I have gone through all of my new cards and have seen the cards as review several times now so the learning intervals even for the easiest setting have become too far away. Ideally I would like to see a certain card within 3-6 days, but for some of my review cards the easy option is like 15 days away.
I was using the set due date function frequently. I recently wanted to lessen my review cards to just 150 per day instead of maxing them out at 9999, but I noticed when I do this and use the set due date function my number of review cards does not decrease as I go.
Any advice on where to go from here, or what settings to change?
You sound like you might be new to Anki/spaced-repetition. Before we get into too much detail about your concerns, have you considered – What if the scheduler is right and you don’t need to see the cards more often?
A big issue for new users can be the leap of faith needed to trust that the ideas of spaced repetition are sound and the scheduling algorithms are reliable. If you haven’t gotten past that yet, you might be trying to substitute your judgment for the system’s and fighting against each other.
If you want to understand a little more about what spaced repetition is doing, see the background in the manual, and this FAQ.
Case in point – you shouldn’t need to use Set Due Date to choose your own due dates very often. If you are using sensible scheduling options, the date cards are scheduled should be the date you review them.
Capping your daily reviews sometimes serves a purpose (that’s why the feature exists), but most of the time it’s not a good idea, because it hides cards from you that it really is time to study again. Your goal should be to complete all of your Due Reviews every day, including graduating any lapsed (forgotten/“Again”) cards back to Review. If you find you have too many Reviews – the solution is to cut back on introducing New cards (or stop them completely) until you get the situation under control.
Okay, enough of the big picture stuff –
Do you know if you’re using the default scheduling algorithm (SM-2), or if you turned on FSRS? If you’ve got concerns about how you have your scheduling set up, show us your Deck Options, so that we can talk about what might or might not be working for you in more specifics.
I see your point, but I rely on the set due date because I take my board exam in 2 months so I dont want to see cards like 20+ days from now, I’d rather see them more frequently. I adjusted the learning intervals for new cards, but is there a way to adjust it for reviews so I dont have to use set due date to see them sooner?
Yes, there are certainly things that can be tweaked to fit your needs. We’ll still need to see your Deck Options before anyone can make any suggestions.
Everything in your scheduling looks fine, and very standard. [Well, having only a 1d learning step is a little unusual, but if it’s working for you, then there’s no reason to change it.]
I think this might just be a matter of you not trusting spaced repetition yet. How long have you been studying?
By letting the cards you already know very well stretch out to longer intervals, you give yourself more room and time to study the cards that you don’t know as well. That’s usually considered the good thing about studying using Anki!
For those cards you are nervous about because they have long intervals and you haven’t studied them lately, there are ways to deal with that –
Some not-great ways – both of these will only take effect the next time you study a card, so they won’t pull back anything that is already set out further – and they will be permanent changes to the scheduling of the cards.
Use the interval modifier to make all of your intervals shorter. It’s not-great because it will impact all of your cards and increase the amount of time you’ll need to spend studying.
Lower your maximum interval to something unreasonably low, like 20 days. This will similarly hold back all of your cards under an artificial ceiling, and increase your study-time.
I would expect that would only change that one interval for a small set of cards – what cards will graduate to if you grade them Easy during learning – and not have a significant impact in the future or on any cards that graduated another way.
[Wasting my time trying to be respectful to robots …]
