I have only been using WaniKani for only a couple weeks now; however, I’ve noticed that some days I actually can get a lot of reviews in, and others I don’t get many at all, because the hours are skewed.
For example, throughout the week on different days (I work different shifts) my ‘awake hours’ are all over the place. I could be awake from 3am until 8pm, 8am to 4am, 2pm to 4am… etc. I have no consistency. I am basically awake for all three work shifts throughout the week.
Is there a way to… force lessons/ reviews to populate at a specific time of day? Will it eventually learn what days I am online at what hours, or will this continue to be random? Some days I’m awake and have 100+ reviews. Other days, those 100+ reviews come in the middle of my sleep, and there are only a handful when I’m awake. I keep catching myself staying up well past when I should to get in a few extra reviews just because that day they lined up counter to my sleep schedule, and also so I don’t wake to hundreds that may overwhelm me.
The timings are not random, they’re item specific. You can learn more about them here:
Once you finish the Lesson for an item it becomes Apprentice 1. There is a 4 hour wait until that item appears in your Reviews. If you get that Review correct, the item moves up to Apprentice 2, and your wait is now 8 hours.
Apprentice 1 → 4 hours → Apprentice 2
Apprentice 2 → 8 hours → Apprentice 3
Apprentice 3 → 1 day → Apprentice 4
Apprentice 4 → 2 days → Guru 1
Guru 1 → 1 week → Guru 2
Guru 2 → 2 weeks → Master
Master → 1 month → Enlightened
Enlightened → 4 months → Burned
For Level 1 & 2 the SRS timings are accelerated for the Apprentice stage.
Basically, you can’t control this, but it also doesn’t matter much, in the sense that if you can’t do the reviews right away, they’ll just stick around until you do. Keeping a fixed review schedule can be one way of getting through WK, but that only works if you have a regular life-schedule. If you don’t, just do the reviews that are available at the times during the day when you have time to do them. You also don’t have to do all of them right away. Just do as many as you manage and then do the rest at a later time. The same goes for lessons: just do as many as you want to, then continue to do them over the duration of they level until the get to 0.
Thanks, it just seemed from what I was reading, to unlock more things and get through stuff, it was best to get them done as soon as possible, so if my sleep schedule means I don’t get to do reviews for a whole night, then I’m screwed out of that 8-12 hours of time to get it to move to the next level. Basically, it seems any delays can cause a drastic slow down, especially in the beginning stages.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the pace you’re going at being too slow. There will be plenty of items to review going forward. Especially once you have items in Master and Enlightened coming back after their longer SRS-intervals.