I am up to the level I dropped out on back circa 2018 and starting to understand why. I am in a spot where I have foolishly ended up doing maybe 2 levels worth lessons at the same time. And now having to add the current level’s second half of the vocab lessons to it all which are now all going to be in rotation in my reviews.
My question is how do you guys handle these types of situations in order to get back to some manageable equilibrium? Do you only do specific reviews for a while? Is there a point you wait until before taking more on?
personally I get overwhelmed once I hit a stack of 100 reviews, during one wanikani session I only want to do about 50 reviews at a time. Some weeks when I slack my reviews stack up to 200 sometimes 300. I still stick to 50 reviews at a time, and then once I get myself together I’ll set aside time and run through the whole 100-300 reviews.
I don’t do new lessons during that time, I’m just trying to get back to a manageable level of reviews. Then once I’m there I tackle new lessons.
I’m not sure I understood your question correctly. But I will try to give general advices.
Limit the number of lessons you do each day. The more lessons you do, the more reviews you have to handle in a day. So this depends on how much reviews you are willing to do in a day, and also depends on your accuracy. More mistakes mean more reviews. Generally try to not have more than 100 apprentice items, else it might get out of control.
Then you want consistency. Building a habit is necessary to keep doing this long term. Try doing lessons around the same time each day, based on your sleep schedule. For example I do new lessons twice a day. 1st in the morning about 12hr or more before bed time, and 2nd round 4-5hours before bed time. This is because you get a review 4hr after a lesson, then 8hr after that. So I would get my apprentice III reviews from the morning lesson before bed, and evening lesson’s apprentice III reviews in the morning the next day.
Try to do apprentice item reviews as they come up. The longer you wait (especially overnight) the higher the chance of you forgetting it. This is less severe for Guru and above.
But understand that there will be days when life gets in the way, or you are just too tired to study/reviews. Thats fine, just accept it and rest as needed.
Personally Im trying to go through WK as fast as possible. I was doing 7 days on average per level. I did apprentice reviews asap, but on days I have no energy, i let Guru+ reviews pile up. Sometimes up to 300+ and then manage them later in multiple chunks when Im more energetic.
This is my 3rd time after 2 burnt out since late 2020. For me, consistency is the most important. And dont stay awake later than usual to do reviews. You would only get tired and cause a burn out. Instead, start lessons with the reviews timing in mind to eliminate this issue at the start.
Its brutal out here
Slowly getting things back into a manageable state. Most things level 1-8 are either in master or approaching master now, leaving only new stuff in apprentice/guru. Will be spacing out lessons from now on instead of doing a levels worth in one sitting
I use reordering (there are scripts and apps. I use Tsurukame and Smouldering Durtles, depending on my device)
And I’ll pick a number of reviews, let’s say 100.
I’ll do have ordering Current Level first, to ensure I progress on apprentice items.
And do half on Highest Level first, to get rid of the stuff that will have a high next interval.
After enough sessions they’ll converge in the middle and I just work through it.
I personally use the forecast + current reviews to gauge when i should do more lessons.
If current reviews < 40 and next 2 days forecast sum < 60, then i do 10 lessons and add them to the pile.
I make sure the pile stay below 40 so that if the reviews come, i can easily knock em out in a single day. And by doing only 10 new lessons each day plus actively managing my stack, I HOPEFULLY wont have a sudden +120 forecast.
If current reviews + forecast is higher than that, i just do reviews until it falls below that threshold. Although i will cap the amount i do to 60, as anymore than that i might slip and fat fingered a wrong spelling.
Also, dont worry if the you end up having a pace of 1 level per month. Thats normal. (lest you are one of those mad man that does like 1 level in 1 week, 300 reviews & 35 lessons daily)
Your number of daily reviews is roughly your number of Apprentice items plus 10% of your Guru items. 100 Apprentice plus 500 Guru will give you about 150 daily reviews, which is a comfortable number for many.
Whatever you do, DO NOT do lessons when you have pending reviews or when you have trouble getting through your daily reviews. Wait a few days and let your number of Apprentice items calm down a little before you add more. I wish I had learned that lesson myself, so I’m telling you as well as myself.
I’m only level 5 so still behind you, but I am only doing 15 lessons a day in the order that Wanikani gives them. This feels slow some days, but I try to think about how this will feel further on when I have much more to review each day.
About how to even out the reviews, I was in a similar situation on Bunpro before. What I did there was to just stop doing new lessons, lower the amount of new lessons daily and then work through the review mountain in chunks. I usually did 50 at a time, but I also had a day where I completed over 300 during the day lol
But just try to lower your daily amount and I think it will average out over time
Definitely better to space out the lessons haha.
I don’t recommend this speed, but this is what I do. So for example if I want to level up every 7 days, I look at the numbers of lessons total in a level. lets say 200, and divide it by the days (7). So thats about 28 lessons per day. You can then do those lessons in 3 sessions in a day, so about 10 lessons per session.
This would be quite manageable, and the reviews don’t come back together in a huge group too. Mentally this is much easier.
Of course, if you go slower, the work load each day is lessen as well. Make sure to pay attention during both the lesson and the reviews, so it sticks with you.
