WaniKani Routine Thread

[Korastra]

I was wondering if anyone had created a post that showed off their WaniKani routine, and after I looked around the forums and didn’t really find a topic like this yet, I thought I’d create one to help our newer (or even older) members.

What I mean by routine is how you go about working through WaniKani. This includes speed (i.e. how many days it takes you to level up), review times, lesson times, days of the week you do things on, userscripts, and anything you find helpful along your WaniKani journey. So I’ll start and give my routine as an example:

• Overall Goal: Level up 10 times every three months

• Speed: 7 Days

• Saturday: Starting day/Ending day

  • 8:00 AM: Level up/Start next level
    • Do new Radicals after finishing up reviews/As soon as you finish guruing the kanji required to level up
  • 10:00 AM: Quiz new Radicals using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 12:00 PM: Review Radicals for first time
  • 6:00 PM: First Set Kanji lessons
    • Do all kanji lessons
  • 8:00 PM: Review Radicals for the second time/Quiz First Set Kanji using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review First Set Kanji set for the first time

• Sunday

  • 8:00-9:00 AM: Review First Set Kanji for the second time
  • 6:00 PM: Vocab Lessons
    • Do half of current Vocab pile
  • 7:00 PM: Review Radicals for the third time
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz new Vocab using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review new Vocab
    • I don’t worry as much about guruing vocab as much as getting the lessons done. As a result, I usually don’t keep tract of how many times I’ve reviewed it.

• Monday

  • 8:00-9:00 AM: Review First Set Kanji for the third time
  • 6:00 PM: Vocab Lessons
    • Do second half of current Vocab pile
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz new Vocab using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review new Vocab

• Tuesday

  • 6:00 PM: Review and guru Radicals then do Second Set Kanji lessons
    • Do all kanji lessons
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz Second Set Kanji using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review Second Set Kanji for the first time

• Wednesday

  • 8:00-9:00 AM: Review Second Set Kanji for the second time and guru First Set Kanji
    • Unlock new Vocab
  • 6:00 PM: Vocab Lessons
    • Do half of current Vocab pile
    • Optional: Do a third of current Vocab pile
      • You can either choose to do a half or a third depending on if you want a break on Friday.
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz new Vocab using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review new Vocab

• Thursday

  • 8:00-9:00 AM: Review Second Set Kanji for the third time
  • 6:00 PM: Vocab Lessons
    • Do second half of current Vocab pile
    • Optional: Do second third of current Vocab pile
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz new Vocab using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review new Vocab

• Friday: Break Day

  • Optional
    6:00 PM: Vocab Lessons
    • Do last third of current Vocab pile
  • 8:00 PM: Quiz new Vocab using Self-Study Quiz userscript
  • 10:00 PM: Review new Vocab

• Saturday: Starting day/Ending day

  • 8:30 AM: Level up/Start next level
  • Repeat

Userscripts I Use:

• WaniKani Open Framework
• WaniKani Open Framework Additional Filters
• WaniKani Real Numbers
• WaniKani Ultimate Timeline
• WaniKani Reorder Ultimate
• WaniKani Override
• WaniKani Pitch Info
• WaniKani Dashboard Progress Plus
• WaniKani Review SRS/Level Indicator
• WaniKani SRS Level Progress
• WaniKani Self-Study Quiz

Additional Resources:

• WaniKani Data

Notes:

• My goal is to level up 10 times every three months. For example, I would go from level 1 to level 11 to finish this goal (this includes finishing level 10). If you do a level about once a week, then you should have plenty of wiggle room to finish before the three months are up. And if you do finish before the three months are up, then you can take the rest of the time as break before the next three months.

  • Don’t be scared to take a break. It’ll help with motivation and cut down on the amount of reviews you have.

• This has not been tested on the short levels yet. I’m sure I’m going to have to do some adjusting when I get to those levels.

• The most important items to get correct (if you plan on going as fast as me) are the radicals and the second set kanji. If you get the radicals wrong, then you are delayed by however long it takes for them to come up again (i.e. I have my radicals ready to guru, but I miss one. It’ll be another day before I can finish this radical). Same thing for the second set kanji. However, you can miss the first set kanji as much as you want as long as they’re gurued by the same time as the second set kanji. Also, keep in mind that you can miss up to 10% of your kanji and still level up (If I have 30 kanji to learn, I can guru 27 of them and level up still).

