I was doing 20 for a while, and doing okay, but finding that I was not really finding time for other types of study routinely. A couple levels back I cut back and I think now I have a pretty comfortable rhythm - 10 vocab items daily, plus if there are unlocked radicals and/or kanji, 3 of each. That seems to space the levels out more and let me clear out the backlog a little more.
Fortunately, there’s no wrong answer for the right speed, at least not if it works for the person saying it. Flexibility and adjusting plans based on your goals and observations is more important than picking some specific number and sticking to it.
My goal was to get to level 30 in a year and then slow down. My strategy was 3-4 weeks at 7 days and then a level at 2-3 weeks to slow down. So at times I did 25 less a day, and some days zero.
Right now at level 25 I’m thinking of slowing down (5-10 lessons) so that I spend more time reading and immersing than in SRS. I have a trip to Japan in a few weeks as well and want to have less reviews to do in the lead up and during that trip. I think once I hit level 30 (likely in January around 10 months after starting) I’ll slow down considerably as the gains form each level are less impactful. I’m already impressed with how much of NHK Easy Kanji I have learned through level 25.
When I first started in 2014, I did everything when it unlocked and got to level 54 that way. I wasn’t racing - it just proved to work. Each time I’ve restarted (way too many times and for too many reasons), I’ve tried doing fewer per day (10, 20 whatever). It’s never worked. So this time, I’m going back to my original method. Granted, I still remember most of the kanji and vocabulary so it’s easier to do that now. I’m not sure why I was able to do it this way the first time, but I maintained a greater than 80% success rate on average the whole time doing that.
I’m currently doing 15 a day because I want to pick the pace up, but I immediately drop down if the reviews are becoming overwhelming, or if my brain feels full. The pace now feels fairly quick but really good fun: I do all the radicals on day 1, then 15 a day (2 kanji, 3 vocab) until the next level.
When I was consistently doing 10 a day, that was just about perfect for actually retaining things in a relaxed way, but it did feel a bit too slow to level up (not that I think levelling up should be the main focus).
10 a day, automatically selected by the WK algo so zero brainpower expended selecting items.
Gets me a level up on average every 15-17 days. 2.5-3 years to complete the whole thing at this pace which feels reasonable for a side hobby alongside other things.
In extra-busy periods (eg if I’m travelling for work) I’ll usually stop new lessons entirely for a couple of days. Always do my reviews though.
For a while I was alternating days between 10 and 15 lessons but found even this was sucking time/brain energy from other activities and my kanji knowledge was outstripping reading, grammar & listening. So I’m sticking with 10 now! And just telling myself to be patient when I get annoyed there are a bunch of kanji just a few levels out of reach in something I’m trying to read…
I have mine set to do 18 a day. Only a couple days so far I have failed to do any new lessons. Though on my days off, I have done 24 a few times. I increased it partly because I am in a rush to build enough basic knowledge to start really reading, listening, and speaking. The other reason is because I am familiar with many words already.
For me, I have listened to Japanese for so long that many words already have a place in my mind. So I’m not really “learning” 18 new things per day in all honesty. At least, I’m not learning them from scratch. I definitely up my lessons on a day where there are many words I already “know.”
The woman is still mad at me for being outside the learning zone, but I spend so much time doing lessons and reviews already that I don’t know how I could possibly go any faster. I think the biggest factors are how much time per day you can or are willing to invest and how often you can do reviews.
If you can do reviews as soon as they pop up on a consistent basis, then you will guru items faster. If not, then large lesson piles will snowball quickly. I learned that the hard way. I think it’s best to adjust your lessons as the situation changes.
My approach is keep the number of apprentice items at <= 100. On starting a new level I consume all remaining items (usually vocabularies) from the previous level before touching new items. This I would do on the day or a day after I level up, then I proceed to consuming all radicals once the previous level’s pile is out of the way – ensures I only deal with current level items. On days WK make content additions and movements, I consume every item that falls below my current level to also get them out of the way.
Now that the radicals are out of the way, I typically just do 15 lessons containing 7 kanji and 8 vocabulary. However, in recent times I have started doing 20 lessons just because the number of kanji and vocabulary are not equal. With 20 lessons, I do 10 kanji, 10 vocabulary and call it a day, same thing the next day except on days where I have apprentice items approaching 100 then I don’t take lessons until the number drops way below 100, say between 70 and 80.
From the time I joined WK up until now I have always done 15 lessons simply just by clicking the Start Lessons button without any sort of customisation. However, more recently after the 15 lessons, I use the lesson picker to select 5 more items to round up to 20.
This method isn’t sustainable which I am quite aware of, I am only doing this because I want to figure out the fastest time I can achieve a new level. Once I do that, I’ll probably just get bored and revert to just doing 15 lessons a day.
