Couple of suggestions.
Pick an arbitrary interval number and suspend the cards past that, like Splatted said. That will cut SOME of the review down, but maybe only 30-40% of what you do during a days review.
The other thing you can do depends upon what Anki you are reviewing in. Effectively the idea is to cut down the amount of reviews via tweaking the scheduling algorithm parameters.
Anki 2:
This is the new version in beta right now. It has a lot of new nice features and a lot of quirks that piss me off, but its something we'll all have to move to if we want to keep getting new updates/features. The thing of particular notice is that it lets you re-tune your scheduling algorithm. By default in Anki 1&2 its set with the belief that you want to remember 90% of your mature cards and forget 10%. This is set in stone unless you fiddle with the source code. In Anki 2 though, you can change it. It comes in the form of a multiplier.
Open your deck in question from the collection. Click options at the bottom. Go to "Reviews." You want to modify the "Interval modifier." By default its 1 meaning forgetting mature cards is assumed to be 10%. Typically you change this to reflect your actual forgetting (found by looking at the graphs/stats in Anki), say you have a deck with a lot of hard words, so your mature fail rate is something like 82% on average. You change this multiplier to reflect that. The equation to figure the multiplier is:
Code:
log(desired retention%) / log(current retention%)
Or in the above example log(.9)/log(.82)=0.53, this would be your new multiplier. It would affect how often cards are shown. (Explained
here in the Anki 2.0 Beta User Manual)
(You can simply enter your calcs into a google search and it'll give you the result. Or use WolframAlpha.)
Example:
Without knowing your situation, lets assume you actually do hit that 90% dead on. Maybe you want to keep reviewing but don't mind forgetting some of your mature cards more often, this way you can keep up on some stuff and do other things you want to. Lets say you want to drop it closer to 80% remember on mature cards. Plug it in:
log(.80)/log(.90) = 2.11
This affects the calculation of ALL card intervals as a whole but is generally focused at re-tuning desired retention of mature cards.
Anki 1.0 & Anki 2.0
Unfortunately you can't tweak that interval modifier in Anki 1.0 but there is something else you can do in both versions that can make reviewing less of a hassle.
Default behavior in both versions when you fail a card is to reduce the interval to 0. Meaning that it restarts back like a new card. It'll still have its ease rating and will quickly climb back up in intervals if it was an easy card, but it'll still be an extra card you have to review often. If its material you WANT to know, then going back through all the reviews is considered important by general memory theory (I assume).
However, you want fewer reviews so we can fix it so that failed cards don't reset to 0 interval days.
Anki 1:
Open your deck. Tools > Deck Properties > Advanced. The field(s) we want to tweak are "Button 1 multiplier" and potentially "Mature bonus." If you never messed with this before, it should say 0 in both fields.
I'll explain this using an Example. You have a card with an interval of 100 days. You fail it. With the 0 multiplier, the card resets to 0 days. Then when you next review it again (in minutes) the answers will be small intervals like hours (hard/2), 3-8 days (easy/3), and 1 week (very easy/4); as an example. If you set the multiplier to something like 20% though, that 100 day card will now have an interval of 20 on fail. It will still ACT like a failed card though meaning you will review it again quite shortly; HOWEVER, when you go to answer it, the intervals for the answer now will reflect what a card with a 20 day interval might be. So a hard/2 answer might place the card ahead by 20-25 days, and very easy/4 will place it ahead by maybe a few months.
More info from the manual
Anki 2 has this option as well and as far as I know it works the same way. Its under Options for a deck, in the "Lapses" tab, as "New Interval."
One more thing for Anki 1, Mature bonus.
The "Mature Bonus" is only in Anki 1 I believe. Basically if you fail a mature card, Anki gives the card extra days if it was a mature card. Meaning if the multiplier (from just a second ago) is set to 0 and mature bonus is 10 days, and then you fail a mature card; that mature card resets to a 10 day interval and not 0.
Note: this does not mean the card will be placed ahead by 10 days, it merely means that when Anki calculates the intervals for each answer, it adds a bonus of +10 days to each answer.
This post is a bit haphazard but I hope it gets the idea across.
Edited: 2012-06-09, 3:57 pm
