Low effort mode userscript? Sort reviews by accuracy and automatically fail overdue reviews

Has anyone made a “low effort mode” script for the tough times (currently I’m unmotivated, no lessons, less time on reviews, slowly growing pile of review items I’ve forgotten, work project which needs my full attention for 6 weeks, but not wanting to abandon my wanikani progress completely).

Something like:

  1. sort review items by “likelihood to answer correctly” (aka previous accuracy), so I can use the limited time I spend to continue making progress where it’s easy.

  2. automatically fail reviews for overdue items (i.e., items that I don’t get to for 1 week). No time or effort or frustration required on my part.

I think this would help me get through a period of low effort, while still making some progress.

Of course, I realize that this would likely end up with my least favorite items (my leeches) slipping back to apprentice 1, but that’s probably appropriate anyway.

If I stayed in this “low effort mode” for a long time, my review pile would divide into items burned and apprentice 1, which seems way better than any other existing option… From that point, vacation mode would be helpful.

I’d be cool with the failed apprentice 1 items just going back in the lesson queue too.

Hmm… maybe this could be called the “graceful surrender” user script.

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Honestly, I’m not sure about the approach.

If you want to go easy just stop lessons and you’ll clear your apprentice items in a week or so and then your daily review load should go down.

At that point you can turn on vacation mode completely or just continue with less reviews per day.

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Yeah, apprentice 1 items come up for review every four hours. Are you sure that’s where you want to be?

You’re much better off always making forwards progress, even if it’s slow progress.

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My opinion / experience - I don’t see how this is a good idea.

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But the SRS doesn’t work like that. It gets harder to remember items as they move up the SRS levels. So your accuracy drops gradually. So, just because you’ve gotten an answer right, doesn’t mean you’ll get it right next time.

Not to mention the two main drop-off points: moving items from apprentice 1 ->2 and Guru 1 ->2 . Those are often when you’ll fail many items and force you to redo them until they stick and you get them to master.

From a pedagogical standpoint, it also makes more sense to mix the easy items with the hard ones (less mentally taxing) to keep you going. Leaving all the hard items for last will create a mountain you’ll never wanna climb. :mountain:

This doesn’t sound like a good idea, no.

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LOL - asking “Is this a bad idea?” was obviously a bad idea.

A better question is if there are there userscripts available which can sort review items by review accuracy. And, if anyone has experimented with auto-failure for overdue items.

Hmm… I guess I’ll repost with better wording…

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I’d say that you answered your own question in the title, and everyone else concurs.

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I think this was more of a psychology test than a useful thread… I’m making the script now, and I’ll report back my results :slight_smile:

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Yeah I suppose if this was in the API sub forum I would have answered differently. :wink:

Awesome! :smiley:

At least you have the solution in hand.

You sure you’re not procrastinating? Maybe I’m projecting because it’s something I’m often guilty of. To me it seems like you have the tools you need simply with No Lessons and toggling Vacation Mode until you have a handle on your Wanikani.

Instead of coding an add-on script you could be tackling your work project or addressing Wanikani head on.

Allow me to give you a sneak peak into a programmers head :wink:

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cry

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Yeah i do it myself. Every time.

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Hey modboy - good point. Better to focus on reviews or my project, not a new userscript.

Problem is, I’ve been doing no lessons for months now, and I’m still being overwhelmed by reviews. I kind of screwed myself early on by going at maximum speed - averaging 25 lessons/day sometimes more if they were available.

That was ok for about 20 levels, then the review waves got too much for me to handle, and my practice fell apart. Been trying to recover ever since. My 98% review accuracy has dropped to 75% or less which is basically treading water, not making actual progress.

I wrote a script which tracks my daily progress toward completion, so I’m painfully aware that I’m not going anywhere.

Hmm… I suppose I could just reset my level, and continue with no lessons…

LOL - you totally nailed it :slight_smile:

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I get it. I reckon you know all this but maybe some consensus will help. It’s OK to tread for awhile and that IS progress (not at the rate you had going on before but it’s still moving forward). Reminder that the goal is to get better at Japanese so those accuracy scores don’t really count for much in the end.

Thanks - I took your advice earlier today and turned on vacation mode. I’ll cycle it on and off until I can get my reviews back to zero.

Probably only take a few days if new reviews aren’t being added.

Once I’m at 0 reviews, I’ll feel better and can probably keep up. If not, a little more vacation brakes are fine.

Thanks for the encouragement and simple solution…

(Still wish I had time to write more scripts. That’s more fun than studying, but gets me no closer to understanding Japanese - lol)

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Whew - glad I didn’t give up! I turned off vacation mode briefly today, got through 50 reviews and burned 9 items, even though my overall accuracy was poor. A small step forward feels better than nothing at all.

Feels good to know I can take break… Wanikani can feel pretty relentless at times :slight_smile:

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