What Happens If You Miss A Day Of Anki When Learning A Language?

Anki is something you should be doing everyday and sadly there is no pause button. If you miss a day it can cause some real problems and give you a lot of work to do the next day.

This happens to everyone at some point, so I will go through what happens and what you can do to sort it out. 

Try Not To Miss A Day

My best advice is to not miss a day …which is not exactly great to hear if you have already missed a day, but the reality is the system is not designed for days off so it’s just something you have to accept is now a part of your life every day.

This is exactly why you need to use Anki in a way that you can handle it, which means you need to make you sure your work load is manageable and something you can do every day, no matter what.

(You can read more about – How Many New Flashcards Should You Do A Day When Learning A Language?)

The Reviews Will Pile Up If You Miss A Day

The reality is that the reviews pile up. Anything you miss today will still be there tomorrow, along with anything that is due tomorrow.

Really this means that the longer you wait, the worse it gets, the reviews can really start to pile up very quickly.

If you miss one day it isn’t going to be too bad ….multiple days can get overwhelming and then if you are waiting weeks or even month, then this is not going to look good at all.

It is going to be asking you to review the whole deck at this point and the whole thing is almost pointless. This is not where you want to be, but I know it can happen.

The Algorithm Will Get Messed Up And Out Of Sync

The Anki algorithm is designed to be used every day and if you don’t things can get a little out of sync.

Missing a day can cause a bit of a ripple effect and a lot of your reviews will not be properly spaced out any more. If you miss one day this isn’t really too much of a problem, but it can really start to be a problem if you miss a couple of days.

I think if I try and give some examples, this will make more sense.

Let’s say you have a card due today and if you click “easy” it will be seen again in 7 days.

If you ignore this card today, it will still have the same options tomorrow …and the same for the next day and so on.

When you do get round to doing this card the option of “7 days” is always going to be there.

Now let’s say tomorrow you do that card and another one is also due, which also says “7 days” when you click easy. Now you have both of these cards due in 7 days time …sounds fine, but really these are out of sync. They wouldn’t have normally been shown on the same day, but now they are.

This doesn’t really matter for the individual card; it’s more a problem that you are now going to have 2 cards to review in 7 days time, rather than 1. If you had not missed a day …the first card would be due in 7 days from today …and the second card …7 days from tomorrow.

You can see how this problem can quickly compound if you are doing multiple cards. It will sort of level out over time, but it is still something to be aware of as having loads of reviews all falling on the same day is annoying.

You Need To Catch Up With Your Reviews

If you do miss a day, the best thing you can do is try and catch up as quickly as possible.

This really means when you do log in you just have to face the huge pile of cards. Hopefully it’s not too out of control, but it will always feel like a mountain.

If you miss a couple of days it can really get out of control and you may be looking at something like 500 cards. This might be doable, but it is going to be a real struggle. 

I would try and do what you can, but honestly, if it’s too many it might just be better to try and do them over a few days. This will also hopefully stop there being a huge spike later on when all these reviews pop up again.  

It can feel like a lot of work trying to catch up like this, which is exactly why you need to try and not miss a day in the first place.

(You can read more about – Can Taking A Break From Language Learning Cause You To Forget What You’ve Learned?)

Stop Adding New Cards

One of the problems with missing days is the fact that the new cards will keep stacking up. This can often be the hardest part about catching up as you are doing a load of reviews and huge pile of new cards too.

Let’s say you have your new cards set to 10 a day as that is what you can handle …and you miss 5 days …now you have 50 new cards. That is probably going to be impossible on top of all the reviews too.

If this is the case I would change the settings to stop any new cards. I would then spend the next few days trying to clear the backlog, of both reviews and new cards. When you have things down to a manageable level again, you can start doing new cards again.     

Should You Start The Deck Over From The Beginning?

Some people might suggest that you should clear the deck and start fresh.

This is always an option, but really I would try and avoid this unless you have ignored Anki for weeks, or even months, then I don’t think this is worth doing.

Most of us can salvage a deck if we work hard for a few days, but the option to start over is always there.

You just need to go to “browse deck”… highlight anything that is set for review and click “forget” and all the reviews are gone.

If you do this and start over you will probably see a lot of cards that you find really easy again, as the system doesn’t know you know these words well. This is annoying, but I guess it is all good practice as such and you can easily review them and press “easy” until they are no longer appearing as often anymore.

Just Mark The Cards As Done …Even If They Are Not

If I ever think I’m going to miss a day …I kind of cheat, I just press “hard” and quickly get rid of the reviews.

Although who am I cheating? myself? who knows, but anyway. I just press hard and clear the deck and don’t even look at the words.

This is going to put those cards into the future pile and I’m basically making it a problem for another day. When the card is next shown in a few days time I can look at it properly then and review it then. 

Hopefully I remember it, but chances are I have messed up the algorithm and have probably forgotten it. If that is the case, then I will redo the card on that day.

I actually did this when I was sick. I didn’t have the energy to do the cards so I just pressed hard and left them for another day. This stopped me coming back to a huge pile and for me; this was the easier way to do things.

It’s not ideal as you are missing reviews and delaying when you will see them again, but of me it’s less stressful than seeing 500 reviews to do at once because I did nothing for a few days.

I guess you can play around with this and see how you feel about it and do what works for you. While I say you should be doing Anki every day, I know life its gets in the way, so you need to work out what your back up plan is …and this is mine.  

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see why it is important to always make sure you get your Anki reviews done every day.

Doing it every day will help with your language progress, but of course life can get in the way and you will occasionally miss a day. If this happens you can see now that you need to catch up as quickly as possible and while it can knock things out of sync, it usually isn’t too much of a problem.

Just try and be consistent with Anki and you shouldn’t have any problems.  

(You can read more about – When Should You Stop Using Anki When Learning A Language?)