Hey folks,
So I did my reviews like a good boy until I got busy with real life a few months ago and totall forgot it existed.
I have 1000 reviews and only like about 400 burned.
Should I start over or just chip away at a hundred reviews every here and there?
The gap in my repetition is no doubt going to set me back a good bit.
Not sure if I messed up the process too badly or not.
Thanks a dozen!
-Yokai
Howdy, and welcome to the forums! (consider introducing yourself to everyone in #campfire:introductions if youâd like 
)
The SRS system is designed to keep you on track, even if you fall off for a couple of months, as long as you keep back at it once you return. (After all, the largest SRS interval is four months!) So Iâd recommend starting out chipping away at your reviews and seeing how it goes. If youâre doing alright, keep at it! If not, then consider resetting a little bit (it doesnât have to be all the way back to level 1, just to where you feel more comfortable).
Also, you can take a look at your burned items, and if there are some that you donât remember at all, you can individually âresurrectâ (un-burn) them to add them back into your reviews.
Definitely donât start back on lessons until you get somewhere more manageable (or if you reset).
Hope this helps!
I definitely agree with this! You have done an enormous amount of work to get to level 11, and resetting back to 1 would have you reviewing content you are probably still retaining.
To go off of what @YoungAdam as already stated, work through your reviews and donât do any new lessons (no matter how tempting it may be). When you finish those, assess where youâre at (your percent of incorrect answers) and how much youâre willing to get wrong to stay on your current level. You could reset back to a more âcomfortableâ level to get back into the groove of things, but I would recommend just fighting through the radicals, kanji, and vocabulary youâve forgotten until you feel ready to start your lessons again.
Youâve got this! (Also welcome back btw!)
The problem with having a big review pile in my experience is that apprentice items can get âlostâ in there, so Iâd recommend using a userscript like reorder omega to single them out.
Say you were going to do 50 reviews today anyway, dedicating like 25 to just apprentice items will help push them up through the SRS stages, reducing your workload.
I think you could try chipping away at it like 50 or 100 and see how you feel. You can even reset back a few levels or do a complete reset back to the beginning. I remember a time I didnât touch WaniKani for over a year and the Extra Study Feature didnât exist at that point so I just reset back to 1.
I feel like if the Extra Study Feature had existed at the time I may not have not that and just chipped away at it instead as you can review recent mistakes as much as you like which is very helpful.
What Iâm discovering as I work through my own overdue review pile â though mine is hundreds, not thousands â is that leeches are still leeches. That is, the items I was having trouble with a few months ago are still giving me trouble, But burnable items are still burnable, too: Iâm doing pretty well on âMasterâ items, and very well on âEnlightenedâ items. Which when I think about it isnât surprising: those are items where I didnât miss the ânormalâ review interval by much, if at all, and that were already embedded in my long term memory.
So thatâs an argument for not resetting. Youâll lose all the progress youâve made on your âbestâ items, but it wonât make much different on your âworstâ items.
Do a quick survey of the material in each level. Iâd recommend finding a level where youâre pretty confident in 50-75% of the material and setting back to the level after that. Starting back at the beginning is pointless if youâre pretty confident youâre never going to forget words like äžăäșșăćăæ°ŽăăȘă©ă
Just find a lower level to set back to, and youâre reviewing will also drop considerably. Then just tackle 50-100 a day as you chip 'em down.
Iâve reset before and regretted it terribly. As someone who regularly wanders away from WaniKani only to return again weeks and months later, Iâve practically made an art form of getting my reviews back under control.
My recommendation is to use a reorder script to organize your reviews into manageable groups. Starting with reviewing only radicals gives you a leg up on sparking memories of kanji mnemonics, and if you leave the vocab for last, your guesses will be much more accurate.
I also suggest settings that allow you to do the most recent reviews first. That way the reviews youâve just done will come back as soon as theyâre available, leaving older reviews in an untouched backlog until youâre ready to pull them out and add them to your cycle. On the iphone app Tsurukame, you can set the reviews setting to âOrder: Newest Available Firstâ, while I believe the script Reorder Omega calls it âSort Type: Overdue Daysâ.
You said that you have some 400 burned items, which means youâve already sunk more than 6 months into your current level. It might take a month or more to wade your way through those 1000 reviews, but youâll still be moving significantly faster than if you went back and tried to start over from scratch. As far as staring at the sheer numbers, I suggest keeping a running log to remind yourself that itâs going down. and encouraging yourself to always end at a smaller number. If you start at 1000, end the day at 950. Can you get down to 900 tomorrow? No? 925 is fine too. 900 the day after that? You get down to 800 but then miss a few days and are back up to 950, thatâs OK, make it down to 900 that day instead. Can you make it back to 800 in four days? Five? Make little short term goals and enjoy your time instead of stressing that itâs not going down fast enough. Feeling discouraged? Take a motivation break to stare in awe at this person whoâs been fighting their way through more than 6000 old reviews for the last year and chronicling their journey.
A year and a half now. And for what itâs worth, I did reset from 60 to 46.