• You can change the amount of lessons you can do in one batch. Just go to the settings on the dashboard. You can do as little as 3 or as much as 10. I personally just use 5 as my standard but will change it based on the circumstance (i.e. I have 27 kanji lessons out of 100 lessons total, so I’ll change it to either 4 or 6 lessons per batch, complete 24 lessons, stop then change it down to 3 lessons per batch, and finish the last 3 lessons.)

• As a warning, this routine will cause you to have large reviews in the morning. Most of the time I can do these before I have to go to work, but if I run out of time I prioritize my critical items which is usually kanji.

• I use the Reorder Ultimate userscript to make sure that I get my radicals and kanji before vocab on both my lessons and my reviews. However, be careful because this can cause you to ignore vocab lessons and have a large buildup of them. I just recently caught back up from a 300+ vocab buildup and it was not plesent.

• Be careful when you use the ignore button script. While useful when you accidentally type the wrong kana, you can easily start abusing it. I developed a bad habit, in the 11-20 level range, of abusing this script and am now currently paying for it.

• When I do my quizzes on new material, I use the Self-Study Quiz userscript by rfindley. You need to install both the Open Framework userscript and Open Framework Additional Filters userscript to do the quizzes how I’ve set them up. Here’s a picture of the settings I use to make the new item review quizzes:

  

  These settings should work for radicals, kanji, and vocab. You just have to set up three separate quizzes.

• As you might have seen in the picture, I also have a leech training quiz set up. Rather than explain what a leech is myself, I’ll let someone else on the forum who put it best explain it:

@chrispthompson

LEECH: An item in language learning that just won’t stick, and ends up wasting massive amounts of your time.

It’s important to keep up with these because it’ll come back to bite you when your review scores start to suffer.
Anyways, here’s the settings I use for my leech training quiz:

And remember you need both the Open Framework userscript and the Open Framework Additional Filters userscripts to be able to use these settings.

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I hope this’ll help out our new members. I’m also hoping our veteran members will hope on board and share there routine as well. I go at a fast pace but that doesn’t mean you have to too. Many of the members here on the forums spend a lot longer leveling up and taking there time. I hope that a few of them will show there routine so we have both fast and slow routines to look through

Anyway, good luck studying!

*P.S. This is just the way I do my WaniKani routine. Experiment to find out what fits for you. When it comes to learning there is no one size fits all approach.

*P.P.S. Don’t feel obligated to share nearly as much as I have. I may have gone a little bit overboard with my explanation. Do what you think is best to get your routine across.

[plantron]

Aaah… to be young and unemployed again…

[Korastra]

I do have a job. I just have no life

[Powerpuncher]

Well, I’m not going as detailed as you, but here’s roughly my routine:

Speed: 7 days (exactly)

I do 25 lessons each day. 15 in the morning no later than 11:00, and 10 in the evening no later than 19:00.
I do my reviews as soon as they come up (unless I’m sleeping).

Monday 10.00: Level up review → Do radical lessons and some kanji up to my 15 lessons in the morning.

Between my radical lessons and radical guru review I do my kanji lessons and vocab lessons with my 25 lessons a day rate.

Thursday 20:00: Radical guru review → Do remaining kanji lessons and vocab lessons up to my 10 lessons in the evening.

Between my radical guru review and level up review I do my remaining vocab lessons with my 25 lessons a day rate.

Rinse and repeat.

Pretty simple and very effective and consistent. With 25 lessons a day I get down to 0-0 almost every level. Sometimes twice per level (depends on how many vocabs the level has of course).

[Chiv]

Boy, not trying to be a dick, but I do find your routine needlessly complicated.
I am sure you are not doing only WK for your Japanese lesson, but trying to fit in grammar and reading into that seems though for me (assuming one does not live only for Japanese of course).

Doing the quiz does imho also cheat SRS, but I get that this could be explained with personal preference.

That being said, my routine is similiar to Powerpuncher’s, but more relaxed (every day is the same):

• Between 0800-1000 am
  Lingering reviews up to second guru level.
  Then 20 new Lessons, radicals, kanji, vocab, in that order depending on availability.
• Between 1200-1400 pm
  Review the 20 new items and lingering reviews up to ~30 items.
• Between 0800-1000 pm
  Review everything that WK throws at me.

