Hey there, so I’m just starting out with Wanikani and I noticed that today my Review Forecast is split into three time blocks, at 2, 4, and 8 PM. If I understand correctly, that’s around the time I’ll get more reviews to tackle, yes?
Is it imperative I tackle the reviews around those times, or can I, say, save the 2 PM reviews for 4 PM? Will that be harmful to the learning process?
No, you should come back whenever you can, usually a few times a day but not worrying about the exact hour.
The first two times an item comes back (at 4 hrs and then 8 hrs—although I think the free levels the times are halved) are the most important. If you can get close to those times, you’ll probably be good. A few hours generally won’t make much of a difference. At later intervals, it matters even less.
But, no, you do not have to do your reviews the hour that they come in. Some people do (particularly speedrunners, who have a lot of time, and may even interrupt their sleep to get the ones that come in during the night in order to finish as quickly as possible), but most people can’t manage it and it’s generally not recommended. Many people will choose 1-4 times a day when they can set aside some time to do reviews and do either a set amount or as many as possible.
Okay, cool, thanks! I’ll try starting with a session in the morning, and one close to bedtime.
Good luck! がんばってね~
はい、がんばります～
I feel that short intervals, like 4 or 8 hours, may help reinforce new memory that is about to forget; so there might be some benefit to doing 2-3 times per day. More frequent that that, not much.
Even “speedrunners” don’t need to do this. A 3 review/day schedule designed around the intervals is good enough to get near max pace. IIRC going sleepless saves a few hours a week and is completely not worth it.
My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK 📖 ) - #2 by jprspereira
If you pay attention, you’ll notice that WK is divided by intervals of 12h and 24h:
Imagine that you do a lesson at 9 am. This means that you’ll get the 1st review at 1 pm (+4h) and the 2nd review at 9 pm (+8h, considering you got it right both times). Did you notice the pattern? That’s right: 9 am and 9 pm . It’s the WK’s pattern working. Now, think about the time it will take for the next Apprentice levels. That’s right, Apprentice 4 at 9 pm of the following day and Guru 1 two days later also at 9 pm. The same will happen with the remaining SRS levels. Can you see the magic happening?
To use WK to its full potential, it’s better to respect the SRS intervals of Apprentice items on WK. Why? If you’ve read the FAQ/Guide, you’ll know that WK’s goal is to show you an item right before you forget it. By being loyal to the intervals, you’ll be more successful in your reviews. Does this give you extra work? Not at all. Just notice the pattern again.
For an item which lesson was done at 9 am, you’ll need to:
You basically only need to use WK three times a day. Forget about trying to be here every single waking hour. You don’t need to. Waking up in the middle of the night is also complete nonsense. Your sleep is way more important than WK and the cool thing is that you can get both right.
Alternative schedule:
There’s another time when you can do lessons: 4h before your last review session. Imagine that the last review session you’ll do is at 1 am. You’ll then do the lessons at 9 pm, Apprentice 1 at 1 am and then Apprentice 2 at 9 am. It’s the 9 pm/9 am magic happening all over again.
Some people even do both schedules by splitting the daily amount of lessons into 2 parts. Go for the one that fits your routine best.
Observation: Obviously, missing reviews by an extra of 1 or 2h will barely do you any harm, but my point here is for you to understand the system. In practice, an extra hour here and there for recently learned items happens all the time and that’s fine.
I know, but I’ve definitely seen at least one person say they do/did that, and they were a speedrunner. The “may even” was intended to say that there’s a small a subset of speedrunners who do that.
(Unless you merely intended to provide additional information, and weren’t directly talking to me, then I apologize)
I just have a hard stance against cutting sleep for WK. The only people I’ve seen do it had special circumstances and I’d really consider it more the exception than the norm for fast leveling.
Getting back to the point of the thread, that info was really meant to point that that having a healthy review schedule and leveling quickly are not mutually exclusive. Chasing the review forecast shouldn’t be necessary for almost any user on WK. It’s just a nice tool to help keep track of upcoming/outstanding reviews.
I think it’s more a person to person thing. I find that if I let it sit till the end of the day in the hopes of banging it out in one go, I just end up feeling unmotivated when seeing that big number. So I like to do it twice a day usually, once after lunch and once after dinner.
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