Hello! I’m trying to take it slow with wanikani. I’m wondering if 5 new items per day is a good amount? If I do that, how long can I expect it to take to finish wanikani?
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Hi! So according to WaniKani stats, there are something like 9226 items in WK in total. If you did 5 a day, that would be a little over 5 years to complete everything. (well, kinda ignoring the spaced intervals for the most part, but you should be getting reviews done at a good rate if you’re learning 5 new cards a day?)
There will always be people who go faster or slower, it would be personal goals that determine whether you are doing too few or not.
Personally, if 5 feels good to you and your brain, I’d say go for it!!
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The big question is what other studying are you doing?
And also what are your goals?
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Do whatever works for you. Don’t try and rush it. Once you start taking on more than you can handle, is when you get burnt out and quit. Better to take it slow and get there eventually, than try and rush it and never make it.
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Good question! I also wonder whether the percentage of correct reviews is a good measure of under-/overloading yourself with new material. Like, if it’s above the “learning zone”, does it mean I better be getting more new stuff daily?
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I was doing 5 while studying textbooks because the textbooks were the priority. Now im doing around 20 without textbooks.
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Good question! I also wonder whether the percentage of correct reviews is a good measure of under-/overloading yourself with new material. Like, if it’s above the “learning zone”, does it mean I better be getting more new stuff daily?
That’s the idea, yeah. If you are getting everything right, you might not be challenging yourself as much as you should be. Of course, that depends on how much time you spend trying to remember things while doing reviews. Some people prefer to go faster and accept typing a wrong answer if they don’t recall it right away, and others will take their time and try to remember everything no matter how long it takes. Still, the learning zone isn’t really saying “you should make sure you get x% wrong”, more like “If you’re challenging yourself, you probably aren’t going to get everything right all the time.”
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Yeah I usually try my best to recall it no matter how long it takes. I believe that effort is what really transfers things from short to long term memory…
I find “5” as a good number to keep studying every day. Small number motivates me to learn something new, even when I’m tired after work, because it is ONLY 5. When I have better days, or I find kanji/words easy, I study more.
Do whatever works for you and motivates you to study regulary 
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So for me this is a tricky question, I used to try to “min/max” my study routine and got to the point where I spent more time on forums romanticizing the idea of studying than actually studying.
Now this is probably not your case, but my point is that after expediting this topic a lot, my honest answer is that there’s no right or wrong answer.
We all have different learning styles, and memory retention. To some, going on a 40 item per day spree works, but to others that’s definitely not the case! I found I can comfortably do around 25-30 items per day and I’ve been rolling with that ever since.
Sometimes we’ll also have low energy days, so we’ll just do like 5, or 10, so try not to worry too much about how much you’re doing and just go at your own pace!