I’ve been at it hard for a week and have just reached level 2(I think). If I work on this a few hours a day could I possibly get to level 60 in 60 weeks? or does it get much harder to learn new kanji after a while? I guess what i’m mainly asking is what are the ranges that people have gotten to different levels. we can use level 30 as a baseline. anyone past level 30 please let me know how many hours per day you put in and how many weeks it took you to get to level 30.
Thank you.
Theoretically, it’s possible. Some people have even made it to level 60 in less than a year (52 weeks).
Practically, it depends on how much time you have every day. If you do 7-day levels constantly, at some point you will get hundreds of reviews every day (especially after about 6 months because the enlightened items come back to be burned).
Possible? Absolutely! Sustainable? Probably not… I make a lot of dumb mistakes that cause me to take longer than 7 days for a level, but I find that when I make a mistake once, it makes me pay attention and remember the right answer. In that way, I’m happy going at the pace I’m going because a lot of the information is sticking!
After let’s say level 20 I feel that it actually gets easier to learn new kanji because you can just do your routine. You only have to watch out for the many similar kanji that come up.
A few hours per day are definitely enough, it helps to have a bit of time several times per day instead of a big block’o’time. The main enemy is you motivation to actually do reviews for an hour or two.
I was going at the speed of about 7-8 days per level, but then around level 20 the number of reviews everyday started to get to a point where it was too much to handle. Miss a day and I was screwed. Eventually got to the point where I avoided it for a week, and had 700 reviews, and then it got worse.
I ended up bumping my level back down after quiting wanikani for awhile because it had burned me out.
Now I have found the sweet spot of just having around 50 apprentice level items at all times. Yes, my speed has decreased drastically, but I feel this is what works best for me, as I feel I’m learning to items better and I’m not overwhelming myself with reviews everyday.
The best thing is to find the pace that suits you best so that you don’t get overwhelmed, but still at a pace you are happy with.
I think you should also take into account that probably the 2nd half of kanji on WK doesn’t give as many benefits as the first half.
If you don’t cover basic grammar and keep a routine where you little by little get more and more vocab and start dipping your toes into using japanese progressively, you will have little chances to actually put those kanji into use, which finnally is what is going to secure them in your brain, not the SRS.
So don’t be too concern on reaching level 60 ASAP if that means you will be lacking everything else.
The first 25 levels where sustainable for me going full throttle … the last 20… not so much 
(actually I just skipped the last 2 levels altogether 
)
Have you read my guide to WK? I feel like you’re too early in the journey, and you’re missing context from all that you’ll have to go through on WK. I don’t mean that you can’t do WK with 1 level every 7 days. With a couple of hours you definitely can. I mean knowing how WK reflects on your general Japanese studies, the lessons you’ll learn from it throughout the way, etc.
As with anything that relates to language acquisition, quality over quantity. In the end it doesn’t matter how fast you go if what you are learning isn’t sticking.
Find a good middle ground and routine that suits best for the amount of time you have available and try to stick to it. Otherwise you risk yourself burning out.
Sorry, I just had to 
Okay point taking, maybe a bad choice of words there 
. But that post is in the context of how they built WK to not learn every kanji detail at once, but instead use SRS and vocab to do that for you. Not what i was trying to convey with that statement.
I was more referring to how you should spend your time wisely and not just try to get it done as quickly as possible just to keep to a super fast pace.
Yeah, I don’t disagree with your post from before. Just continuing to throw stuff at the wall while nothing sticks isn’t a good approach. That particular quote triggered my trap-card though 
It’s possible if you just do kanji only, enforcing it with writing.
Don’t do vocab,reading, listening or even doing grammar outside WK. You won’t have time to do them all, especially if you have life beside learning Japanese. Prioritize what you want to do, have fun doing it and it would (probably) be sustainable.
If you don’t mind planning your entire life for the next year around your WaniKani reviews, and you have plenty of time to do your levelup critical reviews on time to actually level up, it’s not only possible, it’s also been done before. But it takes a level of dedication that most people don’t have. I tried to do it, but I got burned out. When you go super fast and miss doing your reviews for even 1 day, it quickly turns into a frantic game of catch-up that can feel like hell. But if you have the drive and the dedication, go for it
Someone did it recently and posted this. Note how much work it took to do it as well as the lack of focus on other aspects. The person also started with some kanji knowledge.
