How to clear a big Anki review queue (without burning out)

1. Stop adding new cards

Every new card creates future reviews. While you are behind, set new cards per day to zero (or very low) until your daily due count is back to something you can finish.

A useful rule of thumb: your steady-state daily reviews end up several times your daily new cards, often around ten times. If 30 new cards a day produces more reviews than you can do, it is the new-card number that needs to change.

2. Split the queue into short sessions

Three sessions of 15 minutes usually beat one hour at night. Short sessions fit between lectures, on placement breaks and on the commute, and you stay sharper, so your grades are more honest.

3. Grade honestly and quickly

Speed comes from not overthinking each card:

• If you had to think hard or got it partly wrong, press Hard or Again. Pretending costs you more later.
• Use Easy sparingly; it pushes cards far into the future.
• Cards you fail again and again (leeches) usually need rewriting, not more reviews. Suspend them and fix the card.

4. Image-occlusion cards: reveal one label at a time

Anatomy diagrams with hidden labels are some of the most valuable cards in a medical deck and some of the slowest on a phone. On Ankiboy you reveal the answer with A, reveal the next hidden label with D-pad right, and hold L1 + B to show or hide every label at once. Your thumbs never leave the buttons.

5. Make the loop fast

When a queue is in the hundreds, every second per card matters. Physical buttons remove the tap-aim-tap of a touchscreen: on Ankiboy each grade is one press, and the screen flashes the colour of the button you pressed (red Again, yellow Hard, green Good, blue Easy) with an optional sound, so you know it registered without looking.

A review timer can help too. Ankiboy's timer counts down on each card, and you can hold B to pause it if you need a moment.