Hi all! I’m somewhat new to WaniKani (level 15 and started in July), but think I’ve figured out an easy “strategy” to advance levels as quickly as possible while minimizing the overall SRS load. Figured I’d share in case it helps!
Each level takes exactly one week when done optimally, and getting a single item to Guru takes half a week. You need the radicals at Guru before enough kanji are unlocked to pass the level. Based on that, here is my super simple schedule:
Beginning of the week: do all radical lessons and nothing else for a bit. Relax.
Next few days: do reviews on time and gradually take kanji and vocab lessons.
Mid-week: radicals are Guru’d and all kanji are unlocked! Do all remaining kanji lessons, which will be about half of them if you spaced step 2 well.
Remainder of week: do reviews on time and gradually take vocab lessons. Assuming few mistakes, the level should be complete in one week!
That’s it. Basically, there are two cram periods: beginning of the week for radicals, and mid-week for kanji, and they both involve learning up to ~20 items at once (often less). Literally everything else is flexible.
Sounds like you’ve found a great system! I haven’t used WaniKani in years so I don’t know if the system is different now but this sounds similar or actually wiser than what I used to do and I was on the speed-running team back in the day as well. I think I just did all my lessons at once when they became available which I don’t necessarily recommend (stressful). As long as you manage to finish all of your lessons before moving on to the next level that’s great. Good luck on your journey!! I support you!!
Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, the vocab lessons in particular tend to show up in large waves this way. Guess for those the best strategy is to put in some effort every day. 頑張ります！
I am on full speed mode right now (but I took a hit at this level due to work) and I used to do what you do. Except, I’m fully loaded at the day of the level up because I learn both radicals and the first batch of Kanji. That gives me around 22-25 items. Then the next few days, do reviews diligently while tackling around ~20 vocabs “to stay on track”, meaning I’m avoiding a huge backlog of past level vocabs before leveling up.
After reading about interleaving from this article, I’ve been doing rad/kanji/vocab per batch of lessons. And that gives me around ~40 items on a cram day (usually 1st day of level up, and the day that the radicals are guru’d because it will unlock the 2nd batch of Kanjis). I’ve been forgetting some vocab words from the past levels because I used to group the studies in order. Trying out interleaving so that I can associate the related radicals → Kanjis → vocabs together.
But it’s great that you have found your own systematic approach!
Just to add briefly, optimally each normal level takes 6 days 20 hours rather than exactly 7 days due to the 23h and 1d23h spacings for the last 2 apprentice stages. There’s also the fast levels for the initial levels and once you get further into the 40s where they take half the time due to having more than 90% of the Kanji unlocked already when you level up, or due to the different SRS timings for the first levels. This is how it’s technically possible to finish 60 levels in under 52 weeks
Oops, yeah I guess I mean minimizing the amount of new lessons you have to cram to go at fastest pace. i.e. instead of cramming in all lessons as soon as they are available, only cram two batches of lessons per week.
But once you get into the 20s and start burning items you have to do a lot more reviews per day so I have given up on speed running and been taking it slow.
If you keep up your pace of 7 day level ups while still taking all lessons, you’ll hit a wall pretty soon without either a change in strategy, or cheating. I hit one about lvl 25ish. I used to use a similar strategy, but the trans/intrans verb pairs were so annoying(and the typos) that I installed the doublecheck plugin and never looked back. The leeches just kept building up, it was oppressive. I’d have otherwise completely quit, because there’s other way to deal with leeches besides intense study, or cheating while still making forward progress.
Number 3. breaks down in later levels when <10 kanjis are still locked upon levelling up. In the 30s, guru-ing the radicals only unlocks 6-8 kanjis. Also, there are only 5 or so radicals per level.
In any case any method can be adapted, best of luck with whatever you choose to do!
I did something similar. Went from level 1 to 60 in less than a year. It was my second WaniKani run, though.
The main difference is I split the lessons in equal numbers per day, but ensuring I was progressing radicals and Kanji to keep the pace.
Once you get to the higher levels you can do 4-day levels and it gets a bit insane. But of course you don’t have to keep that pace just because you can lol.
Regardless having a consistent routine for WK is a great path to success. Keep it up!
Assuming you’re keeping an eye on your accuracy, the daily load should be reasonable
Personally found that doing levels in the fastest possible time was not worth the schedule shifting to do reviews/lessons in the middle of the night. But it helps to have those extra hours for added flexibility