This is my second time through (I petered out the first time at level 20). I am finding it much easier now that I have adopted the following strategy, which works very well for me.
First priority is to always keep the number of apprentice items below 100 and the number of Guru’d items below 500. That will keep the number of reviews you need to do at any time reasonable. Don’t do more lessons if it will put the number of apprentice items above 100.
Second priority is to keep the number of items in your review queue down to 0.
Third priority, if you are obeying the first two, is to reduce the lesson queue as close to 0 as possible, or to 0 if possible.
Also keep an eye on your critical condition items and try to review them so that you get them off of there.
No scripts or other tools that let you track your progress. I found I would just get obsessed with them, and discouraged if the progress slowed.
So the ideal is to have #Apprentice Items < 100, #Guru items < 500, 0 reviews, 0 lessons, and 0 critical items, and I achieve this quite often which is very satisfying! But don’t do lessons until you can do them without violating the top priorities!
Yeah, I’m similar to other posters here (like @DaisukeJigen) in that I like to spread out my lessons, instead of doing them all at once. For me, I think it helps me retain the information better, and it makes my reviews more manageable.
Ah, gotcha. So, since the second ‘batch’ of kanji for the level doesn’t unlock until radicals are gurued anyway, I’ll often do the lessons for the radicals first, then I’ll wait to do the kanji and any additional vocab lessons at my leisure. That way I can speed up if I want, but still pace myself (but I usually just go at a snail’s pace anyways ).
I never liked going at such a slow pace, since I tend to learn very quickly to begin with- but while I do the lessons, there IS a point where nothing sticks anymore
that’s when I should just stop and take a break, I guess.
I use [Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Filter to spread out my lessons, which then spreads out my reviews reasonably well (though sometimes they still bunch together based on when I do reviews each day).
Also, it looks like you have nearly 200 apprentice items, which is somewhat high. Did you just do a whole bunch of lessons in the last few days, or is it always that high?
Okay. Then I’d highly recommend you try the Lesson Filter script I linked to. You can use it to do all of your radicals the day you level up, and do the kanji over the next 2-3 days. And then when you guru the radicals, you can use it to do the rest of the kanji (while sprinkling in all the vocab of course). That way you can spread out your lessons a bit and still go at max speed, if that’s what you’re aiming for.
I generalized for the sake of comprehension. There are levels that can be done in half the time, 1 and 2 being examples. From then until the 40s, you will only find 7 day levels basically
Obs: 7 days being the minimum, not the speed recommended to everyone. It’s intensive.
My philosophy is to always do reviews and I think I’ve finally hit on a good amount of lessons per day that keeps my reviews at a manageable level while also doing good progress every day. (That number happen to be 15 for me.)
So I would suggest experimenting a bit with the amount of lessons you do. As you mentioned one good spot to stop is when nothing new wants to be learned anymore. Try that for a while and see if it gives you a review amount per day that you like (whether you want to be comfortable, a little pushed, a lot pushed, or have an easy load are different from person to person and their circumstances). And if you still haven’t found your sweet spot change it around again.
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