I feel like WaniKani is taking up too much of my time, so I’m thinking about slowing down. I’m looking for some advice (particularly from people who slowly, but steadily level up) so I can decide what pace might work better for me. Thanks in advance to anyone who reads all this and gives some advice.
Some background:
- I’ve been maintaining a short-term level up time of 8 days on average. Long-term level up time is more like 10 days since I’ve been taking a 2 week break from lessons every 10 levels. My Apprentice pile is usually between 70 and 120 depending on if I just did a bunch of new lessons. My Guru pile tends to be around 500.
- I originally joined WaniKani (and iKnow) because I tried reading a manga (Yotsubato) and quickly realized that knowing only 100 kanji and not nearly enough vocabulary was not going to cut it. This SRS style learning has worked well for me, but I find myself with no time to do anything else. I haven’t tried reading manga again even though I’ve been meaning to, and I don’t read NHK Easy or do grammar studies nearly as much as I’d like (basically none in the last few months). That’s in addition to not doing as much non-Japanese stuff as I’d like (more anime/TV and reading).
- My annual subscription is up at the end of the year. Assuming there’s another holiday sale, I’ll probably just get lifetime at that point. The cost isn’t a significant factor in what I do. I have no plans to reset and I don’t think I’d resurrect much either, but I’d always be happy to have the lifetime subscription lying around if they add more levels later.
- I have no reason to rush. I don’t live/work in Japan, nor do I plan to. Up until now I’ve been going fast partly because I didn’t want to “arbitrarily” slow down (gamification working against me here), and partly out of frustration that I didn’t know as much as I wanted to. Hopefully the influx I’ve gotten of these first 24 levels lessens that frustration.
Questions:
So on to the questions for the slow and steady people.
- How many lessons do you take a day?
- Do you still do radicals first or do you just let them show up whenever? Do you do any type of planning around what combination of item types you take a day?
- About how many days does it take you to level up?
- Most importantly, how many reviews do you have on a normal day?
- Any other general comments or suggestions?
tl;dr Please advise on how to decrease my workload by slowing down, while still making progress.