Feeling a bit overwhelmed for the first time now - if I go half a day without keeping on top of reviews, then I’ll have 50+ waiting for me when I get back, most of which are from previous levels. I think I was hoping that the spacing for items in master and above would make this less of a burden, but so far it isn’t. I actually have over 42 vocabulary items in my “to learn” queue that I’ve been putting off just because I feel like there’s already so many items on the stack.
I do reviews twice a day. Once after morning coffee, and then after work/dinner. I usually get around 60-90 per session, and it usually take me around 10-15 minutes to go through a session (if I don’t start a new tab and browse the forums xd). You might be feeling overwhelmed because you may be going a bit slow, which takes up more of your day and could cause some frustration. Try not to spend too much time thinking about each item, you passively learn through srs, just let it do it’s magic. If an item goes down to apprentice, don’t worry about it, you’ll bring it right back up
My only suggestion is to put on some of your favorite study music, put your nose down, and crank those reviews out. 頑張って！
no worries. You’ll get used to it in no time. Besides less than a 100 reviews will be over faster than you know it. I’m currently getting 100+ new lessons Everytime i level up, so having at least none kanji lessons in line makes me one happy wanikanian.
Same goes with reviews: less than say… 150 is easy as berry picking.
Also remember you can always use the wrap up tool to size down the review batches!
I do 10 lessons a day as a rule and that gives me about 80-100 reviews or so a day.
I find that doing reviews in blocks of 5 and then rewarding myself by unpausing something I’m watching at the same time for 3-5mins helps remove the grind of a large review pile; they’re normally gone before I’ve finished the video/show.
I’ve been on this cadence for a while myself, with similar results. I do my reviews whenever they come up, but only 10 lessons a day, and then a bonus 10 when I level up. I’m even thinking of slowing that down a bit by skipping weekend lessons or not doing the 10 bonus ups leveling.
I think it’s important to do all of your reviews asap. If it is starting to become unmanageable, either stop or slow down in taking lessons to regulate your speed. And realize that after adjusting your speed of taking new lessons, it still take a while for your review count to catch up and follow suit.
After reading any threads here, I think that burnout and/or falling way behind on reviews are very common. Since I want to succumb to neither, I always try and lower my lesson level before either of those has a chance to happen.
Also, if you haven’t already, I’d strongly suggest getting a phone app to do your reviews. That way you can do them when waiting for a bus, in the line at the grocery, or at a fancy dinner with your significant other. Yes, you heard me. “Sorry, babe, I need to use the restroom. I’ll be right back…”
What I found was that with more than 100+ items in “Apprentice” state things were falling out of my brain too fast, so what i’m trying as an experiment is I throttled back on lessons until I was under 50 apprentice items, and now I’m going to try to maintain that target as I go forward. Dunno if this will be effective or not. My logic is that if I at least guru’d a term then it is probably SOMEWHERE in my brain, whereas being shotgunned with 100 brand new terms is (for me) overwhelming.
Also in the 10 lessons a day crew (unless I’m not at work for a few days for some reason!!)
Definitely makes things manageable. Gives me more time to study grammar and things more important for me right now - which is a lot more fun than reviews!
If anyone wants to give my ‘Doing WK reviews’ playlist a go let me know (It’s mostly electronic music, Japanese in style or lyrics - or both!) It gets me through 100+ reviews in the morning and 50-100 in the evening.
My not-snarky response is “As many as it takes.” I’m not actually in a rush and it doesn’t help me to speed through lessons if it isn’t going to sink in.
Hahaha. I didn’t do all of them at once, that would kill me, literally. I basically did a few a couple of hundred per day on and off until I cleared everything. As for the circumstances, in short, I revived all my burns:
Must’ve been one hell of an endeavor.