There's absolutely no need to "reset". Ever.
If you have only ten minutes to devote to Anki, then only spend ten minutes. If at some later point, you have more time, then spend that time.
Set the maximum reviews per day to something you can do most days -- for me, that's 250 cards. If you're behind, turn off 'new' cards. And eventually, you will catch up.
What if you don't do Anki for a month or two? You still don't need to reset. Anything you remember after that month will have a much longer time until you next see it.
Only use Anki as much as you have time for it. Let it figure out which cards to show you. Resetting messes with the algorithm for which cards to show.
Each time I've gone back to a deck, I've just slugged out the few days of heavy reviews and let Anki take care of the rest. The stuff that I've forgotten, Anki will nag me with. The stuff that I've retained for years, stays retained.
One thing that I do suggest is to limit the maximum interval to 365 days, and to remove the review limit. I also tend to use the "hard" answer on cards that I've retained in decks that I've ignored for some time.
(SRS fails in this regards)
- If you want to just push cards to the back of the queue, but remember timings and history, there's a built-in command to do that.
- If you want to change the current interval of a card, but keep your history, there's also a built-in command for that.
- If you need to do the above in bulk, the "Reset Card Scheduling" plugin can make this a lot more convenient.
- If you really do want to completely reset a card, forget all history, etc., and treat it as a new card, there's the "Remove Card History" plugin.
Finally, when returning to old decks, I found I usually get the most mileage by leaving all that stuff alone and just suspending the whole thing, and then un-suspending them at a steady pace. I neglected my Kanji deck for months, and I used that approach to get myself back up to speed by doing the catch-up review in the original (RTK) order I originally learned them rather than based on Anki's priority.
But it feels so hacky when you need them for things that seem like rather elementary functionality like resetting a deck.
Calibre feels the same way like needing a plugin just to estimate page count. I feel lucky when a plugin actually works.
For each new class, I would start a new deck, and after the course was over I would move it over to my main (huge) deck, and it's worked surprisingly well.
Typically (now that I'm out), I add small cards from time to time to my deck, but if there's a large quantity of things I am working on learning at any given time (say I'm going to add 50-100 new cards), I'll put them in their own deck for a little bit.
Ultimately, my repetition does end up being a wide array of subjects though.
If you make that number the same as the "new cards per day"-number, that might be a work around for your issue?
I just want a "dumb" flashcard application that doesn't try to apply "smart" techniques/heuristics.
I was just looking for a way to do the same paper card quizzing digitally without having to actually carry decks on my person.
Every app I've tried over the years powered under the hood by Anki had this issue.
It's been a few years since I last checked it out, but an option for a dumb mode would have had me throwing money at it just to even try it out.
One of the wonderful things about software assisting with spaced repetition is that it automatically selects and remembers efficient intervals. It's crazy how little time is spent per flashcard with this automation.
There’s a “cram seen cards” feature under custom study that’ll just give you a temporary brand new deck you can run through in random order
Clearly, millions of people are benefiting from this app.
I'm just finding the features and interface very bombarding. And, the sheer number of screen taps just to study the flash cards in the manner that I'd like (and even then, not fully within my perceived control) is pretty repelling.
Thank you for pointing that out that feature. It might help eventually with conversion.
Then on day 1 it will want to show you cards 1-5; day two it will show you 1-5 again and also 6-10; day three it will show you 6-10 again and also 7-15 (to simplify somewhat). So you're having some cards you know and some that are new.
If you have 50 cards you've forgotten, then on day 1 it will show you 1-10; on day 2 it will show you 11-20; day 3 it will show you 21-30, and so on -- all completely new. That makes it far more of a grind.
I would prefer to iterate over small set of cards until I know them quite well.
I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a month (but I made time for Chinese). When I came back to the poker deck, the "spaced repetition" system was completely broken: I had a massive long list of cards that had expired, most of which I'd completely forgotten; but it just kept showing them to me in one giant loop, rather than focusing on a few to actually teach me. And I didn't even have a clean way of telling it, "Just pretend I haven't seen any of these cards at all". I ended up just deleting the deck; that discouraged me from doing anything else I wasn't willing to commit to doing every single day.