Study ahead all you like, but don’t put them all in the hopper. Reading is the ultimate SRS, but if you’re bogged down with reviews, you won’t have much time to read.
Play the long game to avoid burnout. Expect about two years of consistent work, about 10-14 days per level.
Love @WaniTsunami 's advice. I do 5 lessons every night before sleeping. I have a review pile of between 30 and 50 every day which I get through mostly in the evening. I get through a level in 30 days or so. 5 years of Wanikani is what I’m looking at. And my wife and kids don’t suffer!
you do lessons regardless the amount of apprentice levels?
I always look at it first to keep below 90, and I still have 160 reviews a day. Usually I spend days without any lesson because they are over 90. My lvl up average now is 32 days. A long time ago it was 12 days.
general rule of thumb is to find your comfort level of apprentice items. thats pretty much it. when you find your comfroting pace at 5/10/15/20+ new items a day just stick with it and if it surpasses apprentice limit just slow the speed.
I started to feel burn out when i reached 180-200 apprentice levels on wanikani + 400 on torii.srs. I spent like on average 2-3 hours a day on these programs in past 11 months. Managed to learn get acquintated with 5500 words but i can feel how my desire to speed through slowly messing with me. for no reason i have this stupid notion that i need to learn all common kanjis before actually starting grammar and immersion thus the need to speed which completley eliminates all joy in learning process.
was close to give up, but decided to cut apprentice items by half and now im finally can continue my progress just with a more reasonable pace.
out of all usseful tools for your wanikani journey i think the best ones are
I’m following some advice I saw in a thread like this and doing approximately 3 kanji lessons and 9 vocabulary lessons a day (and when there are radical lessons I do them all; at the level I’m at now they’re not really a big deal). I’m loving this pace! Not too slow, not too fast, and I’m starting on the next level’s kanji while I’m working on the last level’s vocabulary. So it feels like an ideal workflow, so far!
Like others have said, I think a key to success here is not to rush. Ultimately, learning a language is not a sprint, it is a marathon!
WK can sometimes make you feel overwhelmed if you care about the numbers and your “efficiency”. I’ve though to myself sometimes… “Oh man, I’m going to level up but still have 30 lessons… Now I’ll have to do 100+ lessons?!”
But whether it is 30 or 100, you will eventually do them anyways.
My keys to success so far have been:
1a) Try to stick to this and really make it routine. In the end, life can happen; but when you say “Well, I don’t really feel like it today… maybe I can skip…”, you start to break that routine. Try to reframe the perspective on those days. Sure, you don’t feel like it; but what are you going to use those 20 minutes for otherwise? Watching Netflix?
1b) Find people to “hold you accountable”. This community is awesome, but also get some real life people. I talk to family about it, even if they don’t care. Being able to share what you are learning about may help to keep you motivated. Don’t overload them obviously, but talking about it with others can keep you going.
I try to keep apprentice around 100, but don’t mind if it gets lower. I consistently “check” myself as I do reviews. Am I struggling somewhere? Do things feel a bit too easy? If I am struggling a bit, I won’t add to the pile of apprentice cards. If I feel like the reviews coming in are sinking in, then I add a few more. You have to find the learning pace that works for you!
Find other sources of things to engage in. I don’t have a particular reason for learning Japanese, but it has been a great opportunity to learn about the culture. I’m still pretty terrible with grammar, but being able to recognize more sentences and whatnot is really a great feeling! One thing I like to do is hit the song lyrics option on spotify and try to read that as the song plays. Do I get it correct, can I hear the different words, what does it say? You may need to be a bit careful here since song lyrics can be broken up and take on “artistic licensing”, but overall it has been pretty fun to do.
Just have fun, don’t punish yourself. You have a bad run of reviews… Who really cares? You are trying to learn something totally new. The only person you disappoint with those poor review performances is the mighty crabigator and… well… yeah; we don’t talk about that.
Never heard of torii.srs.
Do you like it? Looks nice!
I would say don’t rush and mix kanji and grammar lessons, along with fun things like watching movies and animes etc.
I tried rushing twice and while leveling up really quickly is fun, the 6 months of not studying then having to come back to 2.6k reviews isn’t.
yh its a great tool for vocabulary. for every new word at least 1 voiced context sentence. + 3-10 unvoiced. + you can add your synonymes. Also you can toogle jp/en and en/jp review mode.
But the best one is obviously wanikani mode. With that mode you going to learn 1000 only kana words + 4700 words sorted by wanikani kanji order. Oviously they wont include vocab words already covered by wanikani.
The word 上下 is not covered by wanikani but its pretty common one or 大方 - also common one but not covered by wanikani. If you use 2 programs simolntaneously by expanding your vocabulary you kinda reinforce your knowledge of kanjis allready covered in wanikani.
Awesome, alright I’ll consider adding it in!
I’ve been augmenting WK with kanji.garden since it has a lot more of a “dictionary” feel to it, but that isn’t really giving you vocab.
Glad you mentioned it 
Yep. Doing 5 lessons per day, I don’t pay attention to the apprentice items. It’s at 24 right now, but all that matters is that I don’t get more than approx.60 reviews per 24 hours, at which point I don’t have time. I plod through all the vocabulary before moving onto the new level kanji; that’s the main driver for how long it takes to level up. I’m not rushing this!
Variety is also nice. A bit of Bunpo, Duolingo, Tadoku reading, Irodori, plus a weekly adult education class…
I used to plod through vocab at the end of a level. I know there are re-order scripts, but it wasn’t a big enough deal for me to start using scripts again (just using plain ol’ WK after my reset).
However, when wandering around in the WK settings, I stumbled across a feature which I had completely forgotten about, namely “Lesson Ordering: Ascending level then shuffled”. No more plodding through vocab at the end of levels! And, no need for a special script! Plus it increases the variety during the levels!
I made a little comment/post about how I use it and why I think it’s good (my own personal preference; obviously people will have their own preferences, hence why it’s an adjustable setting! 
) in the Durtling the Scenic Route thread here: :durtle_hello: Let's Durtle the Scenic Route 🐢 - #300 by wct
You might like to experiment with it to see if it’s more pleasant for you or not. Cheers!
Thanks for the tip! I actually kinda like the distinct three phases of each level, but will give your recommendation a look… I’m definitely open to new scenic routes to the end…
I think you should probably have some immersion going on at every stage, even if it’s just in the background and not active. I do recommend doing active immersion though personally I’m making a game script for Okami as my active immersion and I pretty much constantly have some Japanese audio or lesson on. I recommend this channel if you enjoy games and want a English speaker to slowly increase the words you know: https://www.youtube.com/c/JapaneseQuest
As for grammar while I understand that want to know a lot of kanji before you go into a deep dive on it, however most grammar learning places will only use very basic kanji (if any at all) so I’m pretty sure by level 25 you’ll have those kanji burned, I do understand though I’m waiting till I have all the kanji of N5 learned before doing a deep dive into it, have done a little research into it though.
Yep yomi-chan or rikai-chan/kun is a must
Never tried the reorder script might have to get it thanks :)
Be careful with that - it’s been the demise of many a WK user
What makes that so?
probably because people abuse it to the point where they speed through levels while skipping tons of new vocabulary.
I use it only because it allows me to have a consistent pace 10-14 days per level while learning 12-15 items a day. Without the reorder script it would take me at least 7+ more days in order to progress simply because on a new level you are forced to learn vocabulary first from previous levels before actually learning new radicals/kanjis. And ussualy you have around 80+ new items on a new level. Some people obviously can just learn them all in one batch but im definetely not that person.
See, that’s a good way to use it as long as you don’t forget to do any vocab lessons 
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