Doing 5 per day has been working out pretty well, reviews are not overwhelming and I have around 50 items in apprentence at any given time on average. I think I’ll actually try 10 per day starting next month.
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Really glad to hear that! 
If you want to have more of a gradual increase in the number of lessons per day, go to your account settings and change the number of items that you get per batch in your lessons. You can change it to 3 or 4 per batch 
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Well somehow I come back here to monitor my own progress 
Trying 8 per day currently and its working out ok. Get a bit uncomfortable as my Apprentice pile is coming up to a 100, which I am still not used to. But on the other hand 12 days in and I completed more items than I did last month in total! So that definitely motivates me a lot.
P.S. Do we get Tofugu email on level 10? I got last one at level 5 I think and want another one
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Oh gosh, I feel like I’m going waaay slower than the majority on here. According to my emails, I signed up in mid July, and I only got on to level 5 last week.
In my defence until quite recently I lived with intermittent electricity and a bad nightly weed habit liquefying my brain…
Still. I need to up my lessons. I get a bit scared of adding to my workload so I’ve been holding back.
Don’t worry man. Keep it steady and slow and that is better than sporadically fast.
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@rumade @doutatsu I wrote a few months ago a mini “manual” of how to use WaniKani intelligently (learn faster with less time). It’s not perfect, because I gained more experience since then, but it might help you guys out There are also some new released scripts that are very useful and aren’t on this list.
Scripts that I use (and recommend):
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WaniKani Ultimate Timeline this one shows you a graph of when you have reviews. Knowing when you have reviews at the beginning of the day vs 1h before is much more organized, saves you time and avoids unecessary worries. This means more energy to focus on important stuff
- Wanikani Override: This one allows you ignore wrong answers. Use it exclusively for when you make typos or for when WK lacks your synonym. Getting a Kanji wrong because of a typo and postponing your leveling up because of it can be quite annoying. This script solves it.
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WaniKani Pitch Info: This one shows you a small graph about the pronunciation of every vocab on WK. Not sure what your native language is, but the further your native language pronunciation is from Japanese, the more you’ll need this. Getting used to Japanese tones is important in my opinion and it definitely helps with memorization
- WaniKani Real Numbers: This one shows you the actual number of lessons/reviews that you have (and not just the 42+). Instead of having to check the actual number, you’ll have it right there. This helps you organize your work because you can better make the distribution of your reviews inside your head instead of just worrying about contantly checking the real numbers. WK should be a stress-free tool.
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Wanikani Reorder Ultimate 2: This allows you to reorder what you see first on your lessons and reviews. I mostly use this for my lessons. Why? If you think about WK and its leveling’s system, you’ll quickly understand that radicals and kanji have priority over vocabulary, since the later doesn’t influence how fast you level up. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to do the vocabulary lessons in time. However, instead of having to deal with tons of vocab before getting the radicals, you can choose to get them right away
- WaniKani Show Specific SRS Level: This one is very simple. Instead of getting “Apprentice”/“Guru” every time you get an item right during reviews, you get the specific level that it leveled up. For example, “Guru 2” and “Apprentice 3”.
- WaniKani SRS Level Progress: This allows you to have access to the number of items in each subdivision of both the Apprentice and the Guru categories. For example, you’ll get “10/0/37/63” instead of just “110” items on Apprentice. [Explanation: 10 in App 1, 0 in App 2, 37 in App 3 and 63 in App 4]
- WaniKani Dashboard Progress Plus: This one allows you to see the progress of your current level’s items. Are they Apprentice 2 or are they 3 already? You’ll know in 1 sec.
- Wanikani Self-Study Quiz Edition: I find Kanji to be the hardest to learn. If I get to a point where I feel the need to review my current level’s kanji, I’ll use this script. The better to learn the Kanji, the easiest the vocab will be.
