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I had the same experience. I invested a lot of time on Anki and it paid back, but I could never stick to it. There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3

I had the same experience. I invested a lot of time on Anki and it paid back, but I could never stick to it. There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up. I recently started to use Supermemo because of some comments on HN, and so far it have been going quite well. I feel less overwhelmed when I have to take a break, I think the algorithm (or maybe it is just good defaults?) is much less punishing. I am still new to it, and I have a baggage of knowledge from my past experiences using SRS, so it is unfair to compare it to Anki at the moment. But it renew my passion for memorizing, so far it has been worth the investment.

cubefox 3y ago
I think Anki was based on an old version of Supermemo. It would make sense if the latter had a better algorithm.
BeetleB 3y ago
> There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up. Some things I do to manage this: You can put an upper bound on the number of cards reviewed per day. For me it's 50. After that it says I'm done for the day and I wait till the next day. If missing only 2-3 days leads to such a huge backlog, you really need to take a break in adding new cards. My aim is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes per day reviewing cards. If it seems I always have too many cards to review, I don't add any new cards until I get only a few cards to review per day (when really busy, I don't add a new card until I have a day with 0 cards). You can only learn so much per day. You need to limit card additions to ensure you don't exceed that amount. The other thing I noticed is that I had two types of cards: One where the answer can be instantaneous (e.g. facts). And ones where some thinking is involved (proof sketch of a theorem, details of some algorithm, etc). The latter would kill the experience because of the time involved. So I separated the decks: Simple cards (the majority) go in one deck and this is reviewed daily. Hard cards have their own deck(s) and I'm not as committed to them - I work on them only when I know I have time and am committed to it.
jamager 3y ago
Anki algorithm's is extremely punishing, which is awful for language learning. I think SRS needs to be only a small part of the learning routine, the cherry on the cake. For me that is ~15 minutes / day, and backlog is manageable even if I occasionally take 2-3 days off.
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  The new Anki FSRS algo lessens this punishment significantly. People focus way too much on the backlog - don't even look at it, just set your max cards per day to something you can actually DO and let Anki schedule them out as best it can. It is, after all, just a scheduler.

cubefox 3y ago

I think Anki was based on an old version of Supermemo. It would make sense if the latter had a better algorithm.

BeetleB 3y ago

> There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up. Some things I do to manage this: You can put an upper bound on the number of cards reviewed per day. For me it's 50. After that it says I'm done for the day and I wait till the next day. If missing only 2-3 days leads to such a huge backlog, you really need to take a break in adding new cards. My aim is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes per day reviewing cards. If it seems I always have too many cards to review, I don't add any new cards until I get only a few cards to review per day (when really busy, I don't add a new card until I have a day with 0 cards). You can only learn so much per day. You need to limit card additions to ensure you don't exceed that amount. The other thing I noticed is that I had two types of cards: One where the answer can be instantaneous (e.g. facts). And ones where some thinking is involved (proof sketch of a theorem, details of some algorithm, etc). The latter would kill the experience because of the time involved. So I separated the decks: Simple cards (the majority) go in one deck and this is reviewed daily. Hard cards have their own deck(s) and I'm not as committed to them - I work on them only when I know I have time and am committed to it.

jamager 3y ago

Anki algorithm's is extremely punishing, which is awful for language learning. I think SRS needs to be only a small part of the learning routine, the cherry on the cake. For me that is ~15 minutes / day, and backlog is manageable even if I occasionally take 2-3 days off.

michaelcampbell 3y ago
The new Anki FSRS algo lessens this punishment significantly. People focus way too much on the backlog - don't even look at it, just set your max cards per day to something you can actually DO and let Anki schedule them out as best it can. It is, after all, just a scheduler.