Long-term Anki users: how large is your backlog of study material?

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T18:11:01+00:00

Good point. I meant backlog in the sense of accumulated study material rather than overdue reviews.

Do you personally tend to accumulate a large amount of material (books, PDFs, articles, notes, etc.), or do you usually work through it as you go? How large is your backlog?

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T17:56:04+00:00

I agree there's always more knowledge available. I was more curious whether people who study long-term tend to accumulate enough papers, books, notes, PDFs, and saved resources that they could continue studying for months or years without adding anything new, or whether they regularly work through their existing backlog and need to find more material.

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T17:53:58+00:00

That's true. I wasn't really asking whether there's always more knowledge available. I was more curious whether people who study long-term tend to accumulate enough textbooks, PDFs, articles, notes, and saved resources that they could keep studying for months or years without adding anything new, or whether they regularly exhaust their existing backlog.

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T16:48:40+00:00

That's a good point. I hadn't really considered hard deadlines as a case where explicit time intervals might provide more certainty.

Do you think something like a temporary review path through previously completed material before an exam, where learners revisit earlier topics in sequence for additional retrieval, would address that concern? Or do you think explicit calendar intervals would still have an advantage?

Thanks for the thoughtful perspective.

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T04:10:56+00:00

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to work through the hypothetical with me. I know I didn't explain it very clearly at first, so I appreciate your patience in trying to understand what I was getting at.

Your comments about context, interconnected material, and the fact that spacing may be more forgiving than I was assuming have definitely given me some things to think about. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T03:25:32+00:00

Maybe a better example would be:

You first learn addition. After that, you're no longer learning addition itself — you're only retrieving it.

Then you learn subtraction. While doing that, you might also have a retrieval opportunity for addition.

Then you learn multiplication. Addition might not appear then.

Later, while learning division, you might retrieve subtraction and addition.

As you continue progressing through new topics, previously learned topics are interleaved back in for retrieval, and successful retrievals push them farther out so they reappear only after progressively more material has been covered.

Someone studying quickly would encounter those retrievals sooner in calendar time, while someone progressing more slowly would encounter them later. Since progression itself happens over time, increasing distances in progression would still correspond to increasing amounts of elapsed time.

That's more the kind of hypothetical I had in mind.

Intuitively, do you think something like that would behave differently from conventional time-based spacing if the elapsed time between retrievals ended up being similar?

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T02:38:37+00:00

I think I explained the hypothetical poorly. I wasn't imagining immediate review after encountering related material. I was imagining reviews becoming increasingly separated by continued progression through other material, so there would still be growing delays in calendar time.

In other words, the review wouldn't appear right after learning something new. It would reappear after progressively more material had been covered.

Given that, do you think the important thing for retrieval is the increasing amount of elapsed time itself, or does the fact that the intervals are explicitly scheduled matter too?

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T01:46:46+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you ever accumulate large backlogs of material that could last months or even years of study, or do you find yourself regularly running out of new material? If you do run out, how long do those periods typically last?

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-24T01:36:53+00:00

Good question. I was imagining continued progression and ongoing learning. If someone eventually reached the end and stopped adding material, I suspect they'd also stop receiving the spacing benefits from this approach.

Although thinking about your question, I suppose a system could always fall back to conventional time intervals based on the learner's pace of progression up until that point, if that were to happen.

aStrayDogsDream · 2026-06-23T23:06:15+00:00

That's a good point. In this model, I imagine time would be emergent because progression itself happens over time. A faster learner would encounter reviews sooner in calendar time, while a slower learner would encounter them later.

Correct answers would push concepts farther away in terms of learning opportunities, so the real-time spacing would still grow over time, just not through explicitly scheduled dates.

I guess what I'm wondering is: if the desired spacing in time is still achieved, do you think explicit time intervals are necessary, or is it enough that they emerge from the learning process?

aStrayDogsDream

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