In terms of learning how to use WaniKani:
First, you need to define how many days you want to spend in each level. How do I do it? I make sure to know how long it will take me to do all the vocab of that specific level. I don’t care about leveling up faster, just so that I’ll end up leaving vocabulary unlocked from the previous level to do. If you want to level up every 8 days, you need to make sure you can do not only the lessons of radicals and kanji but also those of vocabulary successfully. WK has on average around 120 vocab per level (higher levels have less). This means that if you want to level up every 8 days: 120/8=15 vocab lessons that must be done every day. Leveling up every 10 days means you do 12 lessons of vocab every single day. 7 days/level and you’ll do 17 vocab lessons. Choose a number that works for you. Doing WK the fastest way is about learning efficiency, not about how fast your level increases
If you intend to level up as fast and as effectively as you possibly can, there’s 4 things to worry about related to items:
- Doing the radicals as soon as you level up. The sooner you guru the radicals, the sooner the 2nd half of Kanji will appear.
- Doing the 1st half of Kanji in the days between the unlock of radicals and the unlock of the 2nd half of Kanji. This establishes that most if not all of your 1st half of Kanji will be already Guru before you leveling up.
- Doing the 2nd half of Kanji as soon as you guru the radicals.
- Doing the vocabulary available during the time you spend on that level (use the “total vocab/number of days” formula to know how many words you should learn per day to achieve this).
Now, let’s talk about reviews. I assume you already know the subdivisions of the Apprentice category, right?
Apprentice 1 => Guru 1 (3d10h, considering 4 correct answers in a row)
Apprentice 1 (lesson)
Apprentice 2 (+4h)
Apprentice 3 (+8h)
Apprentice 4 (+23h => consider this as 24h or 2x12h)
Guru 1 (+47h => consider this as 48h or 4x12h)
This helps you answer the question: How frequently should I do the reviews?
If you pay attention, you’ll notice that WK is divided by periods of 12h. Apprentice 1 (4h) + Apprentice 2 (8h) = 12h. This means that you need 12h after the lesson to put an item in the Apprentice 3. After that, it takes +2x12h for Apprentice 4 and +4x12h for Guru. Why should you care? It’s simple. This allows you to build your own schedule for WK.
For example, imagine that you do a lesson at 9am. This means that you’ll get the 1st review at 1pm (+4h) and the 2nd review at 9pm (+8h, considering you got it right both times). Did you notice the pattern? That’s right, 9 am and 9pm. It’s the WK’s pattern working. Now, think about the time it will take for the next Apprentice levels. That’s right, Apprentice 4 at 9pm of the following day and Guru 1 two days later also at 9pm. See the magic happening?
In order to use WK to its full potential, it’s better to do the Apprentice reviews using the intervals of WK. Why? If you read the FAQ/Guide, you’ll see that WK shows you an item right before you forget it. By being loyal to their intervals, you’ll be able to be more successful in your reviews. Does this give you extra work? Not at all. Just notice the pattern again.
For an item which lesson was done at 9am, you’ll need to:
- review it at 1pm.
- review it at 9pm.
You basically only need to use WK three times per day. Forget about trying to be here every single waking hour. You don’t need to. Waking up at the middle of the night is also completely nonsense. Your sleep is way more important than WK and the cool thing is that you can do both right.
Now, I believe you already noticed that choosing the time you do the lesson also determines your schedule for the rest of your day. I’ll tell you more, it determines your schedule for the rest of your WK usage. Use this to your advantage.
Imagine that you know that tomorrow you’ll be able to use WK at 8am and 8pm (12h interval). Then, 8am is the right time for the lessons. If you do the lessons at 2pm, it means that the 2nd review will only be available at 2am. Little bit late, don’t you think? By creating your own schedule for the day, you allow yourself to use WK in a healthy way. No need to wake up at the middle of night, no need for more guesses. You’re fully in control.
Summary:
- Define a number of days per level that doesn’t interfere with your learning of radicals, kanji and vocab.
- Taking point 1 into consideration, think about the 4 rules related to items that I mentioned above.
- Then, define a 12h schedule (0h, +4h, +8h) based on your routine that allows you to use WK.
