On sustainability
On July 11th, my review count dipped below 5000 for the first, and so far only, time. While it was a little disheartening to see it go back up to above 5300 over the last month, all along I was patient and knew that as long as I kept going, I’d make progress eventually.
The key is sustainability. That July 11th milestone took a huge sprint of 3.25 hours of WK reviews in just one weekend in order to reach. And naturally, that meant that it immediately shot back up again as well.
The real key is to consider not just the review count, but the total amount of non-burned items outstanding. Review count is just non-burned count minus the number of reviews that will come due in the next four months but aren’t currently in the review pile. This means that non-burned count is a ceiling on the review count, and in order to push review count below that ceiling, you have to “juggle” more and more reviews. This is especially problematic if most of them are apprentice and thus won’t stay in the air for long, meaning feverish juggling is required.
On July 11th, I had 6160 unburnt items, meaning I needed to “juggle” 1161 just to reach the 5000 mark. As shown by finally reaching the burns > enlightened milestone yesterday, I’ve made enormous progress on that front. Today, the number of unburnt items is only 5793, so I’d only need to have 794 reviews outstanding to hit the same mark.
Going slowly isn’t glamorous, but every day, I make a little progress, and I know that the next time I reach 5000, I will probably stay under 5000 and keep making progress for good. And I won’t have to kill myself doing reviews all day to reach it either.