Intro

This approach is a way to do less daily reviews in exchange for other forms of studying. If you prefer Anki for studying, this does not apply to you. If you'd rather not do so much Anki, this is an approach to do so

I've observed many students ending up in "Review Hell" - a term coined back in the SRS days but is still relevant today. This is the cycle of having too many reviews every day, causing your overall retention to decline, meaning more incorrects, meaning shorter intervals, which causes more reviews every day, etc... and this pile-up of cards causes for less time to read/watch lectures/do practice questions, meaning you have to learn more with Anki and thus do more cards. All of this is a cycle which glues yourself to the spacebar for hours a day. I have classmates reporting 600-900 due cards every day; meanwhile I have ~350 a day, leaving me plenty of time to do practice questions and anything else I need to for the day.

There's plenty of simple advice on how to avoid this problem, such as lowering retention, suspending low yield cards, etc. however today I want to share a broader strategy and approach for doing cards which in the end will result in fewer cards.

The Strategy

Here's the principle: Do not unsuspend cards until you've learned it

You've probably heard this before, but let me actually explain it. This idea is at the core philosophy of spaced-repetition tools. The point of them is to help maintain information that you already know over time. There is little benefit in doing cards of which you do not understand. You'll answer Again more often, leading to shorter intervals and more reviews each day, and more often than not, you're just memorizing the card instead of the concept, calling into question how much you're actually learning.

But what does it mean to "actually" learn something? There's a few ways to look at this, but a simple rule of thumb is to wait until you've had multiple passes of the material, let's say 2-3 before unsuspending something. For example, watch a 3rd party lecture, review the slides, then go unsuspend. Or maybe you go do some practice questions afterwards then unsuspend, now that's 3 passes right there - you're more than ready to unsuspend now! The point is that you're not unsuspending after 1 pass of the material (or even 0 passes as some people do!). Notice in this case, you'll have much more context and understanding of the material by the time you unsuspend it. When you do the card, your brain will recall the context in which you've seen that material and makes connections, overall supporting the learning process. Additionally, you'll know things better so you'll answer cards correctly more often, meaning less reviews.

Some people swear by doing nothing but Anki all day, and if you truly insist on that then go do it. But i believe you would benefit much more from doing your learning in practice questions and using Anki as a supplement to retain that information. If you want a long-term fundamental strategy to cut down on reviews, this is it. If you wanna do 600-1000 reviews a day, then ignore this post and go finish your reviews