Remember everyone, do your lessons and reviews responsibly. Don’t end up like me lol. I’m the usual story of trying to clear wanikani in minimum time with all mistakes possible. I decided to start learning japanese soon 2 years ago, tried and disliked Anki, and then found out wanikani and bought the 1 year membership.
I loved how this site works, but ended up doing lessons and reviews on mobile all day long. At first it was fun and engaging… But soon it started to weight on me. Then my list of leeches started growing, because I had rushed and forgot a good quarter of vocab I just learnt and the ones coming out for burning. Then I burnt out like a candle in rain at level 18. Not to mention, I did not supplement wanikani with any grammar studies at all, thinking I could do it later. Ouch!
Long story short: Try to set specific times to do your reviews and lessons, don’t try to force it too fast. Don’t do all lessons as soon as you level up, DO study grammar, and all the other good tips the more experienced people can give you!
Now I’m back, with a lifetime membership and trying to tackle wanikani again, with more success.
I forgot to take a picture of my accuracy from wkstats before resetting straight back to 1 (for good measure and a real fresh start), but I think it was around 90% and dropping.
Here is my heatmap of shame, anything green is 100+, yellow is 200+, red is 300+. Teal is <100 and you can see my burnout at the end really well from this.
I understand a few how you are felling but on the oposite way. I have studied a lot of grammar but now I can’t read anything because I ignored the kanjis.
On my case I had to study a lot of english as well, to be able to understand this site 'cause I didn’t find some website like wanikani in pt-br.
I feel this post. Things came crashing down on me at around level 16, albeit I had quite a bit of prior knowledge before I started Wanikani.
My solution was to slow waaaaay down and (a) finish lessons (b) push guru and master pile into oblivion and only then (c) begin to push new levels one by one.
I am on track to hitting level 20 after just over 1 year. I am a little hesitant to push for level 40 by end of 2021 but I am going to try for it.
I think the trap is always doing massive batches of reviews and lessons. It’s not too bad at all if you end up doing 200+ reviews a day but spaced out.
I find this method really works well, I barely ever find myself forgetting a word and because I’m doing several 5-10minute sessions of perhaps 30 reviews it means I can space it out over the day in my breaks from other work.
With regards to the lessons, I am afraid I am a sinner when it comes to them. I do all 40 lessons immediately in order to start reviewing them. Nevertheless, this hasn’t been a major issue for me (perhaps it will when I get to higher levels). The way WK is designed is to retest you on your weaker radicals, kanji and vocabulary more often. This means that even if I do forgot five or so vocabulary from the lessons, I catch them up really fast.
I also do regularly practise grammar, which I would tell anyone is one of the most important things. You can know all the kanji and vocabulary in the world, but it won’t matter unless you have the grammar knowledge to back it up.
TD;DR: Space out to your 200 reviews over the day in 5minute sessions and you won’t burn out so much; you can probably do better than me when it comes to lessons and regular grammar practice is crucial.
