Anki: 0 new cards/day but number of reviews not going down. Why?

Hello,

I’ve been using Anki for the **last year pretty consistently with about 20-30 new cards per day**. Recently I realized that, because of how much Anki I have to do each day to keep up with reviews, it’s eating up a lot of my time that I could otherwise use for immersion.

So I set my new cards/day to 0 about 3 weeks ago and only did my reviews since then but no new cards. However, I’m now **plateauing at around 150 reviews/day** and the number just doesn’t go down **even though I’m not adding new cards**.

All my decks are using the recommended Refold Anki options.

What’s the best course of action now? Should I aggressively suspend cards that I keep getting wrong? Should I tweak my Anki settings somehow? I already tried using the RefoldEase add-on to reset the ease factors of my cards. Another add-on I saw recommended is “StraightEase”. Is that worth trying? Other ideas?

Thanks!

3 comments
  1. 20-30 new cards per day for a year creates a lot of reviews afterwards. 150 doesn’t even sound that high to me. You can download the Anki simulator add-on and see how quickly your reviews are expected to decline:

    [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/817108664](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/817108664)

    ​

    >Should I tweak my Anki settings somehow?

    There is no simple way out of this via different settings.

  2. as other people said you should try to do your reviews faster, but if you dont want to for whatever reason the more “taboo” method in the japanese learning anki community is just limiting your max reviews a day to whatever uou wantit isnt like anki’s scheduling without a limit is anywhere close to perfect anyways. though, since you’re using addons and settings that turn off ease and assume you have your reviews set to 9999 it might have some unforeseen side effects, but since anki backs up every time you close it it’s worth a shot at least

  3. Seems like retention is dropping off for mature cards which is causing reviews to stay high. Two possible reasons for a drop in retention.

    1. Refold’s policy of disabling “ease” makes the SRS algorithm inefficient.

    Solution: Change Anki settings to Animecard’s recommended Anki settings and use the Straight Ease add on instead of Refold’s. I’m assuming you’re only pressing Good/Again, but in case you’re not, only press Good/Again. Play around with the interval values, lowering it if you want higher retention at the cost of doing more cards.

    2. The memory formation of the failed cards wasn’t strong enough.

    Basically if you take over 20 seconds on a card and have to wrack your brain to remember the answer, it’s not very securely memorized and susceptible to being forgotten when the intervals become several months long.

    Solution: introduce a time limit and fail cards that take too long to recall. Use the speed focus Anki add on and set it to auto flip after ~5 seconds and fail cards that you can’t answer before it auto flips.

    Just note that this will TANK your retention rate and your reviews will temporarily rise as you fail more cards. Eventually, the cards will be better memorized and retention should go back up again. Using timed recall also solves the problem of Anki sessions taking too long and it’ll give you more time to consume media which should further increase retention.

    If your retention is high and not going down, then ignore everything above and just wait until reviews naturally go down.

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