Why you should not

You will need to do that to finish WK in one year, hence their marketing. If you repeatedly miss the SRS time when they are due, it will accumulate over time, and you will finish longer. I think part of it is because of leveling mechanism where you need to guru’d radical and kanji as fast as you can so you can level up more quickly.

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They don’t recommend doing it in a year.

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College professor here.

I’m not speaking on behalf of my school, but as both a student and a teacher, I made the mistake of sacrificing my sleep and my health to push myself for years at a time. I’m at an age where I can no longer get away with that. Let me tell you: it wasn’t worth it.

I probably have chronic illnesses from the stress. I didn’t spend enough time with my friends and now we’re all old and encumbered with obligations and spending time together is a whole big logistical nightmare. And for what? Nobody noticed or thanked me. The world wouldn’t have ended if I’d waited. When you do extra, selfish people expect extra.

Take that nap. See a doctor about that insomnia. Use all the leave you get. Go into a less demanding line of work if you can, even if it pays less. I’m already halfway into the kind of life that people regret on their deathbed. The longer you’re in, the harder it is to get out.

Also this:

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Thank you for sharing! :two_hearts:

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Wanikani starts off every item with one review after four hours and another review after 8 hours.

If you do lessons in the morning, you finish all your reviews within the first 12 hours of the day leaving far more than 8 hours remaining in the day to sleep.

As a result, Wanikani does not require you to disrupt your sleeping schedule to do reviews on time and finish all 60 levels in a year.

The 8-hour once-per-day sleeping schedule is actually only one of several different sleeping schedules that are known to be healthy. It is important to get enough sleep but there is more than one way to do it.

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That may just be the sort of thing they didn’t or don’t really anticipate people to be doing, and it’s a stretch to say they’re advocating for it. You’d think, even, that after a few attempts waking up late at night for a groggy review session one would start to get the impression that it’s maybe not the best for memorization (or be put off doing it regardless just because it’s unpleasant). Setting that aside, though, in general, the WK team do seem to be pretty good about reminding people to maintain a manageable, sustainable pace rather than trying to race through the levels as fast as possible.

Although, the guide written up by @jprspereira, the user quoted in the article that @chellykins shared earlier in the thread as having completed WK in only 368 days, also shows how, with WaniKani’s SRS intervals being what they are, it’s entirely possible to plan a routine that both allows one to go at top speed and still only do reviews during normal daylight hours without sacrificing sleep. To quote that guide:

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I was answering your question about why not reviewing in the morning instead.
And it is part of WK marketing. You can read it on their homepage - you can’t miss it - it is stated in big fonts. If they really don’t want their users to finish in one year, why the marketing? That’s the expected duration many people want to use WK, and I think it’s bad marketing. I once believed that I could finish in one year too, so I bought the lifetime.

True, I am terrified of missing my SRS stages.

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Why would you buy lifetime then instead of just an annual subscription??

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Maybe because it was on sale? I was on monthly before that.

Annual also goes on sale though iirc and even one year of annual is cheaper than the lifetime sale :thinking:

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Even in this thread multiple people have shared their stories that have been different from each other. Everybody is different. Maybe some practices are deemed more beneficial than others or more “scientifically” correct. But human sleeping patterns have changed throughout history and the 8 hour per night recommendation stems from industrialisation and its ideals of a work life balance, or so I have heard. In some countries and cultures it is normal to have rest periods during the day as well. REM sleep also does not require 8 hours of sleep as the cycle is much shorter than that.

I have no academic background in sleep studies or learning, but I would advice not to make generalisations based on your own experience and the studies you have chosen to back up your claims, when it is quite true that people are different and have different environments than you or those that have been studied.

If you want to make the argument that WaniKani should only be used when it is most useful for learning, that rules out many of us who have health and sleep problems or work irregular hours. Waking up in the middle of the night to do reviews hardly sounds reasonable to me, but if that is something someone decides to do on their own, then let them. People have different goals and ways of achieving them, not all of them always most “scientifically” best options or healthiest.

The truth about languages and language learning is, however, that you are going to encounter language even when you are not at your best. In the middle of the night, when you’re tired, when you’re sick, when you don’t have the motivation. So while I would not suggest anyone to wake up in the middle of the night for WaniKani or stress too much about their reviews in general, it is also not something that is exclusive to this service. Also, even if you want to finish WaniKani in a year, you do not need to wake up in the middle of the night, as many have already stated.

I understand you want to advice people to take care of their sleeping patterns and health, but people indeed are different and have different situations going on in their lives, and not all generalised advice is applicable to all.

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I didn’t want to lose my account when I finish. I heard people can’t do the review anymore if they unsub. Never unsub so that I wouldn’t know. That’s why I bought lifetime for iKnow and BunPro too, I would not be able to use them when I unsub, and I would lose my progress. I didn’t want to start again from scratch.

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While you can’t lose your account when you unsub (you’d need to delete for that), you’re right about not being able to do your reviews. They just pile up in the meantime.

I waited something like a year to sub to WK after I had completed the first 3 levels, so I had to start with a bunch of reviews. I never lost my account though. Other people at higher levels have unsubbed and then come back too.

I just don’t want you to worry about your account disappearing for that particular reason.

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In order not to base the fact, that it is harmful to favor reviews over sleep, on my own experiences (You might want to read again that I wrote: “My case is an extreme example”) I suggested to read further on the sleep/ memory, health relationship in the book “Why we sleep”.

Please show me the source. “Or so I have heard” does not convince me.
The book I mentioned explains the opposite, it was since humans left the trees normal to sleep for 8 hours uninterrupted. And there are actual brain wave studies that proof that only in doing so a human can get enough Non REM sleep. It is possible to sleep in two shifts but the quality is not as good than uninterrupted sleep.

Besides, industrialization was the time when light became available to almost everyone and factories started to work in shifts. It is complete illogical to suggest that the 8 hours sleep pattern started because of industrialization.
What would a human from the stone age have done in the dark?

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I’m honestly curious how it could be proven that 4 mil years ago that early hominins slept 8 hours uninterrupted normally. I am sincerely interested from an Anthropological background. Does your book cite any particular sources for this?

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I think fast levels wracked my brain more :man_shrugging:

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It is because of the circadian rhythm of humans that has not changed. Melatonin is created when it becomes dark in the night.
The illustration is not from the book directly but 99% similar.

circadian rhytm

There was a part about the change of sleeping patterns in monkeys and early humans but it takes a bit of time to find it, I will post it later.

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This would go against your 8 hour hard rule. In different seasons there are different lengths of light, and around the equator there’s roughly 12 hours of light/dark year-round.

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As I stated I have not studied any of this, so unfortunately I cannot provide you with a source on this. I could probably find one by googling, but so could anyone else on almost any given argument.

In my home country it is dark for more than 20 hours of the day in the winter. Do you suggest that before the electric light people just slept the whole day? And in the summer it is light around the clock = People used to stay awake the whole day and night for weeks?

This seems to be besides the point anyways. As I have not read the book that you keep quoting or studied sleep in depth. All I wanted to note is that there are different experiences than yours and making generalisations and fearmongering is not necessary the best way to give advice. Even if we wanted to have “perfect” sleep patterns, it is not attainable (or desirable) for everyone and it is hardly WaniKani’s job to make sure its users live a healthy lifestyle by limiting the times when (or how) it can be used.

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Perhaps this is what they were referring to?

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