What's a realistic 3 month progression goal?

Hi friends,

As the title suggests, I’d like to know what’s a realistic progression goal for 3 months. I’m currently on level 2 but I also studied Japanese in college. Although I always sucked, I do remember some of them.

I’ve always set ridiculous long term goals and fizzled out. I’ve got a new fancy pants goal tracking journal and am experimenting with the idea of 3 month ‘sprints’ as opposed to long term goals.

How many levels could I go up in 3 months if I log in at least once a day and clear all the lessons and reviews?

Also, do people generally clear everything every day? More than once a day?

Thanks so much

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This website is what you want: https://www.wkstats.com/

You can check the fastest possible pace, the calculated pace considering your average, etc. Very helpful.

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Fastest possible is about 7 days per level. More realistic IMO is 10 days per level. However to get WK to work at a good speed you really need to used it 3x a day, especially on days where you lean new items.

The initial SRS spacings are:
4 hours
8 hours
12 hours

So if you learn an item at 8AM, it will then show up again at 12AM and then another time at 8PM.

So maybe an achievable goal is two levels a month, ie level 8 in 3 months, and then any more than that is a bonus.

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The review system is best used if you sign in at least three times a day, due to the review intervals. The first reviews happen 4 hours after you do lessons, and if you get those reviews right, the items return 8 hours after that. Most benefit from hitting those early review intervals to aide retention.

If you don´t need the retention boost, it still means that you progress faster. Radicals and kanji have to hit the Guru SRS stage before new things unlock, so if you want to progress at a reasonable clip, you´re much better off with a minimum of three review sessions a day. One of the most common schedules to suggest is something like 08:00, 12:00 and 20:00.

I personally don’t advocate for doing all lessons at once. I find the bloated review queues very tedious, and if you use a script to reorder lessons, you can go max speed (7 day levels) while sticking to about 20 lessons a day.

(If you’re confused that you levelled up in less than 7 days - the first 2 levels are faster than the rest of WK).

@jprspereira breaks down this method more in a post he made:

So in three months, you can definitely be level 10+, but you don’t feel the real pain of rushing until about 6 months in, when Burn reviews happen. So it can be hard to know what lesson speed keeps you within an amount of reviews that is tolerable for you.

Experiment, I’d say. Try how you like it when going fast, and you can always slow down again.

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I think the one that @SyncroPC linked to is the old version, which uses API v 1

https://www.wkstats.com:10001/ the newer version, uses the personal access tokens that you can generate.

The old API1 should I think still be listed in the same place of your settings that you grabbed the token. ^^

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Thank you! Clear and easy to understand. I didn’t know about the default spacing. Good to know.

You’re a legend my friend. This is just the type of data I need to gamify the whole experience. Cheers.

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Another thing worth mentioning: There are additional scripts you can install to make WaniKani a bit more user friendly. More about this here:

Everyone has a different set that they use/like, but my recommended ones are:

  • WK Ultimate Timeline - puts a timeline on your homepage that gives you more detail about when your upcoming reviews are.
  • Override - allows you to undo your answer to a question (useful if you knew the correct answer but made a typo - BUT be careful not to abuse this)
  • Hide review accuracy - all this does is hide your accuracy percentage during review sessions. I find it lets me focus better.
  • Jitai - makes your review items show up in randomized fonts (you can hover your mouse over the item to see it in the normal font). This helps with recognizing Kanji in the real world.

There’s also an iPhone app called Tsurukame, and an Android app called Flaming Durtles, so you can use WaniKani on the go.

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If we’re going with some random script recommendations, there is one that should be a standard part of WK, in my opinion:

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Thanks so much! I didn’t know about the scripts. Some of those sound amazing. Especially the override one as I’ve made a few careless mistakes multiple times. I’m guessing as soon as you get it wrong once it drops all the way back to the lowest level right?

Just a question. Sounds like most of you are doing this on the web based app? I’ve always used the app for Android. Is flaming durdles something else?

