Thanks!)
Yes, there’s a noticeable difference - load will only increase.
There’s one a bit unobvious fact:
When you go through your apprentice kanjis and words you have a steady and easy to understand stream of kanjis and words - about 100 vocab a week, if you go at max speed. Let’s focus on vocab for simplicity.
You have lessons, apprentice 2,3,4 and finally Guru level - that means 5 reviews per entry in 1 week (including lessons).
Let’s call that an initial load of 500 RPW (reviews per week) (5 reviews * 100 words).
When the first Guru vocab return (I’m using Ultimate Timeline for tracking) for review you basically have +100 to the load - 600 RPW.
Then you have Guru 2 - 700 RPW and Master in about 2 month from the beginning - 800 RPW.
And you know what? I’ll burn my first Enlightened this Sunday. That means 900 RPW for me from now on. Consider that from level 46 levels become 2 times shorter and you have double the amount of words per week (1400 RPW? Oh my…).
WIthout a routine it’s impossible for me to learn at full speed.
Sometimes it’s exhausting, but looking at my level graph at wkstats.com makes me proud of myself and motivates to continue. Also strictly sticking to SRS intervals helps a lot (I’ve mentioned it here: Forecasting Reviews on the Dashboard - #295 by Cumva).
They’re “painful” because you’ll notice that change in the load.
Brace yourself 