I would say just focus on your reviews, and don't worry about your failed pile until you get your reviews caught up. Then just go through your failed pile and add back in the ones you think you know, or if you don't feel like you know it, work on it some.
Your expired pile isn't really that big. When I got to the point of finishing RTK1, I was getting over 200 expired cards per day (cause I had rushed through it in only 3 months).
Even if you are kinda slow, with an hour a day, you should probably be able to clear out those piles in about a week, if you aren't focusing on learning any new ones.

Just make sure you really know the failed cards before you add them back in. Otherwise, you just fail them again, and it keeps your # of expired cards large.

Last edited by Zarxrax (2008 September 08, 9:02 pm)

Get to it.  There is no answer, there are no tips or tricks.  Do as much as you can, then do something else for a break, then do as much as you can again.

Just do 1. If you're up to it, keep doing one more. You have to decide: Am I going to stop when a certain amount of time passes, When I'm done, When I have missed X number of kanji, etc.

500 seems like a lot, so don't think of it as 500. Just see it as 1 or 10 or 50 or 100, etc. I fell behind a week, decided to do just 100. Sometimes I did more. The hardest part was convincing myself to START. Once I got started, I kept wanting to do just one more.

Basically, Just Do One. Let the momentum take you from there.

For having missed a whole week, 500 isn't that bad. You can easily do 100 reviews in 10-15 minutes. The solution: Do 100 reviews. Rest/Do the stuff you're busy with. Do another 100. Keep going like that. Do 200 everyday and your expired reviews will be gone in like 3 days. Then you're back to normal.

Use Anki, frankly it is better than this site.

One trick I use when I am really not in the mood, is I use an egg timer and set it for 20, 25 or 30 minutes. I have made an agreement with myself that once I hit go I will not stop studying until I stop. Once you have done 20 or so minutes, do something else. Anything? Well if you are like me, if you just watch TV you will get really tired. So I clean or do something active for 20 minutes, this allows my mind and body time to breath, then I study again for another 20 or so minutes.  Rinse, repeat.

Another great one, is watch some sport and study. I get an obscene amount of study done watching baseball or soccer. For baseball just study between the balls. For soccer, just watch when the commentators start raising their voices. This way you get to enjoy sport and get a lot of study done.

Lastly, it is very important that you don't look at how many you have remaining to review. If you look at this every 5 minutes time will drag and drag. For Anki I usually hide the bottom of the window so I can't track the remaining cards until I am done.

Yeah, morning power. I feel that too!

I'm about to be in the same boat you are in. I live just south of Houston so we are going to be hit by hurricane Ike pretty badly. Hopefully my house and everything in it survives, but if not I will be even father behind in my studies. Good luck on catching up though.

-Luo out to fly a kite

Get on that pony and giddy up. I did something similar, just do all your reviews bit by bit, by that time I imagine that your failed pile will grow too. Then try and get them done and you are back to even. I would recommend not setting goals, but just login and do a few till you get sick of it and then do it again when you feel like it.

Sif worry dude, i havent touched this website 8+ weeks and i aint worrying ^_^
i have like 600 in my review stack. And i won't be reviewing/rtking until holidays come (yes i'm stupid and lazy i cant do 2 things at once, )

I get tiny tiny practice though on a weekly basis,  in Japanese class at uni i see a kanji (not taught) and recognize it, or if i hear a word that i know the meaning to i hassle a chinese student to see if that's the appropriate character.

About a year ago, I let my reviews slip for a few months.  When I came back, I had about 1200 cards in my expired pile.  There were two steps to getting the situation under control:

1) I pledged to do a specific minimum number of cards a day (100)
2) I didn't reinsert anything out of the failed pile until I was completely done.

I prefer #1 over the "timer" method because there are inevitable distractions in my study... some of them external, some of them I find for myself (oh, i'll just check this email quickly...).  With a pledged minimum, escape is impossible.

#2 was important because it kept my expired pile under control while I worked on it.  I wanted to empty my expired pile as soon as possible, and reinserting failed cards would only make the situation worse.  Eventually, when the expired pile was gone, I felt as though things were "back to normal", and I could approach the failed pile as though it was new unlearned cards i.e. learning only a certain amount per day so that I didn't end up with a monster day.