How many lessons a day should I aim at for the ~1.5 year goal?

I apologize if this has been asked before, but most of what I found regarding having the goal of finishing in ~1.5 years had to do with the amount of lessons. So, assuming I do reviews consistently, how often should I complete lessons if I want to achieve or get close to this goal? Surely it wouldn’t do be good to do 60+ (happens with some of my unlocks). What is a good number to aim for when I have lessons available?

Thanks and have a nice day!

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Wk has about 8500 or so items in total. If you want to be done in about 540 days, then you need to do about 15-16 lessons a day.

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This is helpful, thank you!

It’s a little bit more complicated than dividing number of items by number of days. If you do 16 lessons a day, in some cases this could mean that there is one kanji preventing you from levelling up (because it’s stuck in apprentice).

Instead, you should divide the number of days by the number of levels you want to do. So from level 4 to level 60, you have 56 levels. To reach level 60 in 548 days (1.5 years), divide 548 by 56, you get 9.78 days per level.

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@plantron is right on the money.

10 days per level is actually fairly doable at a rate of 20-25 lessons per day with a volume of around 300 reviews per day.

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It’s more complicated than that, for the 1.5 year goal you really ought to be clearing your lessons out completely within 24 hours of you unlocking them.

This is what I am doing at the moment with an average of 9 days per level. I fail a good 5% of my reviews according to WaniKani Stat, which is fairly normal I guess. IF I can keep up that speed I will be done in about a little less than 1,5 years (from the starting level).
These calculations above are correct if you never fail your reviews I guess.

Or maybe I fail those 5% just because I clear all the available lessons…

there’s no really straightforward formula, because you have to take into account both the time per level, and the items per level (which vary widely). but generally i think the 15-16 lessons per day ought to work, and then front-load your radicals when levelling up so that you don’t end up waiting unnecessarily for your items to guru ^^

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Not true. I can easily level up in 8-9 days doing 20-25 lessons per day max. Just need to have them in the correct order.

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How would I go about doing this such that I don’t forget everything if I have 60+? Could I split it up between the morning, afternoon, and night so that I get reviews after each set of ~20 (if it was a big unlock day).

I’m not a fan of going slow and routines, but 60 lessons in 1 day seems like a pretty bad idea to me. If you unlock a new lesson, you can use the mobile app to study the new lesson radicals before studying the older lesson vocab to avoid slowing down your progress. Scripts could also work for that, but I never used any.
So basically all you need to go as fast as possible is doing radical lessons as soon as those are available, then doing kanji that require those radicals. Kanji that are available as a lesson unlocks can be done at any time, but not later than those, that require radicals to unlock (I prefer to do about 10 new kanji a day). That’s it. You can do the vocab whenever you want. In any chunks you want, but most ppl don’t consider it a good idea to let your vocab fall behind too much.

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That seems like a good way to do things and that makes sense about the radicals. I will keep that in mind, thanks!

Yeah, then I don’t know how I reached level 60 in 1 year with only 20 lessons a day :eyes:

@Ikiga1, like people have suggested, 15 lessons a day is a good target. Read my Guide for Wanikani, mainly chapters 4-8. I explain everything on how people can do a very reasonable amount of lessons a day and still reach level 60 pretty fast (without skipping any items whatsoever).

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I will check it out, thank you!

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Was that with some sort of script to get all the radical and kanji lessons first or did they change how it works since I did it?

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I basically did a cycle of 7 days (a week) per level. The trick is to basically do radicals the moment you level up, and the available kanji lessons throughout the first 3 days. Vocabulary lessons are done in a balanced distribution during the whole level/week. The moment you guru your radicals, you do the lessons for the kanji that unlocked (usually they’re very few). Each level has 2 cycles of 3 days and 12 hours during the level (it takes that much to go from lesson to guru).

This is achieved by using a reorder script, but I believe even the non-official apps allow you to do that nowadays. Even without any script and go going by the “Ascending level then subject” order (an option in the settings), you could still reach level 60 in 1.5 years with 20 lessons a day or less (and you’d have days without lessons available).

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I do this but I don’t use a reorder script. I do the lessons for the vocabs from the kanji that I just guru’d from the previous level until I get to the radicals and do them as soon as I level up. Then when my radicals are guru’d my kanji automatically shows up before the vocab on that level that I haven’t done yet. Pretty neat.

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Is there any particular reason to wait to start the kanji lessons until the radicals are reviewed? Is it just to reduce inaccuracies later on that could save time overall if prevented by having radicals better locked in?

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The main reason to reorder lessons to radicals first is primarily to reduce the time in takes to complete each level.

In order to level up you must Guru 90% of each levels kanji. However, some kanji aren’t available to learn immediately, they’re locked until you guru the radicals first. For most levels more than 10% of that level’s kanji are locked behind the radicals, so doing any other lessons before radicals adds more time to your level up time.

Radicals unlock Kanji once guru’d, Kanji unlock vocabulary once guru’d.

Note: reordering lessons to do radicals first is the most efficient method, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best. If you don’t keep up with your other lessons it can lead to a build up of lessons from old levels.

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So just to clarify, I would be waiting until all radicals are guru’d to start kanji lessons, so about two days without (kanji) lessons (assuming I continue the vocab lessons), correct?

Also, is it okay If I miss 2-3 radicals each review?