> Furthermore, if you skip a single day, you have twice as much the next day; and if life happens and you end up missing a week or a month, you come back with a giant jumble of cards, half of which you've forgotten, and it's really difficult to dig your way out of it.
The Anki system is actually really good at dealing with missed days. You end up recalling most of the cards that you skipped review for, and the system gives you extra credit for the increased interval before review, in that subsequent repeats for the same card will be spaced out even further. Cards that you outright fail to recall due to the missed reviews are a problem, but the best way to 'dig your way out' of that hole is to keep reviewing on a regular schedule and not to overwork or cram. The backlog gets cleared rather quickly.
The Anki system is actually really good at dealing with missed days. You end up recalling most of the cards that you skipped review for, and the system gives you extra credit for the increased interval before review, in that subsequent repeats for the same card will be spaced out even further. Cards that you outright fail to recall due to the missed reviews are a problem, but the best way to 'dig your way out' of that hole is to keep reviewing on a regular schedule and not to overwork or cram. The backlog gets cleared rather quickly.