I’ve been struggling the last few weeks with a lot of things but I finally got caught up with my two WK bookclubs and I’m hoping tonight to make a good dent in Yotsuba. If I can get an hour a day, it will go faster than I expect, right?!
I’ve also decided to just completely stop progress in WK for now, because my leech count just went up from 150 to 175 in less than a month, and I feel that number of leeches is way too high!
just take it a day at a time and stop doing lessons for a while I guess.
I would always take a couple of minutes each hour at work and do 20 reviews per hour. Step away for 5 minutes and do them on your phone if you cant use your work computer. By the time you finish work you will have already done 160 reviews.
Thank god I paid for lifetime. Wk has gotten frustrating lately since I’m getting a lot of stuff wrong. I realized I was sending stuff to guru and master for the same reason. I kept seeing them in other vocab but I wasn’t really learning them.
I have 300+ items in guru and 300+ in master. Not to mention the 700+ in enlightened.
Once I burn everything (still won’t take new lessons) I will start with lessons again but slowly. If guru gets to 100 I will bring it down to 50 or so before I continue.
1.5h in WK is a lot IMO 
I spend max 25min/day on WK and 20min on bunpro, then I watch 2 anime episodes with japanese subtitles and that’s it for the day.
My lvl up nowadays here is 25-26 days.
You have an exceptional memory then because when I do lessons and as the reviews pile up, I takes me about an hour and 40 minutes on wk for the day.
That’s why I need to pace myself. My memory sucks I suppose 
actually it is the opposite. My memory is quite bad.
So one thing I learned here, many users said, and for me it is true: let SRS do its thing.
I always get the first session of new items I learn on lessons wrong, almost 90% I get them wrong because I dont remember and I dont follow the strict agenda many here say about “as soon as you do new lesson, do the review 4 hours later”, or "as soon as this hits guru, do that many of lessons etc’.
I do the same with bunpro, there it is way harder than here, specially on N2 I am now.
let SRS do its thing.
it will sink in with time 
OP already clarified that thats includes not only Wanikani, but also 1 cure dolly video, bunpro, and two WK ABBC bookclubs. So i think their WK workload is just about what one would expect on those levels, i would estimate 30min per day or even less? But slowing down to create more time for reading is very solid choice around level 30 anyways if you dont have that much time.
Wow thats really really a lot, i dont think ive seen number like that for anyone besides madmen speedrunning fast levels or people returning after months of being away. Whats your average daily review count and accuracy? It might just be a case of taking too much time on reviews instead of firing answer in first few seconds? Failing reviews is often better than taking minutes to answer it - you dont want to take that long when reading some long text either. Basically if i dont know what it is under 10 seconds, i need to train it more anyways, so failing it is fine.
Im basically doing similar strategy to evandcs of just sending it, making my accuracy on new items quite low, but after failing many of them twice or three times i quickly get used to it.
I did pretty much the exact opposite change after level 20. I basically stopped doing any reading and tried to max speed WK (and finished in a year and a half). Thinking back, my priorities may have been mixed up, since I wasn’t able to put the kanji I was learning to use. Prioritizing WK less so you can focus on reading makes a lot of sense I think. You can still do reading with limited kanji knowledge, but you can’t use your kanji knowledge at all without reading.
On the other hand, taking a month per level is a lot, at least to me. Not that anyone needs to speedrun it, or even that they should, but at least for me I would probably get discouraged if I’m doing daily reviews but it’s going to take like 5 years to get to level 60. There are certainly ways to keep under 200 reviews a day while still moving through levels decently fast. But if that doesn’t bother you, then do what works for you. It’s not a race, just a tool!
Exactly. That was my issue. I would have a batch of like 60 or 70 in the morning and I would take too long trying to remember. So I would spend about 50 minutes to an hour. And then I would have another batch in the evening which also would take me quite a while.
I started to burn out and I decided to just spend 4 or 5 seconds on each word. If I couldn’t recall it at all I would answer incorrectly. If I had a word on the tip of my tongue, sometimes I take a little longer but usually never more than 10 seconds. If I don’t know it well I don’t know it!
Now my total review time is probably 40 minutes for the entire day in small batches. This allows me to read or watch videos etc.
Just doing review for now 
Edit: the hour and 40 minutes was when I was taking lessons non stop even if I kept getting things wrong. So my apprentice and guru was always high hence the long review sessions.
I see, glad to see youve already implemented some changes and it made a difference! That really was unneccessarily long, i doubt waiting a minute compared to 10sec on review helped that much.
Im going somewhat fast, leveling up every 10 days, but my ~200 daily reviews are taking me just about 40 minutes, lessons are taking another 5 minutes for total of 45 minutes.
Longest day ive had was 70 minutes (less than 10 total days that are over an hour) on day with 264 reviews (ive actually had few of 300+ days, but they were quicker, most of those were probably burns from very early levels that didnt require much thinking?)
That said im working from home so i have the priviledge or checking in basically every hour or two and seeing those items in the intended intervals and doing them in smaller batches probably helps with accuracy - i feel like i would have to rethink this strategy if my accuracy fell below 70% or something.
In my experience, the best way is not trying to limit items in apprendice or guru state but to limit the number of lesson for a day.
I’m current at 20 lessons a day, and this roughly translate in 10/12 days for level, 100 in apprendice, 500 in guru, 500 in master and 2000 in enlighten.
I’m usually doing 160/180 reviews a day with 95% accuracy.
Since I’m keeping same stats (apart number of burned) since I was in level 10 (now I’m 26) I’d say that they are quite stable: 20 lessons a day means about 160/180 reviews a day. Which kind of makes sense if you consider all the levels and some unavoidable mistakes.
I you want less than 100 review a day, limit yourself at 10 lessons a day max. 5 lessons a day would give you less than 50 reviews.
Also another suggestion: don’t try too hard to remember, if you don’t have the answer in 20 sec or such, just write something random and let the kanji fail. You will do better next time. At the end we want to be able to read the kanji in a reasonable time.
I was doing 10 a day but still didn’t work (and it won’t work if I don’t also take care of apprentice and guru). I don’t have a great memory sadly and I kept getting a lot of reviews which tires me out.
From now and I will keep those numbers low and do lessons accordingly!
Ps- yeah, I don’t spend more than 5-7 seconds on each word. If I don’t know it I enter i (my go to character) for meaning and reading.
Something very similar happened to me when I got to the upper 20s - I went from doing a level a week to taking a month or more to clear a level.
I think you are 100% on the right track to make reading a part of your daily routine. I am personally trying to get my Apprentice and Guru levels down before doing any new lessons, and trying to read as much as possible every day. Reading is like the glue that locks down the kanji and vocabulary, by giving them context and emotional connection.
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