Each night I enter about 20 new Kanji into Anki, but I'm never quite sure when to start reviewing them. Should I review them as soon as entry is done, or should I wait until the next morning?

Recently I've been reviewing right after I have completed entering in the 20ish, and marking them all as "hard" to ensure that I see them again the next morning. Then after this review I give the easy ones a "good" rating, the hard to recall "hard" ratings, and then fail for any that I mess up on.

Also,two side questions:

1) If you use Anki, when do you decide that a Kanji is "easy" - I have been waiting until I am at the point that the picture of the Kanji seems to just pop into my mind even before I have time to think about how to write it. As if it's locked in or something.

2) Is there some way in Anki to see a list of troubled Kanji, or the most failed Kanji?

It seems ok to do it the way you are.

1) I rate a Kanji "easy" if I can write it very quickly and just based on gut feeling - if it feels trivial then mark it "easy".

2) In the browser you can sort cards by "Lapses" - that's the number of times you made a mistake. Also "Ease" shows you Anki's estimate for how easy cards are for you. Lower is harder.

Thanks.

The reason this came up was that last night I was distracted and didn't review right after entry. This morning when I went to complete my reviews I did horrible. Something like a 40% correct. Never have I been lower than 90%ish.

Don't worry too much about low initial percentages. The SRS is a tool, not a test. Failing a new card is just an opportunity to see it again.

After reading this, which as Tobberoth once rightly pointed out shouldn't be taken as gospel: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/myths.htm (Myth: Review your material on the first day several times), I set my 'initial hard interval' in Anki to .75-.99. I add/study new cards and grade them as 'hard', then again the next day as either fail/hard/good or whatnot, same as you mentioned. I also only pass cards as 'easy' if it's like instantaneous. Well, I say 'next day' but only because I often review them later in the day, sleep, then review. It's still the 'first' day though.

Honestly though, that Supermemo bit, I feel like there's too many factors to really come up with hard numbers, but they're useful guidelines for the basic notion of gradually increasing intervals. Also, they're referring to 'active recall' repetitions there, so perhaps it'd be more up their alley to review sooner for 'passive recognition'.

So anyway, the way my cards work out is within 24hrs of adding new cards I review them, then again usually in 3 days or something, which is what the Supermemo ppl recommend and I think is set already in Anki? Can't remember what the original settings were.