I have reset last week, after a very long hiatus.
I did a lot of lessons, which became overwhelming when I went back to uni to study Japanese. There’s a certain irony in that. It did help me in the beginning when doing kanji (although i still struggled with writing them), I had to redo my first year. Unfortunately at the end of the second time around, my health took a dive, so that was put on pauze too.
So now I am back at WK, following some online evening courses for Japanese (that school is associated with the uni), so the kanji I need to learn there, will not correspond with the order in WK ofcourse.
So for now, I am doing all the lessons at once , cause I have learned those already, but I do remember before it all, I sometimes had days with over 200 reviews, which was overwhelming, so I didn’t do them all, which only adds up. Knowing that I have AuDHD now, easy to get in a burn-out I am going to pace myself after a few levels, and try and keep apprentice around 100, or lower when I feel it is getting too much (also winter is coming, and I guess I have seasonal depression?
I recently bumped it up to 30 per day because I’m trying to double down on learning japanese again. I’ve used WaniKani on and off for the past year+ and I’m just at level 12 right now after picking it up seriously again a couple months ago.
Level 12 has felt reallllly slow so I recently bumped up my daily amount from 20 to 30. Still feels really slow but I guess I’m just waiting to Guru enough to get to 13.
I want to emphasize that 20 or more new lessons a day is A LOT, rather than any sort of middle-of-the-road or average approach to Wanikani. There are generally 150-200 items per level in earlier WK (with the earlier levels being the highest, due to having the highest new radical counts), dropping down to 120-140 after level 40. So at 20 lessons a day, you’re getting through all of the content of a level in less than 2 weeks, which I feel is a considerably faster advancement rate than the median user.
I began (five years ago) doing As Much as Possible, but eventually (level 30ish) I felt overwhelmed by reviews, and not convinced that I’d actually really learned the Kanji: similar Kanji tripped me up. So I restarted at level 10 and kept doing As Much as Possible, with much the same result. So I restarted at level 3, and did lessons whenever it seemed like my upcoming reviews for the week were < 30 per day, and if I were particularly busy at work, I didn’t do lessons at all, but my reviews at least never piled up. Now I’m at level 10 again-again, but I feel like I absolutely know everything I’ve learned, and when I go to Japan I’m pretty solid and can tell the difference between thinking I know a Kanji, and knowing I know a Kanji. I don’t regret the fast deep dive I did early, but I’m glad I can putter along now and really land it.
Hmm I think this scenario is very likely for me. But i don’t want to reset. I think I’d fight it out with satori reader until it starts to click however long that takes. Probably a while.
To me it feels like it also depends on stuff you already know -
i think it’s different if you come to wanikani with a complete blank slate vs. if you already know some basic japanese
if you do know some japanese, many of the early or common kanji are familiar to you (possibly even with word examples that you know by heart, which helps with readings)
so what i’m actually trying to moderate is not the absolute number, but the number of NOVEL items - i.e. if i recognize something relatively well i just add it to the lesson batch without thinking twice
i started with simply learning EVERYTHING asap, to now gradually trying to kind of spread it over 2-3 days within the start of a new level. i guess as i progress more and go into more uncharted territory ill slow it down even further
Yes absolutely; WK doesn’t offer a solution to skip items directly to burn that you fully already know well due to prior learning, which I feel is one of the biggest detriments of it as an offering.
Certainly the actual relevant lesson count is the amount of new material being learned.
Restarting is not a solution. That ignores the benefits of SRS. You are expected to power through it. If you get stuck with too many reviews, do a fixed amount every day no matter how many are available, and ignore lessons. Things will rotate in apprentice, and you will do the same review many times before it clicks, but this is how it is supposed to work. Eventually you will remember and the reviews will go down.
I should know, I had over 1200 reviews 24 days ago and I do 200 per day. Now I have around 400 left, so it goes down slowly. Stats say I got 9496 answers right and 2092 answers wrong, resulting in 3032 passed reviews and 1768 failed reviews, which is 81% answer accuracy and 63% review accuracy. There are over 700 items that are at guru level. But I can actually read those kanji now. Had I restarted last 10 or so levels, I wouldn’t learn it at all and I would still be 8 levels behind compared to now.
I started with 10 lessons per day, got up to 15, got overwhelmed and dialed it back to 10.
10 is a good amount for my brain. Above, most items blend into one another and reviews become guesswork.
I tried to balance lessons with Apprentice items at some point (keeping them below 100), but I just stick to 10 lessons now. I noticed that my Apprentice items stay around 100 anyway, while Guru and Master items stay around 700 (which is manageable for my review schedule).
I’d say that finding a good balance betweens lessons and reviews (schedule and accuracy) is probably the best way to progress in the long term.