I get skipping days is against the algorithm, but wouldn’t it be better to simply freeze the algorithm for a few days opposed to get a backlog at all? A backlog would break the habit for me making me unlikely to return.
Skipping days is not against the algorithm, it accounts for skipped days.
In a simplified system suppose that we just double easy card review times, and reset hard cards back to 1. You have a card up for review today, you last saw it N days ago. Two scenarios:
1. You don't delay. You review the card now. It's either hard and reset to 1 (see it again tomorrow) or easy and you see it again in 2N days.
2. You delay. You review it M days from now. When you finally do it's either hard and reset to 1 (see it again the next day) or easy and you see it again in 2(N + M) days.
That's it. The algorithm has you covered if you delay. It doesn't do something silly like say "This card was supposed to be reviewed after 2 days, but you waited a month. You remembered it, but we're going to show it to you again in 4 days." The algorithms will take the delay into account (maybe not one-for-one) like I illustrated above.
Good point. The real risk in skipping days is that you might forget altogether some of the cards that were due for review. But the Anki default is to review often enough that probability of recall for each card is very high, so if you're only skipping a few days at a time this is not a huge concern. Capping the amount of cards you do per day has a similar effect; Anki will prompt you with the highest-risk cards first, and some will be left unreviewed for the day (hence, practically skipped).
