Long intervals for review cards after period of absence

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1

Trying to figure out how to go about catching up on my old review cards (couple thousand) that I have not looked at for 2-3 months. When I do a few of them, the intervals are very long with ‘Good’ ranging from 7 months to over a year, ‘Hard’ is between 4-6 months. Obviously, I don’t want to reset the whole deck or click ‘again’ for all of them since I will recall some, but with STEP coming up around the turn of the year, I also want to see some multiple times without sending them out so far. I use FSRS algorithm. How should I go about chipping away at these with a shorter interval? I’ve seen using filtered decks with some modifications, but not sure if that is the best way or even how to do it. Thanks in advance.

2

I’ll help you figure out how to manage your backlog of review cards with more appropriate intervals. Let me search for some relevant information.

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Found 3 results for 'tags:official FSRS filtered deck review interval backlog status:public'

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Found 5 results for 'tags:official catch up reviews backlog filtered deck status:public'

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Found 1 result for 'tags:official Anki reviews after break status:public'

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Found 5 results for 'tags:official filtered deck catching up status:public'

I see you’re facing a common challenge after a period of absence: catching up with a large backlog of reviews while dealing with long intervals assigned by FSRS. Here’s how you can approach this situation:

Understanding What’s Happening

When you return to Anki after a break, the scheduler (including FSRS) factors in that delay when calculating the next review time. Since you’ve been away for 2-3 months, FSRS is adapting by showing very long intervals, which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to catch up before STEP.

Options for Catching Up

1. Use a Filtered Deck with Rescheduling Disabled

This is likely your best approach:

  1. Create a filtered deck (Tools > Create Filtered Deck)
  2. Set up a search like is:due (or more specific parameters if needed)
  3. Important: Uncheck “Reschedule cards based on my answers”

With rescheduling disabled, you can review cards without affecting their future scheduling. This lets you refresh your memory without resetting intervals or pushing cards far into the future.

2. Temporary Interval Modifier Adjustment

If you prefer to review directly in your normal deck:

  1. Go to deck options
  2. Find the “Interval Modifier” setting under Advanced
  3. Temporarily reduce it (perhaps to 50-70% of its current value)
  4. Return it to normal after catching up

This will shorten all intervals across the board during your catch-up period.

3. Conservative Answering

When reviewing your backlog:

  • Use “Hard” more often than usual for cards you remember but want to see again sooner
  • Reserve “Again” only for cards you completely forgot
  • Be careful with “Good” and “Easy” as these will push cards out further

Important FSRS Considerations

FSRS works best when you:

  • Keep learning steps under 1 day (avoid multi-day learning steps)
  • Trust the algorithm to schedule optimally for retention
  • Minimize artificial adjustments to the scheduling

If you’re concerned about forgetting material for STEP, consider that spending time on targeted practice questions might be more effective than overly frequent card reviews.

Would you like more specific guidance on setting up a filtered deck for your situation? Or do you have any questions about how these approaches would work with your specific setup?

3

This is normal, and by design. :slight_smile:

Essentially what happens is that FSRS assumes that, if after such a long delay, you still remember that material that you must remember it quite well. And so it pushes the intervals off into the distance

There isn’t much to do to ‘fix’ this, as it’s how the algorithm is designed to work and everything is operating as intended.

Your options are roughly three-fold:

  • Let FSRS do its thing as normal.
  • Use filtered decks to sidestep this behavior.
  • Reset the deck.

Please let me know if that answers your question, and if there’s anything else I can help with. :slight_smile:

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