As I’ve been getting busier with other life things, my review accuracy’s started to go down and it’s really demotivating.
Is it okay if my accuracy hovers around 70/75%? Or should I slow down and try and improve it before learning new items?
I normally end up with around 100-120 items to review twice a day.
I think it’s okay if you have that accuracy right at the start of a new batch of items (e.g. new level/radicals), but it should steadily go up. In my case it usually goes up to around 90% when I’m finishing a level. So maybe it’s indeed good if you just stop taking new lessons until you are comfortable with the current batch. Don’t give up 
I think it is normal. There are more similar looking kanjis at these levels. Depends how much time you want to spend daily on reviews. If you won’t slow down it will go up. Happend to me as well. I decided to cut the lessons in half to stay below 200 reviews per day. Ideally I want to drop below 150 before again moving up. Take into account that equalizing will also take some time depending on how fast you were going.
If you’re getting 65-75% on the first review or two for new items, that’s fine. If you’re getting 65-75% on average, that’s concerning. When you get a review right, it goes up by one SRS level. When you get a review wrong (if it’s already guru or above) it goes down by two SRS levels. This means (with oversimplified math) that 67% is basically the break even point in regards to review load. This means that if you consistently get less than 67% right, you’ll actually end up with more reviews coming up than you started with after a review session. If you average above 67%, but just barely, your review load will go down slightly, but probably not enough to noticeably lessen your overall workload.
What if I’m getting 50-60? 
Then stop taking on new lessons until you get the current batch up. A percent that low can mean that you are not really remembering the vocab/kanji.
I barely do lessons these days. Maybe like five kanji a week average? Vocab I tend to take when I get them though. I’ve done a few rounds of no lessons for a few months as well. I’m a snail. Been working at this nearly 5.5 years at this point.
Ah. Sorry to hear. Try doing reviews more often if you can.
That was actually really helpful, thanks!
That explains why my lessons grow over time when I do new a bunch of new items!
Any tips on how to push my accuracy higher?
My greatest failure rate seems to be from Guru1 to Apprentice3 and Master to Guru1.
Don’t think there’s a single answer to this. Why do items fail? Do you blank on the kanji or do you confuse it with other items, or do you kind of know what it is but can’t find the exact meaning match?
I personally recite every review item out loud when I answer (both meaning and reading, regardless of what it asks for), because I like to stimulate auditory learning at the same time as visual learning. Maybe writing down the items you get wrong could help if you’re a tactile learner - but it all depends.
There are scripts that will indicate what the level of the current item is during review - you could use that and decide to recite the mnemonic (or your own mnemonic) for all apprentice items to cement that memory aid better? Lots of stuff to try - but not all of it works for everyone.
That actually sounds like a cycle of superficially knowing the item. You’re level 37 so you’re going to start seeing a lot more similar kanji and this also increased my failure rate.
Like @rwesterhof mentioned, sit down and identify which items are giving you problems and then see if there’s a way to address that.
Leeches often can be blamed for low average accuracy. If that’s the case, I’d recommend trying “Self-Study Quiz” + “Wanikani Item Inspector” scripts and quizzing on “Leeches” and “Failed Last Review” regularly.
If it’s any reassurance, the 20s are really hard going, in fact I did a complete reset from level 24 back to 1 when I got bogged down badly and due to life had basically no time to do reviews for six months. But I made it through the 20s and now almost through the 30s on this second go.
I don’t pay any attention to stats, but guessing accuracy is around 75 percent. Keep the apprentice pile not much higher than 100, take a pause between levels if needed, to get the apprentice count down and take a mental break (maybe 100 reviews once a day). Seems to be working. I’ve been at it for 3 1/2 years – as many people say, for the great majority of us it’s not a race.
sounds to me like you should go a little slower and review the kanji and the readings a bit more carefully. It isn’t bad. Hell, it’s normal to struggle a little bit if the material is still not all the way in your noggin yet.
But it’s better to slow down to get it down, then to push on through and fumble around.
In my opinion, try not to worry about it. I reset a while ago since I took a loooong break but before that I was getting abysmal percentages some days. Once I got over myself and ignored the percentages I stressed a lot less.
Even if you keep goofing up, as long as you’re trying it will (probably) eventually stick. It might seem hopeless but eventually, things will start sounding right or wrong unconsciously. While I try and find a good mnemonic for reading or meaning sometimes you just have to brute force it.
Of course, as with any advice when it comes to learning, this doesn’t work for everyone but I find that blowing through things a little faster sometimes makes my intuition a bit stronger in the long run.
I just wanted to add, you’re doing this for yourself. This isn’t a school setting where 60-50% means failure. Some days, the rendoku just doesn’t click, some days, you mistype. I think seeing the percentage is a good ego boost when its high but when its low who cares? It just means you’re still learning.
Also, if you take too much new lessons and constantly answer a lot of items wrong, you might just get discouraged and feel like you’re not improving. Imo if you get 60-70% on the same set of items for a longer time, you don’t really know these items well. You should stop and mash them until you really get a grasp on them and just not care at all that you’re levelling slowly.
Imagine how bad it’s gonna feel if you do all levels up to 60, then have a glance on all those burned kanji and realize… “omg I don’t know half of these”. Take it easy and you’ll be fine
I can’t say if it’s the right thing for you to do, but I’ll tell you what I did that I am very happy about.
I was around level 24, averaging maybe 70% (sometimes worse) and getting really down. I took the plunge and reset to level 1. Back up to 11 now, I’ve been taking about 7 days per level and 99% accuracy according to WK stats.
It’s become fun again! I know that some of my leeches were lurking in these low levels and so by clearing the new material out of the way I was able to actually focus and solve the problems.
So maybe you don’t have to go all the way back to 1 like I did (although I don’t regret it). But maybe back up some amount and see how it goes?
Memory is a muscle, you can build it with practice. There’s no need to worry, just do other activities that involve some sort of memorisation or learning and you’ll see it improve; it may not be instant, but persistence is key.
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