Nearing the finish of RTK1, I've gone through quite a few burnouts (which seem to last exactly half their predecessor's time for some reason, but that's another story). Since I am an avid user of Anki's graphs, what I noticed was that the 1 week cumulative due graph had a very strong correlation to how "swamped" I was, moreso even than the standard due graph. For example, generally the moment my cumulative due reaches and exceeds 400, I burn out. I'm assuming this isn't a coincidence, so I thought it was worth sharing; those of you who use Anki should have a look at that graph every now and then and check to see if you have a "threshold" of sorts, since it sounds great for pacing.

Shame I don't really like Anki much. When it comes to RTK, this site is perfect enough but after RTK I guess it'll be valuable for other things. I've went through a few burnouts too, I guess they have shortened a bit, or instead of avoiding reviews for a day or two almost completely save 30 minutes, I still spend a few hours studying mainly old kanji. I have set myself a little deadline to finish up, that I put in place a couple of weeks ago and according to my calculations if I learn 30 kanji a day plus reviewing old ones I should finish with time to spare which has filled me with so much hope and relief.

That sounds so much smarter than what I do; I'm so incredibly OCD that I NEED to study everything in lesson groups, so I end up doing a little learn/relax dance even though I know it's better to do it in small manageable chunks. Thank god these last few are all around 20 anyway...

Well I decided on this change just before lesson 23, quite fortunate when you seen the size of it. I'm 60 inward, this is my second day now and it's going great, no trouble yet. Before I'd do 80 in a day, 10 in a day or usually around 40 or so. This way every day is manageable for me and I don't get unmotivated or over-motivated when I find things easy and then burnout the next day.

Edit:
I decided to raise this amount to 40, 30 was too few for all the time I have for 6 weeks. Even filling my time with other things, I can still fit 40 kanji a day. And I truly want to get kanji finished ASAP so I can continue further into the language.

Careful not to overdo it It's exactly that "I'm sure I can squeeze a few more kanji in" attitude that led to my last three screwups (no, I don't learn from my mistakes...)

Hahaha I understand, I have done 40 today, though, in order to round the number of flashcards before I start doing 30 a day. That's why I've changed it to 40, if I spend a good amount of time on the 4 chunks of 10, doing it quarterly over a long period of the day I know I can manage.

If I can't manage to fully grasp all 40 in a day, then there's 40 more the next day so if I slack I've got one hell of a day to follow. It's my summer holiday, I'm unemployed and studying in college so towards the end of this holiday I will have finish RTK and moved on to bigger things.

I usually divide lessons into smaller sessions. Each session is only between 10 or 15 kanji long, though sometimes as long as 19. For instance, lesson 23 had 130 new kanji, which I divided into 10 sessions of 13 each. I always do 2 sessions a day, so that lesson took 5 days to complete. By working like this I never really get too many reviews; I usually go through about 100 due cards a day, and relearn every failed kanji straight after I'm done with the reviews; the most difficult ones usually stick on the 2nd or 3rd try, though I have failed some cards 5-6 times.

By looking over the lessons and seeing how long I would take, I have figured out that I will reach the sign of the snake on the 8th of September... If all goes according to plan, that is.

I plan to finish sometime a few days before September the 20th, in time to do some good reviewing and ensure that I am 'finished' by then. I'll still review afterwards and I'm planning on doing RTK 3 straight after, why not?

For what it's worth, I plan to finish by next week, I'm gonna try one lesson per day now, and I have 7 left (including the one I should be doing now )

These forums are quite a magical distraction, really. I hate them and love them at the same time.