I am a full time employee. I get up, I do my reviews. I finish work I do my reviews. Outside of that there’s little time.
I make a lot of errors, not a lot of is sticks, so I try and keep my apprentice level <50. If I am under that I will take on a new lesson - and that’s 5 new readings.
I read people hitting 20 levels in year — what am I doing wrong? Is wanikani not for me?
Generally keeping your accuracy above 80% (for each separate category) is heavily recommended. That 33% reading accuracy for kanji (and to a lesser degree, the 74% accuracy for vocabulary readings) is likely the main reason behind the slow level ups. At this point you should probably look into why exactly you have these low accuracy numbers.
Just to give a few ideas for what to look out for, I’ll list a couple possibilities and their possible resolutions, but writing about what your actual reason is might help pinpoint it further.
One thing could be typos. WK of course has decent typo detection for meanings, but if you often find yourself fat fingering the readings, well, nothing will correct you for that. If this is the case, and you are doing your reviews on a phone, you can try switching over to a flick style 12 button japanese keyboard. These are awesome, I generally recommend them to everyone, they are fairly easy to get used to and they really lower the chance of a misinput (speaking heavily from experience).
Another thing could be that the mnemonics just aren’t sticking. Especially during the early levels, when this whole onyomi-kunyomi thing is very new, it’s probably a good idea to stick to mnenomics. Later on you’ll have a ton of different methods for memorizing these, but early on it’s the best way out of the initial grind. But if they are not sticking, you need to ask yourself why. Maybe you need to focus more on them, properly internalize what they are saying. Maybe you need to come up with your own (though I don’t recommend this long term). Maybe you just can’t remember them after a week. Whichever is the reason, spending a bit of time during lessons on the reading mnemonic, trying to make it seem “logical” and “important” to your brain, and then rereading them whenever you mess something up, those could in theory help.
Looking at your statistics, it seems like your main problem is in the kanji reading memorization. Your vocab reading accuracy is double the kanji accuracy and your meaning accuracy is much higher.
That leads me to believe that you have some sort of specific problem with kanji reading, but not the vocab, which is interesting. How strong are you at hiragana? One of the things I find mildly troublesome with WK is that the mnemonics only really get you close to the reading, the rest of it you kind of have to memorize, and if you are also confused with hiragana, that could be a problem. If you think your hiragana knowledge is good, do you listen to the pronunciation provided?
For me personally, when I am first learning a new kanji or vocab word, doing three reviews that day makes a big difference in my retention as opposed to just two. I try to do before work, lunch break, after work, and before bed, which is pretty ideal for me but may not work for you. I do know I would be a lot slower if I did reviews just twice a day
From your stats it seems like you recognise the kanji, but can’t remember the sound that goes with it. One of the difficulties with WK is that it does expect you to learn both at the same time which is quite hard.
My guess is that you are unfamiliar with the sounds in Japanese, so it’s hard for you to mentally put a kanji in a particular sound slot in your head.
There were two approaches I used:
First was to make up a specific mnemonic key for each sound - some were simple じゃく was Jack, りょう was Rio, しゅう / Shoe, etc, some were a bit more strained but workable. Then I worked that into some short sentence or two about the meaning.
So, 弱 - Weak. Jack is weak - じゃく.
For things that were close in meaning but different in sound, I generally just paid more attention to the kanji and picked something about one that made it easy to distinguish them. 身, 者. The first one has got that little leg coming down from it, so that’s the one where “somebody is being kicked in the shin” - しん.
Second approach was to use the words I could remember that had that kanji in - this is something that can be useful about the way WK works, that’s why the words are there, but also is sometimes a bit frustrating because the words can appear some time after the Kanji.
There was actually a third approach, which was to leave WK for a bit, learn more Japanese, and then come back when I felt it was more important to have a better handle on Kanji - if I was going to start learning Japanese from scratch again I’d learn hiragana/katakana, go straight into graded readers & watching/listening to Japanese content, and have kanji study as a thing I also did, rather than centring my Japanese learning around it.
I suggest trying to go over the new kanji 2-3 times in the same morning (or in the same evening), 30 minutes or an hour apart. I found that the time gap between the first few times I see a kanji is really crucial. If I see a kanji in the morning and the next time I see it is only 12 hours later, I’m very unlikely to recall it. But if I see it a few times with shorter time gaps, the mnemonic is burned much better into my memory.
Easier said than done but make sure you always get enough sleep. Being tired is a silent killer. It slows down mental capabilities in a way that’s hard to notice internally. You notice it externally like your Chess rating dropping, or any other game you play, but you don’t notice that you understand and learn things slower.
This! 
When I started with WaniKani I tried to stick with the SRS system: lesson (Apprentice #1) → 4h review (Apprentice #2) → 8h (12h total - Apprentice #3) review. The accuracy rate at the first review was okay(ish) and then it’d drop by the second review.
Then I installed the Self-study Quiz userscript and went with lessons → 10min review → 30min review → 1h review → 2h review → then the default SRS timing. Now my accuracy is always in the 98-100 percentile.
Nowadays I may do one extra review between Apprentice #2 and #3 (whenever I have time) because I’ve shifted my schedule and have a larger gap (16-18h).
I’ve heard of another suggestion: to write (by hand) the new kanji a couple of times as you study them - this should also help with retention.
Doesn’t quite work for me because as soon as I take out the pen and paper, my cat wants to play with them 
I really like this — it’s simple.
