Hello,
This add-on should flatten the learning curve for Anki. When people first start Anki, they often fail to prioritize their review cards. This is the biggest hurdle that new Anki users face. Failure to do the reviews everyday results in the user forgetting their newly learned cards shortly after learning them. They will often say “anki doesn’t work for me”. The reality is, they just failed to do their review cards everyday. This add-on solves that problem and here is how.
The user can plan a study schedule based on either “time” or “total cards”.
a. Time based schedules: If they choose time, they can decide how long they want to do cards every day. The system will force them to do “review” cards before “new” cards. After finishing their “review” cards, they will be shown “new” cards until the time runs out. After the clock runs out, a pop-up will appear that says they are done.
b. Total card count schedule: if they choose to based their schedule on card count, the user will pick how many cards they want to see in a day. The system will first fill that desired card count in with “review” cards. If their review card count is less than the “desired daily card count”, then the system would add “new” cards to their todo list until the desired card count is reached. Essentially it makes sure that the cards seen today are their “reviews” and that “new” cards are only added if they are caught up on their reviews.
It adds a heat map. If they finish their daily goal (which can be either their “time” goal or “Total card count” goal), the heat map will fill in a square. Other heat maps exist, but I thought it would make sense for this add-on to also have a heat map. It allows people to track if they are achieving their daily time/card count goal.
In summary, this add-on basically forces the user to prioritize their review cards and to think about anki in a different light. Instead of trying to do as many new cards in a day, it forces you to be consistent with a daily “time” or a daily “total card count” that is based on total cards finished and prioritizes review cards before new cards. It may seem a little confusing, but if you try it out, I think it will make more sense. I think if new anki users use this system rather than the traditional anki approach, I think the learning curve will be flattened which is why I call this add-on “The Mad Hatter’s Training wheels”.
If you have any questions or notice any bugs, please let me know!
Best, The Mad Hatter
