Update after 3 months:
I just made level 25 and things are moving along smoothly again. I did have a few days where a few hundred items came up for review but otherwise it’s been going well. Around 80 seems to be ideal number of items per day for me on my current work/life schedule.
One thing that really helped was to watch the number of Guru and Apprentice items as suggested by many of you all. I don’t do any lessons unless Guru is under 500 and Apprentice is under 100. For example, if Guru is fine and I have 70 Apprentice items, I’ll do 30 lessons that day. That’s really helped me keep the reviews manageable.
The other thing I did was to let myself take a day off here and there. As long as it was never two days in a row, my reviews didn’t pile up and it’s probably far better than never taking a break and taking two weeks off later in the year.
Also, it’s going to be my one year anniversary serving the crabigator on the 23rd and I’m pretty pleased with my progress so far. Barring the setback I would have been around level 30, but I’ve found that this is a better long term pace for me.
cheers