You are gonna find mixed feelings with this userscript only because UGH, it’s so useful. I personally don’t use it because most of my mistakes come from a lack of focus. My memory is all there but sometimes I just need to stop and observe the Kanji or Vocab, observe it for like a long time sometimes.

I feel if I got the userscript it would make me more likely to do things like “I think it’s A” … “could be B” … “Ugh let me just say A” wrong “Oh so it was B then, ok fine, I technically still knew that, it’s fine”

I don’t think I have the discipline to not abuse it :man_shrugging:t2:

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It took me 6 days less than 3 months to get from 1 to 11.
I delayed a lot of the vocab lesson on level 6 to 10 by using reordering scripts, so I ended up with a huge pile of lessons, which I just defeated. That’s why I needed 14 days to get from 11 to 12.
In hindsight, I wouldn’t skip or delay the vocab lessons anymore, because they help you to memorize the Kanji and without vocab the Kanji worthless anyways.

I’d guess if you do all the lessons on each level before moving on you’ll need about 10 days (± 1) for a level which is 3 levels / month.

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I believe it’s something like dropping 2 SRS levels, so high level items don’t go fully back to one. But it drops with every mistake. So if it’s a persistent leech and you get it wrong more than once in the same review session, it’ll quickly be back at the front of the queue.

Flaming Durdles is an app version that a user here on the site made. :slight_smile:

[Android] Flaming Durtles - Android app with offline support

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I think there’s a mistake here

Aren’t these the SRS spacings?

  1. From Apprentice 1 to Appr. 2: 4 hours
  2. From Apprentice 2 to Appr. 3: 8 hours
  3. From Apprentice 3 to Appr. 4: 1 day (23 hours)
  4. From Apprentice 4 to Guru 1: 2 days (47 hours)

@Kinjo
As others have said ~10 levels every 3 months is a great pace.
Doing reviews at least two times per day is also important.

This community is incredible. Don’t miss the wikis and the scripts that some users have made. (I find new ones every day after more than three months here). My list of “must have userscripts”:
Wanikani Ultimate Timeline
Wanikani Double-Check (or Wanikani Override)
Wanikani Lesson Ordering II
The first one is very helpful and innocuous. The last two are even more helpful, but can also make life harder if you misuse them.

Good luck with your studies!

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I can log in 3 times a day. Struggling with finishing lessons for level 5 . I started about a month ago. Lets race!

I started this the last week of September 2019, so at the end of December I was L13. I progress one level every 7-8 days. I use the site when I wake up, maybe around lunch time, and then at night before bed.

I 99% use the mobile site since I don’t use a computer outside of my day job - so I don’t have access to scripts, which is okay.

Compare to my friend who started the same time I did, I think he’s level 5 or 6 right now. He tends to make a lot of mistakes on the kanji which slows his progression, and he doesn’t follow a strict schedule, so he might delay reviews for a half day or so from when they appear.

So a realistic 3 month goal is probably somewhere in between L6 and L15. :grinning:

See it all depends on your pace. We’re not here to judge your pace, but whatever goal keeps you here since you’re already finished paying your taxes to the Crabigator.

Thanks so much for informing me about the scripts.

Can I ask a question? I’ve had a go of both the WaniKani app and Flaming Durtles.

Am I correct in assuming that if I want to use the scripts like those you’ve mentioned above, I would have to be using the web based version of WaniKani. By logging in via Chrome from my phone or desktop? Or do the scripts also work with the apps?

Thanks in advance.

The scripts are pretty much only for the (desktop) web version of WaniKani. You need Tampermonkey to install them in Chrome, which I don’t think exists for Android Chrome.

Tsurukame (the iPhone app) has functionality equivalent to some of the most important scripts (timeline and override). I’m not sure about Flaming Durtles as I don’t have an Android phone.

Or on Firefox. :slight_smile: Definitely not only Chrome.

But if you use Firefox on an Android phone, you can add ViolentMonkey as an extension, and then install certain user scripts the exact same way that you install them on PC.

FD has some quality of life improvements that vanilla WK doesn’t have.

Quote from the creator:

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