For no reason at all, I told myself to do at most 9 reviews or lessons a day, and managed to do it for 30+ days.
I was just doing this for no reason at all, but as a side effect, I noticed that I was taking much more time to do the reviews, and learning significantly more from my mistakes.
I think this effect would still be there if I raised my maximum by a few more, but for anyone finding themselves overwhelmed with reviews, I heartily recommend this.
What were your daily review amounts (rough average) before doing 9/day? How many grammar points were you adding on a weekly or daily basis?
It’s a good idea though, whenever I reach the 90+ daily review count that’s when I stop adding grammar points and let it come back down to a reasonable number (50-60) and tell myself it’s not a marathon or sprint!
So before my reset I did as much as humanly possible, but after my reset I only did at most 10 lessons a week I think?
I still got some clusters at the start of doing this, and I started with 14 lessons per day for a whole month. You can actually see where I got those large batches by looking at where those big plateaus are.
I try to keep reviews under 30, if possible my comfort zone is 20 reviews.
After 20 reviews I feel like I stop being as receptive as the first reviews.
There are still some insanity going from my hiatus without turning vacation mode on from time to time though.
I feel relieved when I only have 120 to do at a time lol
Should note this is my second time going through. I think the last time I was pushing more than 200 a day for three months - haha.
You should reserve some time to sleep and eat… Just saying lol.
It doesn’t take long at all! haha. 30 to 45 mins max. I learn grammar like vocabulary so it’s literally just next next next.
How is your retention though? Are you able to read using these grammar points as well?
I’m not too sure what you mean exactly. I basically read some form of Japanese, like manga, books, newspaper articles, signs, games etc on a nearly daily basis. I was able to pass N2 after three months of Bunpro where previously other grammar resources like Kanzen Master bored me to tears and I wasn’t able to finish them.
To be completely honest, I think Bunpro sentences and other resource’s example sentences are not good at all for learning a language, so I don’t and have never used them as the crux of my study plan. I simply focus purely on the grammar point and its basic function.
The good point of Bunpro is you can control the pace and it covers most of what is need to learn Japanese grammar to a decent level. Slow or fast, it doesn’t really matter how you do it, just how long you stick with it. My personal preference is to just get as much knowledge into my brain, and then process it through practice and experience with native Japanese materials later.
That’s my third attempt at bunpro. I’ve also tried wanikani for a few months. At first I tried doing a lot (for me it was 30-40/day, I would not be able to do 120/day as other people say) and I burned out. So a year later I tried but I lacked motivation. This year (new year’s resolution ofc) I said that I will do few repetitions but I will do them everyday, whatever it takes. So for some time I’ve been doing 10 (or more) per day, I felt that the pace is a little bit too slow, so I increased it to 20, then it was a little bit too fast - I felt that I’m not going to manage introducing new things at this pace so I dropped to 15. It’s a good pace for me, not too much work per day but I feel that there are some results. So I agree with your point - setting the bar too high did overwhelm me and I drop out completely with WaniKani or bunpro the first 2 times. Setting it too low for the other hand felt like I’m not getting results. So for me the best approach is to set reviews/day to some number and sticking to it (it might not work for everybody).
There is an additional benefit - you don’t have to think to much about it 
you just complete the reviews and if there is not enough you add learn more grammar. For me that’s already a routine and I rarely have to think about motivation.
What do your study sessions look like on Bunpro? When you see a sentence are you analyzing every bit in the sentence or moreso just focused on how the grammar point is used in said context? Obviously not saying one way or another is the right way, but focusing mostly on the grammar point helped me knock out reviews pretty quick. This way I can spend less time in the SRS and more time doing other things, which applies as well to Anki, etc. If there’s anything I wasn’t entirely comfortable with I would just use the Cram feature.
I focus on how the grammar point plays with other sentence elements, and sometimes look up more sentences if I can’t find the examples I want to see. When I understand it I put it in SRS, and hope to find it while reading in the future 
I know from experience that grammar is a weak point for me, so I’m ok with taking my time and over analyzing the grammar. I function best when I know “why” a grammar point is used that way, rather than just the fact that the grammar point is used that way.
i’m also feeling overwhelmed with reviews lately (every day i have 70-90 reviews to do!). I’m not too sure how bunpro works - is there a way i can set a daily limit or do you just manually click the “finish session” button once you’ve done the amount you want @Pep95 ?
Bunpro has no set limit, so you have to take care of the workload you add to your queue based on how many lessons you do, and how frequently get your answers wrong/right.
So you will have to figure out a balance that works for you.
Hi,
This is actually my first post here.
If you want to decrease the daily review number, you can try to:
1- Decrease the speed or intake of your lessons. Example: If you are going through 5 lessons per day, stop it for some days until the review # decreases.
2- Spend more time with each review when you fail them, try to understand “why” the grammar works like that. This can be hard in some cases but in most instances, you do see a “logic” or “reasoning” behind the grammar or conjugation. The section linking to further samples can be helpful as well.
Disclaimer: I’m still quite bad at this whole Japanese thing, been studying by myself for over 2 years and yeah, it has been rough.
You fast people, I don’t know how y’all do it! 20 reviews a day is a lot for me 
I do usually 56 to 60 daily and it is fine so far.
If I do less than 35 I keep forgetting them.
oof
How are you dealing with your ghosts?
I decided to stop the “3 lessons per day” to “about 6 per week” since my ghost dont seem to get below 30… which would mean that I would have +30 reviews added -on top- every time just because the ghosts exists, right?
The ghosts have their own intervals, so it’s not exactly 30 ghost + normal reviews every day, depending on the age of your ghosts and if you’ve gotten any of the ghosts correct/wrong before they go back to normal. If you get them all 100% correct then yeah generally they’ll all follow along unless you get new ones obviously along the way. Ghosts are a little confusing don’t worry hahaha, 460 days or so on here and I still get tripped up.
Also 6 or so per week is a solid choice for long-term success without getting burnt out. I was averaging about 10 per week (2/day) but when my daily review count hit a certain amount or I was having brain problems, I would take some days off for it to level out.
