Hi everyone,
I’m mostly referring to premade deck, I personally use the Core 2k/6k deck and go through at least 12 words a day (sometimes adding more when I feel like it), it usually takes me between 15 and 20 minutes and I usually have around 80 due cards per day on top of the 12 new words but they are some days where the new words I encounter are really hard, mostly because there are unknown kanji and then I can easily reach 30 minutes and end up with 100+ due cards for tomorrow, and the worst part is that obviously it doesn’t just suddenly get easier the next day they basically make Anki harder for a whole week and provided that the 12 following words are also tough one…
So is this all just me or do any of you experience similar situations? If so, how do you handle it? Is it normal to have highly inconsistent Anki sessions? Some days it will take me 12 minutes and someday it will take me 35 minutes, obviously, my concentration also plays a part as I tend to lose it a bit when things get harder but I feel like something is wrong…
5 comments
I am pretty sure that everybody finds words with unknown kanji harder than words with only kanji they already know. If you must, do some individual kanji study on the side. Otherwise those words will just take more reps.
If you have a time limit on how much Anki you can do, you could simply move learning new words to the end of your reviews and only do as many as you still have time. So for example if you have a 20 min Anki limit and your reviews already took 15 min, then only spend another 5 min on learning new words. If your reviews took >= 20 min then don’t add any new words that day. This will smooth out how much time you spend with Anki.
If it makes you feel better, at 20 words per day, average of 7 seconds per card and around 6000 words, I have 600 daily reviews that take me about 3 hours to go through on hard days even 4, from which newish words (cards that take longer to stick and cards from the same will) usually represent at least 50% of my review time.
If you want my advice, there is about 10-12k words that we need to learn to be proficient in japanese or pass N1. If a word does not stick just suspend it, i have had words in those 4 hour reviews that i review minute 1 and im still getting wrong 4 hours later, and the next day… and the next day… I once made numbers, a single leech card made me lose around 40 minutes of review over a week, in that time i could have learned 20+ easier words
The [load balancer](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1417170896) addon helps spread daily reviews more evenly.
You could try being less harsh on your reviews. If you made a slight mistake on a word you typically get right in your reading or other immersion, you could mark it right and move on. Anki is only an aid.
Oh yeah, 100%. It depends on lots of factors. Some days it’s not enough sleep, or too much stress. Sometimes I’m under the weather. Sometimes, like you mentioned, it’s too much brand-new information. Sometimes, it’s forgetting to breathe (no joke, take the time to remember to breathe deeply while doing your cards–you’ll remember more).
My only consistency with Anki has been almost never missing a day. Everything else is up for grabs.