For a person like me who has a really tight schedule, It’s a little tricky for me to get used to this application. I know that nothing is easy and that it’s ok to slow things down if things get too heated. I unfortunately have the tendency to try and rush lessons through. This goes for almost everything I learn, not just reading and identifying Vocabulary and Kanji. what are some ways that I can properly manage my time to use this application more efficiently and healthier for my brain?
You’re on lvl 1, it’s very, very easy to feel like you can take a mountain of new content, but give it some time and it will (it will) come back to bite ya. At the start it’s kinda okay-ish to rush through all your lessons, but it’s not a very doable thing to do forever.
Personally I’d advise to pick a number of lessons to do every day and try to respect the self-set boundary. Maybe 10-20 lessons? You’ll get a lot of reviews every day soon enough, especially if you try your best to do them at least twice a day for better results.
I currently do 3 kanji and 7 vocabulary every day and I level up every 2 weeks. If I could restart WaniKani I would do this from the very start even if that meant I’d take way longer to reach my current level. Sometimes I feel like I could take more, but there are always those days where you just want to puke out of seeing a kanji in front of you. For the sake of my own sanity during those days, I thank myself for having slowed down.
TLDR: I’d say if you pick a set number of kanji + vocab lessons every day and do the (much more controlled number of) reviews twice or three times a day, you’ll notice things will go more smoothly (efficiently). Rushing is tempting when you start out, but in the long run it’s not (imo) the best way. 
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Pick a number and multiply it by 5 and ask yourself if doing that many reviews (plus the stuff you forgot) is sustainable. The path of least resistance is the best path for learning with WK. Like others said, it’s easy to feel like you wanna do more starting out, as someone that rushed the first 30 levels my first time, it isn’t worth it.
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Perhaps I should say first that there is no obligation to put Lesson/Review to 0/0. Also, no need to do Reviews as soon as they come up.
After some point, it might be better to re-order Reviews. Personally, I think unperfect native re-order in Settings >> App might already be enough, just to make sure that nothing is an obligation.
About how many Lesson, you should try to gauge yourself. I would put the number of Kanji learned per day, and of Vocabularies, under different considerations. (Therefore Lesson Filter / Re-order? I don’t make a specific recommendation for this one.)
Short intervals like 4-hour / 8-hour is a good point of this app, so doing Review twice per day might help.
Generally I recommend doing review in a non-trivial count, like more than 20.
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I’m not sure if they still work given recent changes, but there are some 3rd party mobile apps that are also great for squeezing in reviews when you have a few minutes to spare or have a spotty internet connection (eg. subway commutes).
Speaking of time and tight schedules, after a certain point I also found myself preferring “anki mode” flip style reviews instead of typing out answers. Typing out answers can help a lot with memory or catching certain errors (eg. しょ vs しょう) so it’s the safer option for beginners (and beyond). If you are interested in that sort of thing you’d have to get into those apps or modifying the site with user scripts.
Speaking of scripts, many are probably broken from recent changes and the community tends to argue about them, but there are quite a few that can improve the user experience or add features to the site that are very helpful for learning. Some interesting examples:
- Confusion guesser - Points out potential reasons you put in a wrong answer, such as similar kanji or wrong readings
- Phonetic composition - Helps identify when a reading is shared between similar kanji
- Font randomizer - Get used to reading everything from handwriting to newspapers
- Anime context sentences - Get another example of vocab in the wild
- GanbarOmeter - Adds a dashboard meter to help with judging pacing and workload
- Lesson filter - Gives more control to how many (and of each type of) lessons to be done in a session for consistency
They more or less let you “work smarter not harder” when used well. This brings me to my last WK point which is that a user has written a fairly comprehensive guide (and anecdotes) based on his experience ‘speedrunning’ WK in a year. The guide has a lot of useful knowledge on using WK effectively and efficiently which should benefit everyone at any pace.
Finally, I will say everything is a learning process. Expect changes in how you use this site (or other resources) as you progress through your studies and always be on the lookout for ways to improve your study methods. What works best for you today will probably not be the same as it will be a year from now.
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Doing a consistent number of lessons each day will keep your reviews manageable in the long term. Here’s a reply I wrote to a similar question:
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