- Protect your learning: while doing the lessons, make sure to only focus on it. No TV, no people talking to you. Those 5 to 10 minutes should only be yours to use. The better your lessons go, the better your reviews will too.
- Sleep well, eat healthy and exercise.
EXTRA!
@doubatsu, if 8 per day is too much, divide it into 2 sessions of 4. Do 1 session in the mornings and the other 4h before the last reviews you do that day.
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This is such a fantastic and thorough response 
I’d definitely find at least some of those scripts useful, but how do you activate/apply them? [I’m a bit of an idiot with tech tbh]
It’s really good to see the timescale for things. At the moment my schedule is very dictated by work so goes like this:
- wake up 10am
- wanikani reviews/lessons before 12:30 if time
- commute 1hr30 (now with JapanesePod101 podcasts!)
- wanikani on breakroom computer if got lucky with buses and came early
- wanikani at “lunch” time ~18:10
- get home anywhere from 22:30-23:00
- do quiet things until 2am to avoid waking parents, Japanese practice included if I’m not too tired.
And that’s my sorry little schedule until 23rd Dec, then I don’t have internet until 4th Jan because there’s no internet in my remote Christmas hideaway!
One danger of going too slow is that you start to forget material that was burned. It is good to go at one’s own pace, but going at a pace where it will take 7 years to go through the material is far too long. There has to be a middle ground, and to be successful it will require you to push yourself a bit.
The early level material is more important than the later level material, I think there is some benefit to going through the first 25 levels at a pretty decent pace (no more than 2 weeks/level), then slow it down. I completed 27 levels in my first year, but ultimately took 3.5 years to reach 60. The slow down was partially to keep a reasonable workload, but mostly due to leeches. Be mindful about keeping leeches under control - this crept up on me before I realized what was happening and ultimately I ended up powering my way through only to deal with a huge mess now.
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Basically what Ish3rd said.
I would power through the first 25ish levels. Try to get a new level as fast as possible.
What I used to do was doing all reviews in the morning and before going to bed. If I have time I do some in between but that’s pretty hard with a job.
around level 25 I had a huge workload and leveling slowed down considerably.
I can’t recommend using scripts. But that’s just my own opinion
I recommend starting reading easy Japanese content around level 20 - 25. With my level so in the 30s you can really read a lot of stuff. I HIGHLY recommend you to start conversing with Japanese people around level 30. Trust me you will snowball grammar and vocab so hard. + it is a huge motivation to continue studying and before you know it you are addicted to it xD
My leveling slowed down so much but at this point I really don’t care anymore. I think the next 5 levels bear useful Kanji for me but the rest isn’t as important as normal reading experience.
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True, but that only applies if they are only using WK. Im sure there are some people that take a long while (maybe not 7 years), but are reading and exposing themselves to japanese outside of WK. If they do so enough it will reinforce burned words that they may have forgotten, assuming they come across them.
Speaking of Japanese outside of WaniKani, when should we start exposing ourselves to things (grammar, reading, listening, speaking, etc) outside of WaniKani? How did this affect your WaniKani leveling pace?
I’ve started reading simple articles, listening to grammar podcasts, and doing vocab flashcards on top of WaniKani, but there’s only so much time in a day to learn Japanese.
ASAP. I make sure what I do outside of WK doesn’t affect my pace, but I wish I had started sooner. People recommend starting to read more around level 20, but if your grammar is good enough, there isn’t any reason to not start sooner. Most low level stuff uses far more hiragana, so not knowing kanji wont be as much of an issue.
Sounds perfectly fine to me. Just try to use what japanese you do know and recognize your shortcomings through that. No one is really a perfectly balanced learner, so one of your skills is certain to be bottlenecking your ability. Just focus more on that skill so it doesn’t lag too far behind. For example, for someone of my level, my grammar and knowledge of words that don’t use kanji reallllly hold me back.
