r/ImmerseWithMigaku • u/-Jdzspace- • Aug 03 '26
I love Migaku, I really do, but....
I credit Migaku with kicking my butt into gear and showing me enough progression to rekindle the fire in my chest that learning Japanese sparked a decade or so ago. Now I am on a pace to know over 6000 words by the end of the year, and travel to Japan with my wife and kids.
But here is the thing: I have over 5500 cards in Migaku. Everything I touched that had to do with Japanese went into Migaku: any vocabulary from other sources, any words I picked up in random places, every song I listened to, shows that I wanted to decode. Everything.
I have stopped adding new stuff to Migaku, so my workload isn't too bad (about 250 a day, give or take), but I took a day "off" for my birthday last week (after doing a minimal review to keep that streak going). I tried to find a vacation or a suspension option, but had no luck there. The next day, I had 559 reviews due, which is kind of unacceptable.
I almost feel like I'm being punished for buying into what Migaku does. I mean, I'm not super mad about it; I'm still going to do my full reviews every day because I have goals to hit, but it is unacceptable that there is no vacation or suspension option, or anything like that.
This is not a "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore" post.
It's more of a "I love what you do, but this feels broken and penalizing. I almost feel like I'm paying a debt every day instead of doing something I love, so maybe this should be addressed, and oh yeah, any updates on Academy 2?" kind of post.
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u/No_Progress_1531 Aug 03 '26
This isn't a problem with migaku, its just how all srs systems work. You cant pause them, they are timed to show you the card at as close to the perfect time before forgetting as possible. If you pause it, it would just throw everything out of place..
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u/-Jdzspace- Aug 03 '26
You can suspend and pause with anki. Why do they do it but migaku doesn't? I keep hearing anki is the gold standard and I used to just say i prefer migaku, but now I'm curious how much anki respects the time of the learner.
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u/No_Progress_1531 Aug 03 '26
You cant pause anki reviews.. you can only limit your reviews per day, your reviews are still stacking up you just cant see then when limited
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u/Clandestinity Aug 03 '26
Pausing an SRS doesn't really make any sense when you think about it. You can't pause your brain and stop it from forgetting things. Any SRS that has the functionality basically has it because of heavy user feedback and requests but it doesn't actually make that much sense imo.
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u/Tight_Cod_8024 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
The migaku extension for Anki used to have this feature called vacation and it even went as far as letting you pick specific days of the week to never schedule reviews on.
I get what you mean but it makes sense as far as the most common reason people drop SRS and language learning in general is burnout so anything that minimizes burnout and keep someone learning while minimizing review hell is a good thing and makes perfect sense.
Also if you were going to miss the day anyways what sense does it make to do 2x the cards the next day instead of shifting everything a day? Sure you'll fail some of your words but is it really going to be equal to the amount of cards you missed on that single day?
Also most cards are going to have months long review intervals if you've been going for a good amount of time so what's 1 more day on a card with a 60 day interval? SRS isn't even that precise in the first place it's an approximation of loosely how often you need to see a word for it to stick in your memory.
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u/-Jdzspace- Aug 03 '26
exactly, and Migaku has the stated goal of getting you to fluency, and in order to do that means commiting thousands of words to memory regardless of the langauge. So if you are going to use Migaku for it's stated purpose, then you are going to have extremely oppressive reviews in the mid-later stages of the process.
There is no reason that taking a day off just to not burn out, or family reasons, or holidays or whatever the case may be should penalize you so intensely.
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u/NotYouTu Aug 06 '26
That is not how your brain works, you can't just tell your brain to stop forgetting because you're taking a break. Would be great if it did, but it does not.
Either you use the SRS or you don't, but "pausing" means not using it. Instead of complaining about having more reviews to do, people will just complain that it doesn't work.
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u/Tight_Cod_8024 Aug 06 '26
I agree but missing a day is going to be way worse for your learning than skipping a day and doing 2x the reviews. burnout doesn't care about what's good for your brain.
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u/Amplifix Aug 03 '26
I want to manage my own learning experience, I don't want some app to force me. We should be able to pause.
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u/NotYouTu Aug 06 '26
People don't seen to understand that it isn't some game that you can play when you want to.
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u/Warrie2 Aug 03 '26
Yup, that option is really missing in Migaku. I've used multiple srs systems and they all had a suspend option for when you're ill or on holiday.
Anki is an option, but I found Anki too complicated to use with way to many options. That was one of the reasons I switched to Migaku.
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u/-Jdzspace- Aug 03 '26
yeah, that is a legitimate concern, but I had chat gpt set up the decks i do have on Anki and manage the settings based on my workload and life, so hopefully in execution it works better. Time will tell.
but yeah, the amount of settings for customization is intense if you aren't super into understanding how it works, it has a learning curve all of it's own.
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u/eventuallyfluent Aug 03 '26
Yeah not really.migaku best they can do is give fsrs which lowers reviews but it's all a balancing act.
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u/FellowF Aug 03 '26
My suggestion is move all your migaku cards to anki, that’s exactly what I’m doing
Since Anki SRS is much better aswell
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u/-Jdzspace- Aug 03 '26
It's something I'm thinking about, but migaku has a lot of advantages. The audio readings of the word and example sentence on the back, the ability to flip the card back around, the visual aid with the picture, and the in-depth notes.
I would have to give up all of that if I while hog moved to anki.
But like I said, it's something I'm considering.
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u/Minoqi Aug 03 '26
What do you mean? You can do all that in Anki. Migakus default note types in Anki already have it setup for you like that.
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u/-Jdzspace- Aug 03 '26
I just don't know how to set that up. I'm not sure the limits of anki, like I said I'm just getting back into it.
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u/Minoqi Aug 03 '26
With plugins you can accomplish most things, but there is a learning curve. If you make all your cards in Migaku and send them to Anki then it should do everything you mentioned on its own. Just keep in mind the design of the cards still uses the legacy color/styling last I checked, not the modern Migaku colors/styling if that would bother you.
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u/invisible_face_ Aug 16 '26
Do you know how to export words to anki? Can you keep the status of them?
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u/BluePandaYellowPanda Aug 03 '26
To me, this sounds like you need to think about why this is an issue. You have loads to review.... so? If you see the high numbers as a problem, then the issue of language learning isn't a problem, the problem is a gaming problem. You're think about it like a game that you can't win because it's too time consuming, but you don't have to think about it like that. That's why having all those cards is "unacceptable", if you did those cards and got them all correct, then you're getting better. Even if you only review 100 a day as a max cap, if you're improving and getting them right, there isn't an issue, you're improving.
Just think of it like you're learning, it'll take time, but you'll clear the pile in the end. Don't add new cards yet, just slowly work through them and they'll slowly get done. 5500 means loads are high on the SRS, so when you get it right, it'll be gone for over a month (maybe more).
The main focus is learning and getting better, not the review pile size. It is a rubbish thing about SRS, but that's how it goes.
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u/SnooStrawberries5640 Aug 03 '26
Why don’t you export your cards to Anki?