How to deal with the review/lesson backlog?

[Veestire]

I have an idea for it. I have about 142 reviews coming up tommorow, with 60 already up. But i also have 61 lessons left. I want to first finish the lessons so i dont have any leftovers. Any other ideas? I really don’t want to have a backlog

[Yarumari]

I recommend always doing your reviews first and then take lessons so that you have around 100 apprentice items at all times. Then adjust the amount of daily lessons from there.

If you can’t keep the reviews down to zero on daily basis, do not take more lessons until you get comfortable enough with your current reviews. There is no rush to finish anything. It’s just you, the reviews and great Crabigator watching you do your reviews.

[Veestire]

And my wallet’s thickness dwindling down with each month ;-;

[mztik]

@Veestire

And my wallet’s thickness dwindling down with each month ;-;

All according to 計画.

[skymaiden]

The review backlog hurts much more than the lesson backlog! Do reviews every day (if possible) and space out your lessons across multiple days (and even times of the day), and you’ll avoid creating monstrous piles of reviews for the next few days/weeks/months…

You can still go fast if you want, spacing out lessons carefully hardly impacts time to level up - accuracy and consistency in reviews does.

[timfreilly]

Pushing lesson speed beyond what you can review per day will always lead to misery.

[steffenalbrecht]

@Yarumari

and then take lessons so that you have around 100 apprentice items at all times

Personally get a funny feeling when they get too close to 50 …

[rwesterhof]

If you’re looking to level at maximum pace, you need to clear both the lessons and reviews for radicals and kanji as soon as they come up. Those are the items that block level progression (they need to go to guru to unlock more).
Vocab doesn’t block anything, so in the week that it takes to guru radicals and kanji (or half a week for fast levels), you can spread out the vocab lessons to prevent having all the reviews come in at the same time.

As @Yarumari mentioned, spreading the lessons to keep the number of Apprentice items in check tends to be more manageable in the long run, but the choice is entirely yours of course.

[d-hermit]

First take care of your reviews. Doing 150-200 reviews per day is pretty normal, so you don’t have a backlog there yet.

As for lessons, do a fixed batch every day. For example 10 lessons every morning. Then review them after 4 hours and again after 8 hours.

This will require about 1.5 hours spent on WK per day.

[sergiop]

Suggestions (feel free to ignore them):

1. Do not do new lessons until the number of apprentice items are below 140.
2. Try to do reviews in small batches, 30 or 40 items.
3. Do reviews every day (when you wake-up, sometime during the middle of the day and before you go to bed).

[Yarumari]

@Veestire

And my wallet’s thickness dwindling down with each month ;-;

Consider investing in Lifetime and you will stop worrying about montly cost so much.

Especially when you start hitting level 20 or so, you probably have picked up a lot of other learning resources you are working through (or would like to, for me it’s JALUP, ToriSRS, Bunpro, reading manga and watching J-Drama) and it is very easy to burn out on WK if you are not careful. If you reach Lvl 60 in 1.5 years, great. If it takes 3 years but you had fun doing it, I think the final result is much better and then you can take a reset to level 1 and do it again in 1 year or something else like reseting all cards to master.