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Here’s the tutorial:
I believe there’s been some problems with one of the programs that allows you to use scripts on Firefox. Not sure which one it is, since I use Google Chrome. If someone knows, please let @rumade know (in case they use Firefox).
I suggest you to try and find a 5 minutes interval to do the first reviews on that day’s new items around the middle of the afternoon. I would also highly suggest you not to finish that day’s reviews at 2am. The midnight reviews will last until 12:59am, so try to finish with WK for the day around that time. You might think you aren’t really that tired, but if you try to do the reviews with a more fresh mind, you’ll see a big difference 
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I was already using most of these scripts, but your schedule write up is great, I didn’t think about it! I’ve stayed with 8 items per day and got through all 248 items this month. As of this writing, I’ve got 110 in Apprentice, which is a new record for me…
My previous approach was basically doing a WaniKani review at any point possible, multiple times per day, but because the schedule was flexible, I think I indeed reviewed things often after, as you said it, I’ve already forgotten it. Due to that, I noticed that I got things going back to Apprentice more often, items staying there for longer than before and having plenty of leeches.
So I’ll stay with 8 for next month as is the max comfortable number at the moment and will try to define a proper schedule as you wrote about. Hopefully, that will make me do less mistakes and progress items between levels faster, which should eventually lead me to less items in Apprentence bucket, which in turn will allow me to start doing more items per day.
P.S. wow do you have a lot of Instagram followers
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Glad to see things are improving
To reduce the number of items coming back to apprentice, it is very important to take at least 1 minute in each lesson as to make sure you had a healthy first approach to the item. For 8 items/day it’s 8 minutes. For kanji, if the WK’s mnemonic doesn’t work, don’t fall into the mistake of thinking it’s okay not to have one. Try to create your own story and make it simple (envolve both the radicals and the reading and meaning in it). Example:
https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/乏
乏 (lvl 30) has the radicals leaf and hills. A hill having only 1 leaf is sad, isn’t it? Well, you’ll have to bow (ぼう) to the hill’s God in order for the leafs not being scarce.
Also, if you’re creating your own mnemonics, keeping the the same reading connected to the same idea works best. For example, every kanji with the きょう reading, I connect it with Kyoto. (きょうと)
Let me know if I can help in any other way.
EDIT:
Well, I’ll try to start posting more frequently this next month Let’s see if both of us can achieve our goals 
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I’ve tried using the script which loads user-defined mnemonics as when I used Kanji Kohii before I discovered WaniKani, they had fantastic stories. I find WaniKani ones are not that great most of the time, so I do come up with my own stories. My problem is usually now having so many 1) Similarly looking Kanji 2) Having like 3-4 readings for a kanji… Knowing the story, I still think “is that the one”. But yeah, I need to improve on that front
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What your suggestion would be to establish constant schedule when I already have a messed up one? I’ve got 100+ items across different apprentice levels. So my reviews happen multiple times throughout the day, obviously with no clean 4-8-etc hour intervals? Should I just ignore current items and establish new ones using a new schedule? Or go through things I currently have to clear apprentice bucket, before starting new items and making consistent schedule work?
Reviews sort themselves naturally by the times you do them on - you can just artificially create those intervals, and within a few days you’ll end up with your reviews coming in at regular times.
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It seems that this site largely teaches you to distinguish kanji from other kanji.
So it seems like it might more effective if you move quicker, and have less items in burned… otherwise you have fewer kanji to get the ones you’re learning mixed up with, so there’s less learning going on no?
I know it’s very easy for me to fall into habit of identifying a kanji at a fast glance, and then when I unlock a kanji that is similar structure, I have to spend time to learn to the differences. Seems like if you burn one first, you miss out on some of that learning.
Plus It seems like if you burn one first, there’s high chance of simply unlearning the burned one in favor of the newly learned one.
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Don’t know if someone has already say it, but for me a very important thing in WK is to fail in your reviews, your brain needs those mistakes to remember some of the kanji or vocab, etc. There are some kanji from level 3 or 4 I will never forget because I always failed and that made a big footprint in my memory
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