Only use this when something catastrophic happens. I tend to have things come up where days on end I am unable to hit anki. Some is dealing with family during a death, another is a vacation where I am camping for a week or even a weekend. This method should be used only for those times when something happens, but it is not for a time when you just don’t study for a while.
One of the biggest problems with long breaks from SRS is the annoyance of having to catch back up with anki even though the reasons may have been out of your control as to why you couldn’t do your reviews. Because of running into the situations like this, unfortunately fairly regularly, I needed to figure out a way to lessen the mental impact of returning.
After trying a few things the least negative impact way I have come up with is what I am going to go over. It isn’t full proof and takes some concentration and extra work, but after about 2 or 3 days you will be back on track “normally”.
Step 1
First take an assessment of how many reviews you have. If you are sitting around 200 to 300 just do them normally. If you are like me and had about 700 then this method is for you.
Step 2
Now you have taken a look at your number and determined there are too many to do effectively you need to make a decision. Ask yourself “How can I modify my score structure?” what is acceptable to you in modifying your scoring temporarily to zero out anki.
*I must point out you are going to review all 600 just a bit differently
Step 3
Since I had around 600 to review I realized I have a lot to review, but there are mature cards I know. So I don’t want to just go through and hit the hard button on them all. So I changed my scoring structure.
- Again: If I have no mental image at all, period, of the kanji to review I would hit this one.
- Hard:
- If the kanji had a slight image but really didn’t know what it was. I would normally hit Again, but this time hit Hard.
- If you are able to get it and it is hard. A “I know I know this” moment in your head and you get it go ahead and click hard.
- Good: Treat this one like normal
- Easy: Treat this one like normal
It is important to treat Good and Easy the same as normal because those are the most important ones to filter out at this time because a majority of your “hard” and “again” ones you will see in the next few days anyway. Good and Easy are just inflating your numbers to a point you are concerned. In all likelihood you remember these, but if not hit hard.
Step 4
At this point you should be through your whole deck. It probably took you an hour or longer to get through it, but your mature cards are filtered out and you can now concentrate on the next couple of days getting through, like normal, your cards you don’t understand as well.
Conclusion
While this method may take some time it is much much quicker than doing all the reviews like normal. Just remember this can mess with your stats a bit. But which is more important mental sanity or stats? For a long time I was concerned about the stats until I realized I want to be relaxed while doing my reviews. Just remember this is a shortcut that can have negative consequences on your overall learning if overused. I don’t overuse it, but can feel some of the effects. Use with caution, but don’t forget it should be fun to learn.
maja (1)
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Another tip I would recommend to spread out the learning of a large number of cards is to think of a date in the future you would like to have them all learned by (perhaps in 30 days time). Find out how any cards you need to learn (600), and simply divide the number of cards by amount of days. Then set the maximum number of new cards to 20 (+ whatever amount of extra learning you want to do).
Yeah, that is a good way to go too. And it is a similar approach to what I have been taking lately since I have been fairly lazy in my studying. Thanks for mentioning it.