It’s pretty similar to the last image. It’s kind of the same thing; both have a little bit of less-than-optimal timing that results in leaving some things sitting in the queue for a while.
It is!
Thanks for the graph. You lose less on two-session vs the three-session schedule than I thought you might – it only puts you about one level lower by the end of the year.
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I uh. Yeah. Fast.
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Twice a day making the biggest difference is a really good point, not just for the WK system, but for memorizing new material in general. Letting a whole 24 hours pass between a lesson and the first review is just too long to remember the ones that don’t click immediately. Even just seeing something twice on the first day significantly bumped up my recall rate for the second day.
I guess that’s the point of SRS really — maximizing the efficiency of study time, and ten minutes of the second review session in a day is simply worth more than ten minutes of the first review session of the following day, when it comes to nailing down new material.
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Here’s my “secret” if you can call it that:
I do extra practice on the current levels’ radicals and kanji to make sure I will never, or almost never, get them wrong.
So usually right after the radical and kanji lessons, and/or a few hours later, I do a focused review of these items (I use a self-study quiz in the Flaming Durtles app on Android).
I never cheat, so if I eventually got it wrong in the review, well, that’s life. But I make sure that new radicals and kanji critical for level-up would stick stronger, and this way I usually get enough kanji right to level up in 8-10 days. Meanwhile, making mistakes with new vocabulary is fine, I don’t mind how long vocabulary remains in apprentice.
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I disagree with the part about “neglected vocab lessons, a lot of leeches, and a destroyed sleep schedule”.
As someone going at just about max speed, I find that doing vocab and sleeping are very important! If i neglect vocab or sleep, I wouldn’t be able to go max speed! xD
Leeches aren’t a problem either if you take some extra time and focus on your mistakes! I have a whiteboard I write down any word I even slightly struggle with, and while doing other stuff I occasionally glance at the whiteboard and try to recall the reading and meaning of the words. No more leeches!
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Personally, I split my daily review-sessions into morning, afternoon and evening reviews. When doing lessons on radicals and kanji, you want to make sure you can stay up at least 12 hours after that! So you can do the lessons, then first review 4 hours later, and second review 8 hours after that. After that it’s 24 hours until next review, and 48 hours until they level up to guru. Doing it “perfectly” would mean 3.5 days for the radicals, and 3.5 days for the unlocked kanji, after which you would level up!
Is every 7 days consistently reasonable? Probably not, I’ve been having fun with full-speed recently, (I reset my levels after a 22-month break) but I still average every 8 days so far! I don’t work full-time, however. Do note that if you want to go fast, you have to do all the radical and kanji lessons immediately, you might have to go to the advanced tab and pick them manually! After that, you can do vocabulary in-between!
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Triggered 
jk
Contemplated doing this as well
That’s the part that will never happen for me, I have stacks of handwritten A4 wanikani’s items reading and meanings beside me, never looked at them even once. I just write when I do the lessons and move on.
Triggered again
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My main takeaway from this is; make sure you know why you want to go fast and figure out if you’re willing to pay the price.
Just realized that is consistent with a sentiment from a podcast I used to listen to, “if you want something, figure out the price and pay it”, i.e. what would you have to do to get there and is it worth it?
My current metric for doing new lessons is less than 70 items in apprentice. Contrary to the essence of this thread I don’t mind going a bit slower in order to last the whole way. Currently at level 11 and so far the time per level has gone steadily up from about a week for the first few levels to a little over a month.
I might up the pace sometime but not at the risk of burning out.
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Personally, previous knowledge plus not much else to do. Please don’t compare yourself to others that are in a completely different situation! (Ideally, don’t compare yourself to others at all.) I think that’s really not fair to yourself.
You said you level up every three to four weeks, that’s actually pretty good, especially if your pace is consistent. I feel like that’s a realistic and sustainable pace for people starting zero.
Oops I just realised this is an old thread. Still stands and I’ll keep saying it haha
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Full time job and parent here. I got the email that I had been at level 1 for a while. Granted I didn’t do much the first week because I was just getting in (Day 21 of my journey from zero). So thank you for this post. I’ll keep going at the pace I can manage with the rest of my life and kid extracurriculars!
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Yeah I did one level/week for the first 40 levels and only could do it because I’m a childless freelancer who can afford to do hundreds of reviews at basically any time of the day. Even then by the time I got into the 30s I was frankly hating it, but I was just too obstinate to give up on the level 40 goal I had set. Doing my reviews felt like a punishment and I felt a great amount of relief when I got off the treadmill.
All that being said I do recommend going as fast as you’re comfortable early on. Wanikani’s returns are very uneven: the first 20 levels or so will teach you hundreds of kanji that you’ll encounter everywhere all the time and as such give you a massive return on time spent learning them. As you progress towards the end of the course it flips, the kanji you learn are a lot less common and therefore you may be better off focusing on other areas of studies than pure kanji drills.
I think that psychologically the 60 levels can be a bit scary because if you’re not going at a wild pace it will take you years to get there, so you can’t really keep your eyes on the prize and set short-term objectives. With the benefit of hindsight I think it may be more helpful to break it in three thirds:
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1-20: must-know kanji. Every minute spent on wanikani is a minute well spent.
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21-40: important kanji you’ll want to know even if you only engage with beginner material, but also at this point you should really diversify your study and work on your grammar and practical reading practice (and listening/speaking if that’s important for you at this point).
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41-60: who cares. If you still enjoy doing your WaniKani drills (or you want to brag on the forums) then go for it, but at that point you should have enough kanji knowledge to continue on your own if you prefer a more organic path.
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Thank you thank you for this. You have no idea how astute this roadmap is. I’m headed to Japan April and was waffling on how much to focus on speaking/listening vs reading. But this- this is the answer. I’ll fit reviews in as much as I can since every minute now is a minute well spent at this point. Thanks for the coaching!
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Don’t overthink @simias’s wording there – WK teaches you kanji, which are mostly useful for reading; you probably want to have at least some reading ability as part of a balanced study diet. But if you have a short term goal which is not reading focused then you probably don’t want to be doing primarily a lot of WK if you could instead be folding something more speaking/listening focused into the mix as well.
Good general long term advice doesn’t always apply in the specific and short term 
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Oh totally. I want to continue long term beyond April so this encouragement that the early levels are valuable is a push to add that little extra time in my day like doing them at lunch rather than chatting with people in the conference room. Things like that
I’m doing Pimsleur where I go through the lesson twice, practice the vocab, and have some easy podcasts to try to pick up what I can. But at only 21 days in, it isn’t much, though hearing the pacing and manner of speech seems to be helpful. The last month before the trip I’ll do some tutoring on the weekends early morning before little league games and hope to continue that more.
I always wanted to learn Japanese but my school only offered Spanish. This trip really lit a fire to finally push for it.
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