I’ve also discovered kaniwani and boy it was humbling.
But it works really well with the Kani Wani audio script — you hear the word regardless if you get it right or wrong.
Whatever it takes to ram it into my middle-aged brain!
Thank you all for the suggestions. I will keep trying.
Edit: what has helped a bit based on suggested:
Hi, siDouglas!
Thanks for the log, it’s nice to meet you はじめまして!!
If you’re using Wanikani out of the box, like me… I recently started doing a single “5-pack” of new lessons…I’m keeping daily lessons low to keep from burning out or getting overwhelmed (again)
…I quiz myself several times on that same 5-pack throughout the day, and I don’t officially take the “Quiz” and send it into the Wanikani SRS system until I already feel “familiar” with it (which may take more than 1 day)… And includes remembering and recognizing it in the Vocabulary Examples!! But that does let me have a fast, short (within an hour, within 4 hours, again within 4 hours) interaction only with the new stuff… It’s a slower way to go, but I think it’s advantageous. It makes the rest go more smoothly…
If you can get through ALL of your reviews (down to Zero remaining in the stack) every day, then you are doing the right amount for your schedule… And your statistics don’t matter, because if you need to see a thing more to reliably “nail it”, then you need to see it more, and you can be unapologetic and don’t chastize yourself in any way… It’s just how that particular word is for you.
Your goal GET THE ENTIRE REVIEW STACK DOWN TO ZERO EVERY DAY. Then the SRS can work is magic
Good luck with your studies!
I always write down the kanji when they first appear in lessons in black. Then the reading in red. Then the meaning in blue. No real reason for the color coding outside of it looking nice, and mentally separating them all.
Then when I struggle with something in reviews, I take a separate notebook and make a note of it there.
Line 1 has the reading and the name. Line 2 I write the kanji down once.
Some time after reviews are done, I go over the notebook again and fill the entire row for each review item I struggled with. My handwriting is terrible because at some points I just kinda rush through it and don’t mind it being not neat.
Fairly old image from months ago as an example:
I have about 6 filled notebooks since starting now. But retention has gone through the roof since I started having the secondary notebook.
I think the older you get, the harder it gets to learn a new language. But please don’t despair! You may need to adapt your learning style. I for one found that if I got a kanji answer wrong, for some reason my brain remembered the wrong answer more than the right. I kept choking on certain kanji until I changed my learning style and forced myself only to put the right answer. Huh? I’ll explain more.
Basically, since school, we’ve been taught your either right or wrong, no in-between. Nativshark recently sent out a post addressing this issue. Problem is, we are still learning even if we don’t always remember the complete correct answer. School taught us that if any part of our response is incorrect, YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG! Sorry, but that’s just not true.
Think about it. Are there words you forget in English sometimes when you’re talking to someone? Certainly. In fact, I just mistype “your” instead of “you’re” in the previous sentence (grammar check caught it). If we make mistakes like this in our native language, why do we beat ourselves up with mistakes learning a new language.
How do I learn now? I actually open a 2nd WaniKani window and look up the answer on any that I get stuck on. WHAT!? That’s cheating! Well, is learning cheating? It works for me since it only reinforces the only correct answer. Now, is my retention as good? That depends, but generally words that I read in Japanese more often stick than words WaniKani teaches that aren’t common. I actually found a lot of words using kanji are spelled with hiragana alone anyway. Immersion really helps too. Try watching shows with Japanese subtitles turned on. I currently learn 10 new kanji a day and try to do reviews at least 6 days a week. Also, writing out problematic kanji helps me too. They key is not to get bogged down and stuck on kanji that you may or may not even use frequently.
The overall moral is to find a system that works for you. Don’t give up! I’m sure it’ll take me about 3 more years to finish at my current rate for example (I started in 2019). Learning a language isn’t a path to a door, but a road forever leading to the horizon.
@aboveup さん, WOW, your notebooks look awesome! I’m a HUGE fan of using different colors (preferably also in a different, set location, like you do with your secondary notebook) because I find it easier to do something like don’t peek at the green on the line above!
@derek790 さん! I noticed the exact same thing! I attempt to avoid letting my brain recognize or reinforce the wrong thing… So I also always keep a second “for lookups” window of examination open while I do reviews! That’s also how I find out what my brain was confused by (then I write them BOTH down next to each other in my study log, with the link to Wanikani).
I think you explained it rather well! Thank you!
I don’t think it matters how young one is to reinforce an error instead of a correct answer is still encouraging it “wrong” in the brain, and that is more difficult to “overwrite” と思う (I’m over 50歳 and teaching some under 18歳)
It’s okay if you make mistakes with the SRS stystem. You get to keep trying until you get it right. I had pretty much resigned to the fact that I would never get 下げる、下がる、上げる、and 上がる straight, but after getting it wrong a ton of times, I eventually started getting it right. Writing mistakes out by hand really helps, too.
I hit this too: 下げる、下がる and months げつ and がつ. I often screw these up.
Here’s a great post about transitivity.
The TLDR is
Transitive verb endings: す, せる, ぜる, める
Intransitive verb endings: ~ある, ~おる, れる
Often transitive: げる, てる, ねる, べる
Complete Guessing Game: ける, える, any other う ending
So most of the time e_u will be transitive and a_u will be intransitive. (Though, like any rule there are quite a few exceptions)
