, who knows when I’ll actually finish the course, so I decided that even if I had to slow to a crawl (6 lessons a day compared to the earlier 20 lessons a day) I would do what I could to keep some type of momentum.

How it went was around the end of level 11 I was really feeling the weight of the reviews and had decided that I wouldn’t be able to go on if it would only grow more and more over time. So, I gave myself a two-week vacation to allow myself to recuperate, after which I resumed my full-speed-ahead philosophy. Based on how difficult level 13 was to finish, the break wasn’t quite enough, which was when I decided to slow new lessons to a crawl.

I still have to wait and see how that will effect things long-term, since it should slow the rate of all of my other reviews down the line too and hopefully make things more manageable, at which point I might increase the lessons again in the name of not spending years on WaniKani. My average reviews per day, as of this week at least, is around 80.

Oh yes, and during my attempts at going full speed again on level 13, I dropped reviewing the vocab on KaniWani, which I now think might have been a mistake, so I’ve picked that up slowly again. I do think it’s pretty crucial for my retention, especially sorting out words with very similar meanings and the nuances with them. I’m allowing myself to lag behind WaniKani in it because I found trying to go full pace with it was extremely overwhelming on top of my other reviews since I would get stuck on a bunch of vocab I thought I knew but actually needed way more reinforcement on.

I’m also still doing KameSame since I’ve been enjoying chipping away at the JLTP vocab, but it’s definitely taken a backseat while I’m just trying to keep my head above water with my regular reviews.

That’s it for now, I’m not sure when my next update on the forums will be now since I hit the last major milestone, but I guess I’ll make that call if I encounter anything worth updating on or celebrating. Maybe level 20? At the current rate it’ll be a while until then.

[Alexanderkooij]

You’re doing three different SRS systems, maybe don’t do that?

You will finish the JLPT N5 list at level 16 on wanikani , so I would drop KameSame. At level 32 you will have covered 95% of the N5, N4 and N3 lists, so unless you have a date set for taking an exam I wouldn’t bother specifically studying those lists.

[Till]

You currently have a very high review count because you did 20 lessons per day earlier. See that as a learning experience, you’ve now figured out that such a pace is not sustainable. The good part is that you’ll push through that mountain eventually, if you focus on review for the moment and lower your goal for new lesson. Just stick to 5 or 6 each day, and allow yourself to go slower for the moment. When you find that your review pile gets less, you can increase your pace to perhaps 10 per day. Or alternate 5 and 10. Find a pace you’re comfortable with first, and then worry about how long it’s going to take you to do each level.

[SteenJ]

At level 16 you have only finished the JLPT N5 kanji, not the JLPT vocab.

…right?

[iwew]

Yeah, as @SteenJ said, that’s the N5 kanji list, not the vocab list. There is still a lot of overlap between the WaniKani vocab and the unifficial JLPT list but there’s also a lot that I either wouldn’t have learned for a long time on WaniKani or might not be there at all. I do it when I have time because it’s fun for me to get a break from seeing the same words over and over again on WaniKani, and it’s satisfying for me because it’s also reviewing vocabulary that I learned in my college course a few years ago.

Basically how I do it is via the placement test feature, meaning I don’t actually use the SRS for anything that I already know, which also saves quite a lot of effort (and if it’s something I’ll get to in WaniKani soon anyway, it gives me a leg up in already knowing it better, which I see as a pro).

Over half the items I immediately burn (via passing it on the placement test) so it’s kind of a little ego boost for me, haha, maybe that’s why I like it.

[iwew]

It’s reassuring to hear confirmation that my review pile will (eventually) go back down to the leisurely level that I think I’d rather do long-term. I’d been so excited about going full speed at the beginning, then eventually I realized that I’d have to do like 200 reviews a day or something if I kept going full speed which freaked me out. I was also thinking of trying 10 a day once things calm down, hopefully it’ll strike the balance that you mentioned.

It’s been hard to convince myself to go slower but it seems like it’s necessary <_< I really hope it’ll be faster than one level a month but it is what it is.

[sakurasushi15]

Might I just offer a reason for doing KameSame? Wanikani is great for recognition, which is an important part of learning, but KameSame is great for recall, which is tougher but I believe is a necessary part of committing all these kanji to memory and cementing their meanings in my mind. I use both WaniKani and KameSame and I’ve found that using both are critical to my learning. Now, I’m taking absolutely forever to progress, so maybe don’t take my advice, but I’m not in a rush to get to level 60.

[ashwagandha]

A little unrelated reply to the OPs question, but where do you find these stats charts? I seem to be unable to find it in WK settings.

[durteloni]

wkstats