How I got over my 2000-card Anki backlog
It happens to anyone who’s used Anki SRS… You lose interest, or you take a break from studying, and the next time you open Anki you are seeing a huge number of cards due. It’s overwhelming, and you just want to shut the app and do something else.
I’ve dealt with this numerous times over my nearly 10 years of using Anki on-and-off. But over the past 2 weeks, I have been determined to defeat my backlog.
I decided on a divide-and-conquer strategy, first clearing out my easiest decks, then working up to my biggest and most difficult ones. The worst part of the backlog is the seemingly impossible number of reviews staring you in the face. So, I focused on each deck one-by-one, with smaller goals leading up to bigger ones.
This might not be the 100% most efficient method, but it worked for me because it increased my motivation.
With about 8 days of serious study, I destroyed the backlog
- Start with low hanging fruit
My Anki collection includes a few different types of decks. Some are normal vocabulary cards. Others are sentences and Subs2SRS style cards. The sentence cards are easier, have longer intervals, and rely less on my memory – because it’s not about memorisation, but just being able to understand the card.
So, I worked on those decks first before tackling my vocabulary cards. And, since I was hitting ‘good’ or ‘easy’ on most of my sentence cards, I’m not going to see those cards again for months or years – so I just review them once, and they’re off my plate.
- Defeat decks one-by-one, and keep them defeated
Once I emptied out my easier decks, my collection looked something like this each day:
Vocab deck 1: 200 cards due
Vocab deck 2: 600 cards due
Sentence deck: 15 cards due
Subs2SRS deck: 10 cards due
So, my new plan is this: For as long as the backlog remains, I keep religiously reviewing the ‘finished’ decks. For the small price of 25 cards per day, I not only prevent my backlog from building back up, but I also get a strong motivational boost from finishing these decks each day.
After finishing those, next I work on my deck with 200 reviews. The goal is to have as many decks in a manageable state as possible… and leave the other backlogged decks for later.
If I started with the 600-card deck, it would be more difficult for me each day, because it’s full of vocabulary cards that I’ve forgotten. Reviewing these cards will involve failing a whole bunch of cards, resetting their progress back to a short interval, ultimately making a lot more reviews. So, I don’t start that task until my other decks are under control.
This might go without saying, but while you’re trying to clear a backlog, do not learn new cards. It will only add to your load and make things harder for you. Clear your plate first, then move on to the fun new stuff.
(Truth be told, I cheated on this a little bit. I still learned new cards in my Sentence decks – but no new vocabulary cards until the backlog was finished)
I set my leech threshold very low. This means that if I have trouble remembering a card, it gets suspended. This prevents me from wasting time on the cards that I keep forgetting over and over. I review a card, and I either get it right, or I get it wrong and I don’t review it again.
Once I’m through my backlog, I’ll return to those leeches and see what to do with them – I might unsuspend some of them that I think are important. I might search out example sentences so that I more fully understand the words. Or, I might just leave them suspended. If a word is important, it will pop up elsewhere in my studies.
It wasn’t feasible for me to complete all 1000+ reviews each day. But, with some time and effort, I could do 500.
So, I gave myself a goal: each day, I should review at least half of my total cards due. This is an attainable goal, and enough that I am making a dent in my backlog each day.
Once I’d done a few hundred cards, I found that sometimes I was in such a flow state that I wanted to continue and review more than that. Anything over my daily 50% was a bonus, and meant that I could spend less time on my reviews the next day.
Now that my backlog is defeated, I have about 15 minutes of reviews each day
- Try not to build up a backlog again :)
Consistency is key. 10 minutes of reviews each day is better than an hour a week – not just because you won’t have a backlog, but because you will actually remember your cards better. Wish me luck in maintaining my cards going forward!