The main point, as far as I can see, is not about which overdue cards will I attack first. For this last point you may use sundry approaches, such as relative overdueness, or the default Anki procedure of using the “absolute” overdueness. Cards that were due a long time ago will very probably have been forgotten, and there is nothing you can do to change this fact. The approach of relative overdueness helps when this relative overdueness in not too big, but if you see today cards with a 10 day interval a year after it was due, probably no approach will save you from failing most of these cards. The remaining fact is that you lost the efforts you have made on those cards, as you didn’t follow the rules the algorithm sets upon you. If you do not follow the schedule, there is no assurance of remembering things. What is lost, is lost. Period.
But the big concern of this technique the manual presents of creating a “Just Due” filtered deck is to ensure that this new effort you are currently doing trying to bring back that knowledge you lost is not going to be in vain. It is like telling Anki “Ok, I failed with you, but it is not going to happen anymore. I’ll respect your schedule”.
And why do you need this approach? Because Anki algorithm is not fitted to handle these situations; if you have abandoned your deck for a long time, the default behavior of the software not necessarily will be the most efficient to help you getting out of the problem you created to yourself.
The strategy you proposed is way of answering the question “what cards to attack first?”. You can create filtered deck choosing “cards selected by” - relative overdueness. But in my point of view, if the cards have been abandoned for a long time, there would be little or no benefit at all compared with Anki standard approach, as it would continue to show you first the cards that are too much overdued, and you would probably fail them.
If the cards have been abandoned for a long time, I prefer attack first cards that are not so much overdued. That is, my approach is the inverse of the “relative overdueness”; I prefer attacking first cards with low relative overdueness, in which my chances of not failing are still high; the very overdued cards I already forgot and nothing will change this fact. But if I can save at least those cards not so overdued yet, great! A way of implementing this approach is to set the “Just Due” filtered deck with increasing negative values. E.g., commence with “is:due prop:due>-7”. When I see all these cards, I change the options to “is:due prop:due>-15”; after seeing all cards, -30 days, and so on. This will bring me these cards I most probably still remember and can yet avoid failing. And from time to time I go to the regular deck, that will present me the cards in the order due (the very old cards, which I will probably fail anyway).
I see no point in creating the second filtered deck “Over Due filter” with: “is:due prop:due<=-7”, as the manual says; it only makes sense if you will, for example, choose to use the relative overdueness. Otherwise, you can go directly to the home deck to see the older cards.
The most important thing is to have the “Just Due” filtered deck to ensure your current effort will be preserved.
The other thing you proposed of using two filtered decks, one of them set “prop:due>-1 prop:due<1” and the other “prop:due<=-1” does not make sense to me. The first one will show you the cars due exactly today. I think the “Just Due” settings “is:due prop:due>-7” are better, as if you do not see and rebuild it for one or two days, you will still see that cards that you very probably will not fail and so you do not loose your recent effort. Remember the point is to keep this filtered deck always up-to-date, leaving the trash in the other deck, to be dealt with when you have the stomach to deal with cards that you fail a lot, what is very disappointing. And the second (prop:due<=-1), as I said before, I think you don’t need it, only if you select “relative overdueness”; and if you will, you cannot use this “-1”; you MUST see as soon as possible these cards that you almost certainly did not forget yet, otherwise you will loose your current effort; use the proposed “-7” instead, or something like it.
I don’t know why I wrote this giant text! Sorry about that!
