Seeing as how many people have the problem of procrastination and happen to surf the internet all day - I imagined a browser plugin which pops up and forces you to answer before moving on. It would act the same as a normal SRS otherwise, but would run continuously rather than at specific times you decide to do it.

I suppose an idea like this wouldn't have to be browser based - but it could be. It seems like a decent idea - has anyone seen something like this?

Here's something similar: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...l-the-time

I've joked before that I sometimes get this itchy mental feeling like I've internalized the SRS algorithm and know when cards are expired, and feel kind of compelled to check, but I like where you're going with this sort of insistent, perpetual SRS overlay... although personally I wouldn't use it, because I'm very specific about when I SRS and how I segment it.

I could have sworn that there was an anki plugin that would make it pop up whenever a card came due, but I can't seem to find it, so maybe I was just imagining that.

Seems a little like sweeping dust under the rug. If you need to have reviews forced on you there's something wrong elsewhere in the equation.

I'd search for motivation and work on self discipline before I'd dally with a script to force me to study.

There's so many clever life "hacks" that can deal with these sort of problems that you will eventually internalize and be able to apply to other aspects of your life.

heromode Wrote:Seems a little like sweeping dust under the rug. If you need to have reviews forced on you there's something wrong elsewhere in the equation.

This. There's probably some really boring cards in your deck if you have to force yourself. Delete the bad stuff and keep on adding the good stuff.
If you don't like the thought of deleting cards just suspend them for the time being.

If you can't concentrate at home, leave home. I do 99% of my Anki at work, on the train/bus, or in a restaurant/cafe.

It won't work. Trying to force yourself to do your reviews will only make you hate them.

It's a vicious circle: I don't want to do my reviews so I force myself because I "should" and have a miserable time. So the next time, I want to do them even less and keep forcing myself until I can't do it anymore and delete the whole deck as I don't ever want to see another Anki card again.

The solution is simple. If you don't feel like doing SRS reviews, don't do any! What if reviews start to accumulate? Just suspend everything! Then reactivate 5 easy cards and that's your work for today. I bet that after you're done with those cards you'll unsuspend some more and review them, not because you have to but because you want to, you won't be able to resist doing just 10 more. And the problem will solve itself rapidly without you ever feeling like you had to work hard for it to happen.

Suspending cards does nothing except ruin your scheduling. Those cards are still accumulated whether you suspended them to hide that or not.

My motivation to study is dreading the accumulated stuff that I'll have if I don't. Skipping a weekend means 1000+ cards come Monday.

Tobberoth Wrote:Suspending cards does nothing except ruin your scheduling. Those cards are still accumulated whether you suspended them to hide that or not.

I don't really care about the Holy Schedule. The SRS is not my boss, sometimes I choose to spend more time on other activities.

Suspending cards is the way to make that work. It completely changes my perspective on due reviews. If I open my deck and see I have 800 reviews due, I'll feel discouraged and I'm likely to quickly close that deck and do something else. If instead I suspend all those cards and then unsuspend them in small manageable chunks whenever I feel like working on my Japanese, I'll get a lot more done more quickly. Plus I can add new cards right away, and prioritize learning new things before reviewing old cards which is also important for motivation.

I don't want to be like those people posting about how they ended up deleting the deck they spent so much time and effort building because they can't keep up with reviews anymore. I'm the one in control of how much time I choose to spend reviewing not my computer.

Don't hesitate to suspend cards. If you open your deck and feel even slightly discouraged by the number of due cards, suspend them all!

Codexus Wrote:I don't want to be like those people posting about how they ended up deleting the deck they spent so much time and effort building because they can't keep up with reviews anymore.

You say that like it's a bad thing!

QuackingShoe Wrote:You say that like it's a bad thing!

Well, it seems like huge waste to me. And unnecessarily drastic, just spending less time on the SRS seems more reasonable than completely giving it up.

How does it help to suspend 800 cards and do them in chunks when you can simply do them in chunks without suspending them? It's just a number, and it to me seems really odd and quite ridiculous to be so governed by just seeing a number that you do something so drastic as to suspend cards.

You're just lying to yourself.

Tobberoth Wrote:You're just lying to yourself.

And I believe it!

Since there's hardly a practical difference between the two, I don't see the need for contention!

I- I guess unless you just like contention.

Tobberoth Wrote:How does it help to suspend 800 cards and do them in chunks when you can simply do them in chunks without suspending them? It's just a number, and it to me seems really odd and quite ridiculous to be so governed by just seeing a number that you do something so drastic as to suspend cards.

You're just lying to yourself.

If you suspend a lot of cards, your SRS will examine you on non-suspended cards when they expire. If not, you may forget some cards until they are scheduled for review again.

Actually there is a practical difference.

If you suspend cards you can use Anki normally. The cards you haven't reviewed in time are kept separated until you choose to reintroduce them into the system.

If you don't suspend, then none of Anki card sorting options are satisfactory. If you set it to largest interval first, you can't work on cards you recently added or failed until you've caught up. If you set it to short interval first, you get all the short interval cards you have been neglecting first. I'd rather not do those all at once since I've probably forgotten a lot of them, they are almost like new cards and best reintroduced a few at a time. ('in order due' mode is even worse, and random isn't very satisfactory either).

Also I like being able to control exactly which cards I want to unsuspend and study. I may be in the mood for lots of large interval cards one day. Or maybe I want to study those cards I added last month and neglected.

So basically normal Anki usage is crippled if you keep a large number of due cards. You pretty much have to be able to catch up quickly or it's really annoying. With suspended cards you first resume a normal reviewing habit, then catch up, which makes a lot more sense to me.

But! You said you didn't care about the holy schedule.

I can agree with that. On the other hand, Anki works like that because you're supposed to get rid of those cards. The intervals are up, if you don't review them you will forget them. So if you get to a situation where you have like 500 due cards and you simply can't handle that, you might just as well delete them, or reschedule them to zero and then suspend them, they will of course be out of their proper review-spacing.

To me it makes sense that you shouldn't let due cards pile up, and if you do, it's your fault and you have to climb into that mountain of crap and fix it. By suspending them, you're making it worse in the long run.

Tobberoth Wrote:To me it makes sense that you shouldn't let due cards pile up, and if you do, it's your fault and you have to climb into that mountain of crap and fix it. By suspending them, you're making it worse in the long run.

Sure it would be ideal to review them when they are due. But sometimes I have other priorities. Learning Japanese is nice, but so are others things. And when I'm not spending enough time on Japanese, I'm obviously forgetting things and not making as much progress. It's an imperfect situation, but it's a lot better than giving up completely.

IF YOU'RE NOT STUDYING LIKE I AM YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

You guys are missing the point.

While pounding down anki cards for an hour or two might be your thing, it would probably be more enjoyable for me if they popped up while I was trolling forums, selling magical dust on ebay, etc etc.

Instead of "chunks" of cards, it would be more like a constant stream. New cards could appear in the middle of the day if you were good on the previous ones, allowing for a more efficient and probably faster learning process.

That's a nice idea but I think an anki-plugin, that does the same, would be good enough to do the job. It is the normal anki-behaviour to automatically show new due cards instead of the "Congratulation" screen. So the plugin only needs to bring anki to the front when new cards are coming up. Perhaps only every X (e.g. 5) new due cards so its not too often.

QuackingShoe Wrote:IF YOU'RE NOT STUDYING LIKE I AM YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

You are on fire these days, QS! lol

T Wrote:The intervals are up, if you don't review them you will forget them.

Nope. It ain't physics...it's fuzzier. (besides, most folks remember without any SRS) :-)