Beyond that, I wouldn't worry about backlog too much. I use a custom deck that gives me my maximally doable number of cards per day and completely ignore the rest. It's not like the actual repetition frequency is critical - many people change those settings quite drastically and still manage to memorize their cards fine.
Just do the amount you feel like doing. Backlogs don't matter, the system will just show you the highest priority cards (highest risk of forgetting) first, and even give you extra credit (i.e. a longer review interval) for those cards that you do still recall despite the backlog.
I read a lot of technical books and articles. I used to make notes on the interesting/relevant stuff I came across, in case I would forget about it after I had used it and need it again in the future, so I would be able to look it up.
Now I make flashcards instead. Since I keep reading new things, and keep wanting to make new notes, I also keep adding flashcards. And it feels silly to add flashcards without also reviewing them, so I end up doing that too.
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But yes, as another person wrote in their comment, part of it is also resigning to/accepting your condition for the effects it will have on the things you want to do. Sometimes you'll stop reviewing and you'll get a backlog. The important thing is not that you consistently review, but that you consistently pick up reviewing again once you've stopped.
Is there an app/plugin that works like that? I know you could use Anki like that by just not worrying about the backlog, but in my experience it doesn't work like that.
And I started small. Add a few flashcards, review. Don't add more than 5-20 cards per day (Anki and Mochi have new card limits to enforce this for you).
If you use it daily, and add cards at a slow trickle, they won't pile up and you won't get discouraged.
Like say you block of 30 minutes per day for Anki. Most days you'll probably have time left over, but some days you may have cards left to review by the end of the 30 minutes. But that's okay. You can just do them tomorrow. The point is to be consistent, not to be a completionist.
It would probably help to start reviewing old cards before learning new ones as well.
And of course you can start with whatever small block of time feels like it would be easy to complete like 15 minutes or 5 minutes. Maybe even 1 minute; you can always gradually increase the duration as you rack up a streak.
What finally helped was that I first learned the habit of reviewing the cards daily, before I trained the habit of adding new cards. I always fell into the trap of picking up Anki (maybe because an exam came up, or because I was otherwise motivated to learn a specific topic) and immediately writing lots of cards. This gave me a dopamine boost (thus reinforcing the habit), but quickly became overwhelming.
It only stuck when I learned to integrate the review process into my daily life, without actually having anything to create flashcards about. I went days without creating new cards and then every once in a while I thought of something that was a good fit for Anki and that I was unlikely to remember otherwise.
As a result the review process was just a handful of cards every day, able to be reviewed in under a minute. Eventually (I'd say after a month or two), the habit settled and I didn't need to think about it anymore. And because I wasn't fixated on creating new cards I was able to enjoy a gradual increase in creating flashcards as I got better at writing them and recognising when they were a good fit.
To be clear, this took maybe four or five failed tries, even though I read articles like this one. I had to make most of the mistakes covered in this (and other) articles myself, before I got better at writing cards. The tips still helped me arrive quicker at the solution, but it was hard to grasp why they were right, without experiencing the mistakes with my own cards.
Two big things that people seem to forget, or not realize:
1. Anki (etc) isn't really there to help you remember, it's there to schedule and optimize your time so you can do more in less time; to avoid the (ad absurdum) case of studying every card, every day. That's effective, but wasteful. To help you remember you use other tricks like the Major system, the Loci system, mnemonics, etc. I recommend either Higbee's book on memory, or Lorayne's, for a array of help there.
2. It's not even close to "perfect", because your brain isn't. SO MANY THINGS affect whether or not you're going to remember a card on a day; what you ate, how you slept, other stuff going on in your brain/life, your context when you added the card, your context now, what you have been thinking about ... It's just not possible for software to nail it _to the day_ of when you can see a card. Anki can only tell you when you should PROBABLY see the card and that probability's standard deviation is high indeed.
To your question, what works for me (I've been using Anki for years, and am now approaching a ~1200 day continuous streak) is to be honest with yourself on how many cards per day you can actually do. 10? 100? 1000? For me I'm comfortable with about 150 to keep up the streak. Some days I can probably do a lot more, some days I want to do less but I can power through. But 150 is my happy spot.
Then, set your max cards per day setting to that. Then do those. And stop sweating it. (Optionally, with more recent versions of Anki using the V3 scheduler, set the review sorting to "by most relative dueness")
This does a few things:
* It keeps your workload manageable based on your own notion of "manageable" * It shows you the cards needed to be reviewed kind of by priority * It "hides" the fact that there might be more due
Kind of related is also to be HONEST about your use of the 1, 2, 3, 4 keys. Some people ONLY use 1 or 3. I think this is a mistake because it games the "ease factor" to never go up. Be honest; if the card was basically easy, use 4. It'll up the ease factor and you won't see the card as often. If it's too much you'll eventually miss it and restart the learning steps. (Optionally here, use a plugin light "straight rewards" which will also up the ease factor even on a 3. This is what I do and prefer it.)
I agree with this, but I'd argue that this alone isn't sufficient. You should also try (as best as possible) to keep the number of new cards per day at a level where you will hit your max total cards per day on average in the long run. It's no good setting a cap of 150 cards per day if Anki wants you to review 1000 per day - you'll be severely interfering with the SRS algorithm if you do that. On the other hand, having a cap of 150 per day and an average of 150 a day is fine for those days where the review count is higher than average because it will work out roughly correctly in the long run.
My assertion is that "no, you won't", from a practical standpoint. One of the reasons people lapse on these things is the "overwhelming" issue. If you keep the max to what you can ACTUALLY DO, you'll be more likely to actually do them.
What you're referring to is an optimization issue; although doing less than what it thinks isn't "optimal" FOR ANKI, its way, WAY better than getting overwhelmed and not doing them at all.
And 150 vs 1000, if done regularly, WILL calm down and you'll chip away at that backlog.
And I also firmly believe that people focus way, WAY too much on "the card has to be done on this day or it's lost". No, it isn't. There is no "proper" time for a card because our brains and memory is SO variable that Anki just is a VERY crude guess at proper. Miss it by a day, or 10, or 90 isn't (IMO) that much a difference in the long run.
I see this over and over in /r/anki; people are getting WAY overtuned in trying to keep the software happy rather than the goal of remembering more things in less time.
This keeps happening to me, and I have somewhat treated (but severe) ADHD.
Does anyone have recommendations to make this easier? Either Anki settings, or using another app.