If life calls (exams, deadlines @work, girlfriend, cold etc) I skip/lessen the lessons and only do the reviews.
This gives me level up speeds from anything between 7 days (lots of time for WK and no errors in review) to 12 days (life comes first).

In the end, it is all about what works for one. So keep up the good work.

[YuriKai]

My routine is also the same everyday, more or less like this:
12-14 pm
First review

Around 8 pm
Second set of reviews, as some days this comes earlier, some later, sometimes it’s two sets, sometimes three, etc
And I also try to do 10-20 lessons after the first review.

[plantron]

But seriously folks, I am impressed by your consistency. I really have no routine whatsoever, just check WK every so often and if there are reviews, I’ll do them until I’m tired/bored. Same thing with lessons. Probably the reason why I never level-up in 7 days…

[Powerpuncher]

That’s what I did for the first 6 levels pretty much. Until I got too impatient with my progress
My timeline shows that pretty nicely.

[plantron]

I’m averaging 8.5 days per level now, which I think is not bad, considering I really take my time reading the context sentences this time around (didn’t do that for the first 60 levels). I’m guessing my average will grow to be around 10 days as time goes by, because of vacation mode etc. Still, I see the advantage of levelling up at the same time on the same day every week. Maybe someday I’ll reset again and try that.

[DawnTheFawn]

From level 9 that is so clean looking! I hope you can keep it up all the way to level 60.

[Powerpuncher]

Hehe, yeah, I’m quite proud of that
Although I’m not quite sure what to do with the fast levels. I might go down to 5 days a level. Or I might not we’ll see^^ My current level is a fast level and I decided to artificially lengthen it to 7 days to stay in my rhythm.

[jalexng118]

I don’t know if it can be called a routine, but I usually just clear out all reviews and lessons at the end of every night. I’m averaging around 9-10 days atm.

[Korastra]

That’s as much of a routine as mine.

I made this thread because this is something I wish I had when I first started WaniKani. Also, a while back I saw a lot of new users wondering about routines and how fast they should go. I wanted to show that you don’t need to go top speed despite the fact that I essentially do. You can either take your time with WaniKani or try to get it done as soon as possible. Not every one can be a Leebo, but maybe some of the new users can benefit from slower paced learners routines.

[Belthazar]

My routine: See review, do review.

[jprspereira]

Wanikani is too slow and the Radicals are Useless. also Why Can't I just level up in one day instead of 7?

@bahooney @Fang and others that might be interested. How to use WaniKani: Obs: this strategy requires the reorder script. Step 1: you need to define how many days you want to spend in each level. How do I do it? I make sure to know how long it will take me to do all the vocab of that specific level. I don’t care about leveling up faster, just so that I’ll end up leaving vocabulary unlocked from the previous level to do. If you want to level up every 8 days, you need to make sure you can do …

[Saruko]

Member of team Taking it Slow checking in here!

My current average is about 20 days per level.

I stick pretty closely to the same routine everyday, but sometimes slack off on lessons or Kaniwani on Sundays or other days if life has got me feeling too overwhelmed.

~9:00pm: (in this order)

1. large set of WK reviews
2. up to 100 Kaniwani reviews, writing down each answer on paper before typing it in
3. 10 Kaniwani lessons if it won’t give me too many reviews the next day, writing down each answer
4. 6 WK lessons if they are radicals or kanji, or 12 WK lessons if they are vocabulary; writing down each item, along with the meaning and reading for kanji and vocab

This all usually takes about an hour.

~9:00am the next day:

1. small set of WK reviews (just the new lesson items from the previous night, and a few others)
2. on with my day

So far I haven’t bothered with any userscripts, but I might consider adding one to show stroke order in lessons (if that exists).

[Ben6]

I’m on Team Slow as well (hence my slow ) but I am trying to ramp up my study time and effort eventually…

My current routine is:

10:00 PM - 11:00 PM (22:00 - 23:00) every day

• Do all available Reviews.
• Do 10 Lessons at a time until the counter doesn’t show + anymore (i.e. less than 42.)

7:30AM - 8:00AM (07:30 - 08:00) every day

• Do all available Reviews.

You don’t want to see my duration chart…

My OLD routine was:

10:00 PM - 11:00 PM (22:00 - 23:00) every day

• Do all available Reviews.
• Do 10 Lessons at a time until the counter doesn’t show + anymore (e.g. less than 42.)