> There is always a point where I have to skip 2 or 3 days because of life and the huge backlog is too much that I give up.
Some things I do to manage this:
You can put an upper bound on the number of cards reviewed per day. For me it's 50. After that it says I'm done for the day and I wait till the next day.
If missing only 2-3 days leads to such a huge backlog, you really need to take a break in adding new cards. My aim is to spend no more than 5-10 minutes per day reviewing cards. If it seems I always have too many cards to review, I don't add any new cards until I get only a few cards to review per day (when really busy, I don't add a new card until I have a day with 0 cards).
You can only learn so much per day. You need to limit card additions to ensure you don't exceed that amount.
The other thing I noticed is that I had two types of cards: One where the answer can be instantaneous (e.g. facts). And ones where some thinking is involved (proof sketch of a theorem, details of some algorithm, etc). The latter would kill the experience because of the time involved. So I separated the decks: Simple cards (the majority) go in one deck and this is reviewed daily. Hard cards have their own deck(s) and I'm not as committed to them - I work on them only when I know I have time and am committed to it.
