Wizard wrote:

If I could give one piece of advice, it would be never ever ever learn less than one new kanji per day.

That's actually really good advice...  And deeper than it sounds at first.  I recommend that anyone who doubts this advice, they should try it before passing judgment.

Personally I've missed to add kanji a few days simply because I didn't have time or wasn't by my computer. While it's true that one should try their best to keep the habit going, don't worry too much about missing a day or two once in a while. As long as you get right back on it, you didn't loose much. Set an amount of kanji that needs to be added every day, let's say you set it to 10. If you miss one day, add 15 the two following days. Don't let yourself lose the speed you've set up.

Making a minimum time goal rather than number of kanji will keep you honest.  Those tough ones can be time consuming. There is the temptation to not give them the effort required to achieve mastery just to get to that 30 for the day.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2008 November 04, 4:08 pm)

50 a day? I can't even imagine.

Jarvik7 wrote:

plumage wrote:

50 a day? I can't even imagine.

It's not that hard. I was doing 100-150 per day towards the end of the book.

It's kind of hard to be taking several upper level college math courses, be in two choirs[with loads of practices], study Spanish, and do 100-150 kanji/day with the corresponding torrent of reviews.

My kanji-adding patterns are actually kind of strange. I add like 50 on the weekends, but about 10-20 on a normal day, and none on days where I have to work hard on assignments.

That's probably why my stacks are spaced so oddly:
55 | 18 | 115 | 239 | 1123
I probably need to clean out that failed stack...

Anyways, if this were the summer, I would have[I'd say I'd've, but that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen] been finished by now.

My best advice is to never, never, never get behind on a day's reviews. You might be really tired, and want to quit, leaving 10 or 15 kanji, but don't. They'll come back to attack you tomorrow. Not to mention they might mess up your SRS timing ever so slightly.

I also suggest reviewing during strange little times whenever you can[in retrospect, this is probably my best advice]. For that matter, it'd be really handy if I had an iPhone -- the go anywhere/review kanji anywhere ability would fit perfectly into my 'unleash the power of the useless little bits of time you waste in the day' mentality.

Whenever I'm on campus, I have my laptop in my bag. I whip it out on the buses and anki away. Whenever I'm waiting for a bus, I anki away. Whenever I'm eating breakfast or lunch... You guessed it -- I'm doing my anki reviews.

Jarvik7 wrote:

playadom wrote:

It's kind of hard to be taking several upper level college math courses, be in two choirs[with loads of practices], study Spanish, and do 100-150 kanji/day with the corresponding torrent of reviews.

Obviously you should be singing your kanji stories... in Spanish..

I would, but I'm afraid that it actually might work!

I'm almost done with the book now, and I had a similar goal of around 30-50 kanji per day. I found that it was very hard to do because I don't have time certain days of the week because of other activities that I refuse to give up, so I ended up with a very uneven amount of kanji each week, depending on what other stuff was going on that week. Usually I tried to cram it during the weekends, which I don't feel is optimal for a bunch of reasons, but hey what can you do.. It basically comes down to how much time you have to study each day.

What I never, ever compromised on though was the daily reviews of the expired kanji. As long as you keep doing the reviews, missing to add some kanji a day here and there is ok, it just takes a bit longer to finish.