How has your work ethic changed throughout Wanikani?

I got my WaniKani subscription about 100 days ago. Since then, I’ve mainly been doing 5 lessons a day, doing anymore seemed like a hideous chore. But I forced myself to do more and more lessons as they started piling up, and now I can comfortably do 30 lessons in a sitting. I’ve also noticed an increase in my attention span by forcing myself to finish all reviews at once no matter the number, so if I get like 100 reviews, I do all of them at once. These overall have helped in other parts of my life, so I was wondering for the more experienced of you guys out there, how was wanikani changed your habits, work ethic, lifestyle etc?

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Yikes! Reviews, yes, and I’m glad you’re finding a positive effect on your attention span. Watch out for doing too many lessons at once though, it’s easy to get yourself in reviews trouble that way. You don’t have to do all the lessons just because they’re available. (Do all the reviews, though)

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wanikani has made my work ethic worse because every hour I ignore work to go do wk reviews.

Also you may want to slow down on reviews, doing a lot all at once catches up with you later. I keep my apprentice items below 100 and do a batch of lessons (usually 10, sometimes lower depending) only if in 4 hours (when they’ll show up again) I won’t have a ton of reviews to do. It still keeps me plenty busy.

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Right, I usually like doing all my radical + kanji lessons in one go and then all my vocab later

Oops, sorry to hear that. Have you considered maybe doing 2 Wanikani sessions, like one in the morning and one before sleep so you don’t have to come back every other hour to complete reviews

if I don’t keep up with wk on the prescribed intervals I have a harder time actually committing the items to memory. On busier days because of life I’ve been forced into that situation a few times and I’ve seen doing one or two big sessions in a day drops my retention rate. WK sets the SRS intervals the way they do for a reason. I’d rather do 10-20 item reviews every hour that only takes a couple minutes than a 100 item review at the end of the day that takes way longer anyway.

I’d also rather have more spare time at the end of my day to like actually immerse in Japanese content than while it away with SRS reviews.

Hello みなさん! I just wanted to share my work method. I used to just read the lessons and chuckle here and there, but it was hard to remember. Then I started to make drawings for each lesson, and now my memory retention is much, much higher. These are quick sketches, but the act of drawing out the scene ( and sometimes refactoring the story to make more sense to me ) has proven to be more effective, especially for longer term recall. I don’t have to remember the drawing or the story. If you think you can’t draw well, know that there is an Japanese illustration genre called ヘタウマ - bad but good. :slight_smile:

As for whether work is intrinsically good… I suppose that studying Japanese might fall within that category. :slight_smile:

今晩は皆さん :crabigator:
so once upon a time i had a really a really good habit that i built up (then crash landed) that i’m now cultivating again. i insert WK into my morning routine, usually at the end. i do around 7 lessons a day & i read through the examples at the end of the ボカビュラリー section. i used to write them down on paper… and then i considered that i’d much prefer to directly memorize them, rather than using notes… which i never review…
anYWays :durtle_durtverted_lvl1: i always have a glass of water while i do my reviews (一日二回) and it feels really manageable. when i make it non-negotiable (like brushing my teeth or having tea in the morning), it becomes a routine i can play with ~ maybe throw in some anime or something ~ and i have this feeling of relief when my reviews reach 0. it’s always nice & it’s always temporary :high_touch:
^^but i relate w/ the attention span thing cuz i could forget to do my reviews for a day or two and then i have like 100 and i really don’t want to procrastinate another day… then i get them done and feel so accomplished but so tired at the end bahahaha

Haha good, yeah you have some smart habits. If you’re struggling with a large amount of reviews, you could try timing yourself like for example I’ll put a 15-minute timer for 90 reviews and speed through it. However, it’s important to make sure that you carefully spend time on anything you get wrong since people often make the mistake of not focusing on what they get wrong to beat the timer.

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Some rough events brought me to finally start learning Japanese, like I’ve always wanted to. I never started before because I thought it was just a pipe dream. Now that I’ve actually made some progress and learned a lot, I can solidly say that it’s been one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. It’s made me want to work on other big projects that I’ve always wanted to do. Its made me more motivated and happy in general!

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ありがとうございます!:high_touch:

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glad to hear that

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Personally, WaniKani has positively contributed a lot to my general work ethic.

I always have this rule where I have to do something on WaniKani everyday, with a few exceptional days off in my entire ~1.5 years of using it, usually because of something else I’m busy with. Even if I end up closing a day off and I only completed a couple reviews, I know at the very least I contributed to some progress, even if it is small, in my overall Japanese learning journey (as cheesy as that sounds lol). Because of this thinking, I’ve definitely developed some discipline that even affects outside of studying Japanese. I don’t think I would, for example, be able to work my admittedly slow way through textbooks like Genki without this sort of baseline discipline already.

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