Hello everyone, recently subscribed to WK as I really liked the first 3 levels and how it taught me. I definitely feel like this can work for me as I do this everyday and can make it a habit but as I’m browsing the forums I’m seeing a lot of people burning out or giving up etc.
I’m currently doing 15 (yesterday switched from 10 lessons/day) lessons a day but I’m worried in the future my workload will be too much?
Any advice for me?
If you reach the point where it feels too much; keep doing reviews, but stop adding new lessons for a while. The reviews will gradually decrease over weeks/months and you can continue adding new lessons again at a slower pace.
Studying grammar and beginning to read/watch things will also reinforce what you already know and make reviews easier.
It’s important to pace yourself a little in the beginning. The biggest tip I can give is that the full load will only be felt after (I think) roughly 3 months.
Some people swear by limiting apprentice to around 100-150 items since these are the most shaky and come by most often.
If you feel it getting too much, simply pause new lessons for a while and the load will self regulate down pretty fast.
Ok thank you. Also another question is if I do 15 lessons a day and then forget them the next day should I worry about doing the extra study and trying to nail them down? I do 2 review cycles a day and sometimes 3. Morning, lunch and then a few at night sometimes. And also my learning zone is 88-90% so far
I wanted to grind at max speed till I finish but I suffered a burnout at level 30+ so I took a several breaks with the vacation mode which totalled 2 month+ in a year
But once the breaks were over, I went back to grinding at full speed. I might take a 2 week break from Wanikani in December so I can just enjoy some real world vacations
Just take some breaks and you’ll be fine
You should review all your mistakes once per day so that you don’t forget them the next day, do it 2-4 times in different times of the day if you have the time and determination
15 is my personal max, however if it becomes too much you can always slow down or go to 0 new words. But never stop doing reviews.
+1
I do 5 from wanikani daily, but learn from outside of here.
Never stop reviews just slow down on the amount of new stuff you take in
What has worked for me so far is to only do new lessons once a week. For me that means every Sunday I do the whole batch of 15 lessons and then do the required reviews over the week. In the beginning it might feel slow but eventually you’ll have around 50-60 reviews or so to do every Thursday. That’s within the threshold for me and I have been going daily so far since March when i started.
When you eventually run into a week day where there are no reviews to do, look at the schedule and plan ahead. If the amount of reviews is small, do another batch, otherwise, wait.
Of course i’m only a bit ahead of you so take my advice with a grain of salt 
Kind of depends on what works best for you. Some people prefer the extra study route, some people prefer failing the review and seeing them again sooner. I’m definitely a learn from failure guy (fortunatley I get a lot of practice at it) but the important thing is to figure out what works best for you and go with that.
My strategy is to take deload weeks like in weight lifting. I do like 3-4 levels at like 7-9 days pace then take 2-2-3 weeks to slow down, I’m in such a phase right now because I let my apprentice count get to like 380. At some point it becomes to much, especially if you want to spend time in Bunpro, Anki, and comprehensible input. Etc.
As someone who has been doing this for years, including several months-long breaks, but always inexorably moving forwards, my tip is:
Do less new lessons than you think. My personal limit is 5 per day, with maybe 10 every now and then. It doesn’t feel like a lot, but it keeps the review count manageable and leaves me excited to see new reviews appear, not dreading them like I used to.
Yes it’s slow, but this constant forward progress combined with regular reading and listening to Japanese elsewhere has meant that I surprise myself at how much I understand these days!
You should review all your mistakes once per day so that you don’t forget them the next day
This helped me a lot. If I’m waiting for the bus, riding metro, waiting for something to finish cooking I will just review recent mistakes. I was getting the same cards wrong and feeling shame, but with this method they just became boring little memorized facts. I wish I knew this tip sooner.