I do about 20 new vocab lessons at a time, maybe once per day (twice if I know I can commit) and make sure I get the 4-hour and 8-hour reviews done for those as soon as I can, then maybe the next day do another 20 vocab lessons. Once all the vocab has been done (the 4-hour and 8-hour reviews done for all of them) I begin the kanji. I do all the kanji lessons at once because there are only ever about 35 of them.
Something to note: I have a decent Japanese level, so it is never the case that all 35-ish kanji are brand new to me.
While keeping this pattern, I stop or slow down if:
-my apprentice items get close to/over 100
-my guru items get over 400 (if this happens, I keep my apprentice items around 60-ish until the guru number drops again)
These specific numbers were something I saw other people throwing around in the forums, and I discovered that it worked for me, too.
Then, once the kanji make it to guru and I level up, I do the new radicals and up to 20 vocab items and start the whole process again.
I use the Ultimate Reorder 2 script on browser, and the Jakeipuu iOS app.
I’ve changed my method a few times since I’ve started because my memory sucks lol. Right this second I only do new lessons until i hit 50 apprentice. I also have scripts to prevent me from doing new lessons after I hit 50. This way, the amount of new lessons I do purely depends how well I got through the previous ones (this week alone that varied between 3 and 19 new lessons per day!), and with 50 apprentice I won’t have a huuuge amount of reviews.
I also always do radical>vocab>kanji and try to cap kanji at 5 per day so that way I’m continuously unlocking new vocab.
Yeah, I just keep apprentice at 50. Usually like this:
Day 1:
25 lessons at 8am before work
Sneaky lunch extention to study the first reviews at 1
Next reviews at 9 or 10 before I sleep.
Day 2:
Reviews at 9pm
Day 3:
Another 25 lessons following Day 1 pattern
Day 4:
50 reviews at 9pm
Depending on if I pass everything I will have between 25 and 50 reviews now (first 25 should be to guru if no mistakes)
Day 5+:
Do enough lessons to bring me back up to 50 apprentices, and follow same 8am/1pm/9pm schedule.
I will often keep apprentices below 50 if I see a bunch of guru/master/enlightened reviews coming up too.
Also, work or family commitments get in the way, when this happens I save the reviews until night or the next morning, and don’t add any new lessons the next day until I’m caught back up to my regular schedule.
This is pretty slow compared to all those 7 day per lesson folks. But it is manageable. And keeps my errors front and centre, instead of being lost in piles and piles of new lessons.
For a steady “do the same thing every day” schedule, there actually are ways to approximate workload ahead of time, and calculate your preferred X based on that: Level 4 advice - #39 by sclu1034.
I don’t use any scripts, just shuffled lesson order. New lessons come way smoother than before. Would work even better, but I tend to “refresh” lessons after level up, to get more radicals and kanji in lessons. This is my second time in Wanikani. First time I used scripts and stuff.
Honestly I did it manually. I’d look at my apprentice count in the morning before doing lessons and then just do them as appropriate. There were many days where I did no lessons at all.
This is true if you didn’t mess up like I did and take a 2-3 month long break and then spend 6 months clawing back from it.
Many of the things I recommend were borne out of that pain.
