I've got to 696 kanji entered into Anki since starting in early December, and for the first time will not be keeping up with repititions as I'm going away for two weeks (ironically to Japan!). As I've got 60 cards due for tomorrow, I'm fairly sure that in the two weeks most if not all of my desk will be due!!

Get the feeling this will be incredibly demotivating...but suspending the deck somehow isn't the answer, right?

I feel like 696 is good going, and I just need to keep the spirits up and carry on! Don't want 696 reviews when I come back to be a distraction (which they obviously will be)

You've got several options:

- use the "review early" feature
- use the Anki web interface in Japan
- enjoy your stay in Japan and when you're back, spend like 1 week with reviews ONLY

I'd opt for option 3...what's one week in your life anyway? It's nothing...

DESPAIR.

Nah, seriously, only some fraction of 696? If it's high it's getting up into the danger zone, but I took two days off last week and ended up stacking up ~450 due cards; you can plow through them in chunks over the course of a few days, especially what with weekends and all.

~J

Yeah I had this at about the 1000 point, missed a week through moving to Japan and had to catch up on 700 kanji. It took a good few days to get through and I wouldn't want to do it more than once but not a massive deal, you should be alright.

Due to the nature of my work, this happens to me about once a month. It has been really hard to keep pace with RTK. This past fall I fell off the wagon entirely, over 500 cards, the vast majority were expired. It was incredibly demotivating.

Now I've cleaned up the mess, added another 100 and am battening down the hatches for my next business trip, starting this weekend. This time my resolve is stronger to keep up with reviews while out of town.

RTK is really meant to be done intensively, and breaks in the learning really do set you back. As well, breaks in your study mess with the algorithm, which is what the SRS is all about, isn't it?

It's not the end of the world, but avoid getting behind like me.

If you have a bunch just click through them all on hard I review on anki and here but sometimes there is just too much on anki and because of that it makes it take forever to learn more kanji. If I don't just click through them on hard I never get back to zero and I never move forward. The cards are there and if I forget them they will go back to the beginning anyways. The point is it might mess up your graphs that anki has but moving forward is key and because it took me forever to start doing this process its taken me three months longer to get to the point I wanted to be at.

Psht, I went on vacation for nearly a month. I came back with a cache of 200 previously failed cards plus 1000+ expired.

It took me almost three weeks until I could wade out of that mess and start adding new cards again.

spoonsman Wrote:Psht, I went on vacation for nearly a month. I came back with a cache of 200 previously failed cards plus 1000+ expired.

It took me almost three weeks until I could wade out of that mess and start adding new cards again.

spoonsman,

do you remember how many new cards you had added each day before your vacation?
I can imagine when you added 20+ cards every day, you get stuck after the vacation.

but with a low rate like 30-50/week it should not become a mess.

the first 2 stacks are due every day.

but once the cards reach the 3rd and 4th stack, it should not lead to a big mess after 1 month.
I have not reached my first month yet, I noticed so far the 3rd pile grows, every day it gets higher and higher, no expired cards from stack 3 so far)

I am going to Hawaii on Sunday!! Yeah! But there will be kanji.koohii and anki and iknow reviews waiting. But you know what? Unless I get huge blocks of time (I'm a dad of a 1 1/2 year old) I feel good if I can just put a block of time. In anki 500 expired cards has become my new "0". It's like leaves. Sometimes you can't get them all.

tokyostyle Wrote:It seems like SRS algorithms should take that into account when they calculate the new spacing.

Anki does.

This happened to me recently. I finished RTK, then my review habits deteriorated because I got a real job where I couldn't actually slack off and study Japanese all day while pretending to work. I probably ignored both Anki and RevTK for two or three months, and I had more than 1000 expired cards on RevTK when I picked it back up.

My strategy was to give myself a limit of 50 reviews, after which I could quit or do another 50 if I felt like it. I reviewed the expired cards in the leftmost columns first (since I figured the fewer times I have seen it, the more harm it will do to wait one more day until reviewing it). I think you may be able to set Anki up to show you younger cards first, too - I know you can set it up in the opposite manner (oldest cards first, which makes the first reviews easy).

My failed cards hovered around 100. I force myself to actually write down the story if I fail a card, so it was slow going bringing this stack down, especially since I was failing more cards with every review. I treated these like new kanji and passed no more than 25 per day so that my future review rates would stay reasonable.

It took me about a month, but I'm caught up now and it feels great! Best of luck, and enjoy your trip!

Lol i'm at ~1300 and i accidentally stopped for 2 months. I'm pushin through though. Its crazy trying to get through these. I'm not sure if i should keep entering new kanji in though. Like 10 a day or something just to keep it goin. Probably will end up doing that.

Don't worry about taking a break... I took a break at exactly 1000 (yes, mid-lesson), for about 6 months. But then I came back and in about 3 weeks knocked out 500. Now I'm at exactly 1545, so past the 3/4ths mark I believe.

You can do it with a break, no worries!

Man it sets you back, but just set yourself a baseline number that you're going to plow through each day. I was sick with the flu last week and came back to about 500 cards expired, so I made a goal to get through 75 or so every day and keep adding new ones too. It's when you stop learning new ones that the motivation hurts, so I would suggest learning new ones with paper flashcards while you are out. That sounds stupid and time consuming. I will probably finish RTK1 tomorrow, so I will definitely celebrate and finally get to move on to other things, but it has taken me the better part of a year because I didn't have this attitude the whole way.

lol down to 300 from 1300 with ~300 in my failed pile haha. Last 2 days have been crazy. Don't give up its easy once you get in a groove!

Thanks for all your replies. I had a great time in Japan, am back and have plowed through the due cards. Unfortunately some 193 are now in the failed pile! I guess I just need to plow through them and repeat and repeat until I know them once more (if I ever did know them well enough- hmm, there's a thought).

Anyway as someone above said RtK really should be done as an intensive study thing I believe- I've now mapped out my targets until the end, being on 696 now and doing 20 a day (weekdays) I have this week to clear the failed pile, then should hit 1000 on 21st March, 1500 on 25th April, and 2000 by the 30th May! Motivation is the key, right

193 is nothing! I finished RtK1 and didn't do any reviews for over a year.... (^_^);