I want to be able to make sure I am not adding more new cards than I am learning. I would like the number of new cards I add to be roughly the same as the number of cards that I am able to learn each week. I should note that I use Anki to try and learn from errors I have made in a board game I play. Therefore, it is different to learning a specific subject or for an exam, because the number of cards is never ending.
So, is there a statistic that would be useful to ensure I do not add more cards each week than I am able to learn?
Set a low daily new card limit, like 10–20, and only increase if you can keep up with reviews without overwhelming yourself. If you struggle to finish reviews, pause adding new cards until caught up. It’s better to add a small, consistent number of cards than to burn out with too many at once; you’ll see better long-term retention this way.
An alternative approach is to set a review limit and 9999 new limit.
Within a few days this will stabilise to a reasonable number of new cards per day for your given review limit, and will give more stable daily workload than a constant new limit (try playing with the FSRS simulator in the deck options to see how different limits work out over time).
Be careful reducing your review limit significantly at any point in the future as this could lead to accumulating a backlog, but with no sudden dramatic changes you will be safe from this.
When you refer to a “new card limit”, what does that mean? Is that a limit of the number of new cards you can be shown per day. Or, is it a limit on the number of cards you can add to the deck per day?
The same goes for a “review limit”. What does that mean?
Obviously, what I don’t want is to run out of new cards to be shown, when there isn’t enough in the deck. At the same time, I don’t want the pile of new cards to grow. This is why I am interested to know the rate at which I am getting through new cards. But I suppose the more cards I learn, the greater the pile of review cards becomes.
The number of new cards affects the learning workload. The new cards will be x7~x10 review cards. e.g. if you add 20 new cards/per day you have about 200 review cards/per day. If you review 200 cards at 10 sec per card it will take about 30 mins. If you make 20 new cards at 1 minute per card it will take 20 minutes so a total of about 1 hour. If you stop to add new cards the number of review cards will decrease and in the long term will be a few cards/per day.
[ New card 0/per day ] Overdue or on vacation.
[ New card 5/per day ] It’s hard to keep up every day.
[ New card 10/per day ] You are dedicated to learning.
[ New card 20/per day ] Anki’s default limit. Sufficient for most cases.
[ New card 30/per day ] You can learn 10000+ cards in one year.
[ New card 50/per day ] You are very busy college student.
[ New card 100/per day ] Upper limit recommended for medical students.
[ New card 200+/per day ] You are challenging the limits of humanity.
