I timed myself: median answer time is about 4 seconds. Two hundred and fifty reviews should be twenty minutes of actual thinking. Instead I am at the desk for an hour and a half and I finish irritated. I am not obviously scrolling on my phone. Where is the time going?
Check how many of those 250 are repeats within the same session. If your Again rate is 30 percent you are really doing 320 reviews to clear 250 cards. Lowering new cards for a fortnight brings the Again rate down and the session shortens on its own.
Splitting it into three blocks of thirty minutes helped me more than any setting did. Same cards, far less drift after the twenty minute mark.
Also check that your cards are not enormous. A card with six lines of text on the back takes ten seconds to read before you can even judge yourself.
@dark_room_dev · 10mo ago · 3 replies
Your median is 4 seconds and your mean is probably 20. The long tail is doing this. Twenty cards that take a minute each because you sit there arguing with yourself about whether you really knew it is twenty minutes gone, plus the recovery time after each one.
Hard rule that fixed it for me: if the answer is not forming within about seven seconds, press Again and move on. You are not being graded on effort. The card comes back tonight.
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@coldstorage_cy · 10mo ago
That minute is the most expensive minute in your day and it teaches you nothing.
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@retainer_rue · 10mo ago
I definitely do the arguing thing. Sometimes for a full minute on a card I half know.
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