Only you can judge but I say don't change a thing. I believe it is far better to make your own stories in the long run. Ideally, images are created from the first ideas that come into your head; in other words, they are uniquely memorable to you. Just grabbing one ready-made story after another would possibly weaken your command of all the kanji from lesson 30 onwards.

I also think you shouldn't increase the number you are trying to learn each day. What's the rush? If you're fed up, take a break. So many people approach this like it's some kind of race. It really isn't. The time you take now to get things right will pay off ten-fold further down the line.

I did 50-60 a day for 3/4ths of RTK, doing 20 a day only for the first 500 and doing 100 every other day (found it too taxing if done on consecutive days) on weekends/vacations, usually. I half-assed all my stories. This lead to failing half the cards at every step - i.e. half of the cards at a 4-day interval failed, then half of those successful fall off after the 15-day one, this continues even into mature. It lead to reviewing around 250 cards a day, and even now, a month after finishing, with very few new cards, I do 150 reviews a day. Even now, I fail 1/3 of my matures when they pop up.

However, it is a lot more relaxing to be only reviewing and not adding, and I wouldn't do it any other way if I had to choose again. It also let me get started on core6k sooner. For kanji I really can't remember, I make custom stories (or should be making, but I find that I most often just keep on regardless of the fail streak).

I'm just listing my experience, and my preference. It's all a matter of drawbacks - would you rather get over it fast, creating the minimum amount of custom stories necessary, with all the drawbacks that brute memorizing includes, or have vivid stories and an easy time after the first learn? I'm not a visual person and mnemonics work much better than images for me, so I choose the way of the stubborn bull. For many kanji, I don't even remember the story for, I just know them as a sequence of keywords.

@frame 1450. I'm also adding as much as i can right now(80 today for example, but i had all the day to do it) and i was usually adding 15-20 before. When someone's else story sticks, then i just use it without wasting time on creating my story, and if i can think about something that seems it will stick better within minute, then i'll use it instead. You'll know when you'll be reviewing, whether you can or cannot use someone's stories, and then you can think about your own. For me like 25% stories i use are self-made, the rest from the site just sticks well and there is no need to think about new ones. I wouldnt be able to add 100 new kanji per day within 4 hours, reviews can get really long when you add so many, and there is nothing worse, than having to relearn everything because you went too fast. I add 20 cards, take a little break, review these in anki and then move on to the new ones. My correct answers rate gone down from over 90% to 80%, but that's not a big deal as long as i can remember them.

Last edited by meeatcookies (2012 April 07, 6:22 pm)

Instead of using ALL your own stories or ALL other people's stories, just use whatever works on a kanji-by-kanji basis.

The best advice I can give is to look at a keyword, and then think of the very first thing that comes to your head. Whatever story best illustrates that image should become your story.

The next time see the keyword again, the first thing that comes to mind will probably be the same thing, but this time you'll have a story that'll write out the kanji for you..... :-)

Remember to always keep it "keyword -> kanji" and rest will work come naturally.