Reducing sleep duration for work or studying for tests is one thing, but I did not imagine someone would wake up in the middle of their sleeps to accomplish their goals. My personal experience says reducing sleep duration make me less functional.
Review time is based on the SRS stages. It will show up after a certain hours has passed. If WaniKani wants to prevent the reviews to show up at the time where people is supposed to sleep, it would be a challenging problem to solve. First, people have different schedules. There are people with night shifts. Second, WaniKani users are everywhere in the world. We live in different time zones. Perhaps, WaniKani can solve this by adding user time zone and user time preferences. If WaniKani does implement them, the next question would be SRS and memory theory. If both SRS and sleep are proven to help memory retention, what if sleep makes one passes SRS time?
Speed running WaniKani is a side effect of the gamification. WaniKani gamifies by having levels and a final level. There is a clear and attainable goal and we often satisfied by progressing. It can be addicting for some people. If WaniKani wants to have a health warning when a review happens at night, it needs users’ time zone. One of the easier ways is by putting a warning every time users open WaniKani.
The discussion we have here is already a health warning in itself. A reminder to have self-control.
They could just state that waking up just to do reviews is … A or B … I don’t know, I am not an expert. If they can give me a good reason to wake up for reviews I will happily do so.
As has been pointed out, Wanikani does not suggest you should wake up in the middle of the night to do reviews + if you keep a sound review schedule you shouldn’t have reviews appearing in the middle of the night anyway. And even if you do get a few, there is no harm in just doing them in the morning.
As for glorification of getting to lv 60 as fast as possible, that has nothing to do with the Wanikani team - that’s really just individual users posting on these forums sharing their stories of managing that feat. It’s up to other users to decide if they think they can manage something similar, but common sense says you need to fit WK into your own real-life circumstances of work, family and other hobbies.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a rough guide for priorities doing Wanikani (though I simply cannot remember where on the site), but essentially, they’ll also support you slowing down and doing other things but Wanikani, since the lack of grammar, vocab, reading and listening practice that WK doesn’t offer, needs time as well. After lv 30-ish I think that’s the clear message that you need to prioritize WK less, and immersion and grammar more.
Well, having seen a lot of lv 60 posts by now, some are fast indeed, but most users are not. And even on the speed devil posts, there is usually acknowledgement of that it’s not necessarily a smart thing to do (speeding through levels).
Not sure, there is much new things being said here. I don’t get the feeling that it’s common to set an alarm to do review at night. In fact, I’ve seen plenty of discussion from new users being confused about how to handle reviews appearing at odd times, and getting recommended to just do their review in the morning + change their reviewing times to not get reviews at night.
I’d say, the main message on these forums is to not try to break a record, but to fit WK into your life in ways that suits your needs, availability of time and energy to devote to it. It’s really an individual thing what that is.
I assumed the “within reason” was obvious. What else are they supposed to write?
“Don’t do reviews while driving?”
“Don’t do reviews at work?”
That would need to be a really long list to cover everything.
The general consensus here is to take it a a reasonable pace to avoid burnout. If you start to feel overwhelmed, stop doing lessons and focus on reviews. If necessary, reset to a lower level.
I haven’t seen any post here that suggested to set an alarm for reviews at night. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but they are certainly rare.
Maybe the claim " 2,000 kanji. 6,000 vocabulary words. In just over a year." leads some people to overdoing it. Maybe there’s a better way to market WK. I’m sure they are open to suggestions.
I am quite new to this forum but a message from someone who exactly did that made me write this topic. I know it is strange to read “don’t dry your cat in the microwave” but there seems to be a certain demand for that kind of warning messages.
One person in an office I had worked for two consecutive days and nights told me once: “No one will ever say thank you for that” and I want to be this person to others now.
Maybe you just have to dig deeper into these forums. There are plenty of useful study logs out there that show a variety of study paces and methods for leveling. Allow yourself to be inspired of what appeals to you and be consistent once you find something that works for you personally. Also, reading more lv 60 posts and you’ll see how different everyone’s WK journey is.
I know, but I wrote this for one specific person. If this whole topic keeps being on the top and I can save one single soul from ending up in the “sacrificing everything for 15 minutes of fame” mode I am happy. That is my only intention, not to lecture all of you who obviously have a common sense!
Well, let me thank you for bringing this up. I am sure many users have the same frustration. I’ve seen stats that only 2% of users have finished 60 levels. So they do not represent the majority here. I am more concerned about why a lot of users quit. There might be something wrong going on, and WK needs to address it.
I wouldn’t call putting the claim on the landing page as nothing to do with Wanikani team though.
If you think about it, that’s the level of high school graduation!
It is not something that should be learned in one year.
I am now at junior high level and I can COMFORTABLY understand news and read novels.
I can put a towel over my face and waterboard myself in my sink.
The designers of my sink didn’t make that literally impossible.
Nobody told me that I shouldn’t waterboard myself when I bought the sink.
Does that mean that my sink a torture tool?
This kind of false equivalence is just hyperbole and only detracts from your argument.
A bit more kindness toward amimono, everyone? She’s not saying that doing reviews as soon as they go up, in the middle of the night, will necessarily make people ill. But there is a chance that it will do that, and as you can see from amimono’s account, it is no joke. If even one person can avoid that pitfall after reading this, I count that as a good thing.
Nitpicking never led anyone anywhere, in my experience.
