So I’ve decided to change the way I use WaniKani to improve my experience. At level 12 (finally), I’ve decided to thoroughly read the ultimate Guide for WaniKani and installed some really useful scripts. But now my ultimate question:
I’ve got reviews all over the place, almost every hour. I thought I could get away with it, but now I’m really feeling the consequences of that kind of routine which I can’t keep up anymore.
Will this fix itself if I for example do lessons and reviews at 8 am, do my next review at 12 and the last review for the day at 8 pm? If I basically only come to WaniKani three times a day to do my reviews at the designated times?
What happens tho if I sleep in on Saturday and do my lesson and first review at, let’s say, 10 am, do my reviews according to this new time and start doing reviews at 8 am the next day again?
Will it tremendiously affect my reviews if I can’t do reviews at 12 for two days of the week and do my second review at around 5 pm, so basically, if I’m 5 hours late to do my second review of the day for two days of the week?
Lot’s of questions, but I decided to use WaniKani smartly from now on, which I can’t do without help! Thanks in advance!
It won’t change the timings for items that have already moved up the levels (master, enlightened), but i will change when reviews become available going forward.
More importantly, just because you’ve got reviews available - doesn’t mean you have to do them that very second. Just go ahead and change to a 3-times a day schedule and worry less about the past items that might still appear at other times. They’ll be in minority soon enough, and they can wait until you have a scheduled slot to handle them.
If you want a more precise way to calculate when reviews will be come available, look at the general SRS-guide, but essentially each item gets assigned its own SRS-timing. That’s the principle of the system.
Yeah, I think I will just do my reviews three times a day and worry about them when the time comes.
Just that I spent around 20 days on level 11 and really don’t want to repeat, which is why I asked how not doing your reviews on time affects the time you spend on every level.
Thank for the answer!
A few years ago, I ran some simulations for doing different numbers of review sessions per day, and at different times of day. The most important factor in reducing the time to complete WK was to do at least two sessions a day, at least 8hrs apart. All of the other factors (including moving to 3 sessions per day) really only changed the WK completion date by no more than a few months, which is really not much at all when you consider the total journey of learning Japanese.
Adding the 3rd session per day only optimizes level-up day and half-level day, by the way. (i.e. when you unlock a bunch of lessons at once). You could skip the 3rd session (the middle session) on other days and it wouldn’t make a difference unless your accuracy is low.
It can have a negative impact if you keep postponing your reviews. Especially on the earlier stages, the addition of hours on the original SRS-timing (4 hours becoming 7 hours, which is closer to the next SRS interval of 8 hours waiting) obviously makes it much harder for you to answer correctly. (so people that avoid doing their review regularly will have a harder time progressing.
That being said, it’s less time-sensitive with the upper SRS-stages: what’s an additional couple of hours after waiting 2 weeks to answer the question?
That’s really nice to hear! Took off a little of that pressure since a couple months really isn’t that much. I suppose I will just try to do as much as I can, try what works for me best and see how many days I need to complete a level with the new routine. In the end tho, the amount of days you need for a level-up doesn’t matter much in comparison to actually retaining the things you have learned.
Thanks for the answer!
Exactly, which is porbably why it took me so long. I do really good in the mornings, then life comes and I don’t get to do my reviews properly until 5 to 8 hours later. I have to change my strategy, since I get an accuracy of about 80 to 90% these days. Spending more time in extra practice would probably help, as well as having designated times in which I do my reviews.
This script allows you to sort reviews by SRS level which I use to fix the issue you’re having too of many items appearing at random times.
I have the script disabled for general reviews and then when I review the items I’ve learned that day I set it to ascending SRS so I can target the apprentice 1 items specifically.
Might be other ways to do this but this has been working nicely for me!
You can play with projections at [Userscript] WKStats Projections Page if you want to see what the effect of time per level is on your completion quickly
