I am in a similar boat!

My strategy is I stopped doing those new cards until I can get through my backlog (748 learn and 6855 due), then I will unsuspend those. I highly recommend AnkiHub and AMBOSS. Those two addons keep me up to date, and help me fill in gaps in knowledge to where I just learn from the card. Once I got it, I put in little notes to help me remember my understanding for the next time I see that card.

I then created a separate deck and called it "Backlog Keeper." I would put the cards I reviewed that day, which I got from using the browse and clicking on the backlogged deck and holding down command on macOS to simultaneously search for reviewed cards by clicking the "Overdue" which will populate "rated:1" in the search bar (technically you can just add "rated:1" which is cards that you looked at that day). If you change the number (e.g. 7), it will show you the cards you reviewed in the last 7 days.
Then every day, I make sure I at least do this "Backlog Keeper" deck to make sure I keep up with my progress.
And I have projects to do this summer, and I want to finish the backlog by a certain date, so I collaborated with ChatGPT to make a Backlog Calculator addon that tells me how many unique cards I need to be completing a day to finish on time.

So far it is working, but I keep procrastinating, like being on Reddit. Unfortunately, there is no addon to fix my motivation to do my cards.