I definitely think it’s possible, but I personally feel like it’s not about levelling up, but about remembering the kanji and vocab, and being able to apply them in your daily life and conversations. Striving to level up hella quickly is admirable, for sure, and I’m super impressed by people who do it, but like other people said, making mistakes is part of the process and being able to remember your kanji a little better.
That being said, everyone has a different learning speed and approach. What might work for someone else, won’t work for you, and vice versa. Give it a try, and if it’s your thing, keep it up!
Language learning is a long process, but with the right amount of effort and motivation, you’ll get there regardless. Good luck (:
Lots of people did it, so it’s possible. An IRL friend reached lvl 60 with an average of exactly 9 days, so I’d say yeah. If that’s your question. Whether you should do it or no is another matter tho
I had just noticed that your badge is gray… and I admire that you are just able to stop, so close before level 60, I could not deal with that. It is a super mature choice to move on to something else if that something else works better for you even thought you are so close to level 60 (since level 60 is meaningless, in theory), but I just could not do it. I would have looked forward to your level 60 post too 
Back on topic: as so many others have already said: it depends on you. For me, I am busy at work, tired in the evening, trying to study grammar a lot at the moment for the JLPT and no, it is not sustainable for me. Sometimes I try to go fast for a while and I would probably be further along now if I would just have sticked to 10-20 days per level. But it sure is fun going fast for a while and see how long you can handle it as long as you are still learning the material properly.
I think a point that many people forget to mention about those who do a level in a week is that the majority of people who are able to do that had studied Japanese for years before starting wanikani, so each level requires significantly less effort for them to complete than a person who is relatively new to studying the language. Basically, pay no mind to what other people are doing and follow your own comfortable pace. Much better to take one month per level (an extreme example, to be sure) if that’s what it takes rather than to try for one a week and quit after a few months.
The grey badge is a better match for the B&W avatar, it was a no brainer actually .
Actually I think is easy to lose focus on the actual benefit (and detriments) that can have persuing blindly a goal like knowing that many kanji in a short span of time and make the gamification aspect of WK a back firing point.
In my case the last 8 level felt like I wasn’t learning that much tbh. The kanji that I had seen before up to that point from known vocab were super easy to assimilate, but the new ones and specially the uncommon kanji felt like they were sliping away so easily. Partly because I though that doing the levels in 3-4 days was equally effective than 7-8 days, and also partly because I wanted to be over with.
Retrospectively now I think it’s not worth the time and the effort was misguided.
I see so many japanese related activities where I can get so much more bang for my buck. Take writing for example (caligraphy), I can practice writing after a few lessons, watch a couple of videos on a weekly basis, and that alone has allowed me to get the feeling of writing with a brush within 1-2 months. Same for reading and so forth, is so easy to go from 0 to a beginner level in other areas, that stretching 1900 to 2200 kanji seems pointless, as the revenues get to be less and less.
In any case I’m doing RTK now in persue of having a more solid and systematic basis to write kanji, which is something I can quickly turn into actual practice now, eventually those kanji I left out or just plainly forgot from WK will be presented again.
Actually doing my own Anki deck for writing I picked up the basic model that the comunity on MIA (the new AJATT) is using, and I realize then that the deck was adjusted to just include the most common 1,000 kanji in RTK … after all the comparision with the other methods!! 
(tricky clever bastards ).
Personally, when I started doing wanikani, I leveled up in around 7-9 days for levels 1-26, but as my enlightened and master items came back, it got significantly harder to level up this fast.
I’m a full time student, and at level 42, I definitely cannot level up in 7 days consistently anymore. Maybe if I have a vacation or free week where I can dedicate all my time to wanikani, I can do it, but with my regular schedule it’s not sustainable. When I do level up in seven days, I probably spend around 3-4 hours per day on wanikani doing lessons and around 200-300 reviews per day, although I’m sure the time varies from person to person!
Nowadays I take around 10 days per level and I do wanikani for 1-2 hours per day.
I think everyone else has basically shared what I wanted to say, but I hope this can help give you better idea of how much time it would really take each day to level up this fast 