This was never my experience using Anki. I wrote a markup language that compiled to Anki cards in college because manually making cards was too tedious, and it

This was never my experience using Anki. I wrote a markup language that compiled to Anki cards in college because manually making cards was too tedious, and it was never "overwhelming." The exponential backoff means you rarely see cards after you first learn them. You also learn to be smarter about what you actually Ankify -- this isn't something you think about, because the best way to succeed in a cram model is to spend a few extra minutes that one time on something that might not be on the test, but it might be. With Anki, you can focus on actually learning the core material and cultivating a deep understanding. Another thing I would do is just delete cards that weren't interesting to me after the course was over. There are some things I want to remember forever, and there are some things that aren't worth it. It also helps to use the mobile app to review a few cards whenever you get the chance throughout the day rather than batching them all up. This is better for remembering them as well. This also fits very nicely with pomodoro-style working.