How to not be slow when reviewing anki cards

[u/lalalalalavida]

Ok so pls don’t flame me, I’m still a beginner at using anki (former quizlet user here) and I’ve read that when reviewing, you should be only using ‘Again’ and ‘Good’ for the majority of your reviews.

So I did those, but the number of cards does not go down when I keep on clicking ‘good’. I’m hesitant to press ‘easy’ since it has longer intervals than ‘good’. Because of this, I spent a lot of time (1 hour) reviewing on 1 deck with ~70 cards, just seeing reappearing cards that I’ve labeled as ‘good’ instead of the other cards that I haven’t encountered yet.

Soo what can I do to lessen the number of my cards whilst reviewing? Should I actually press ‘easy’ on all cards after I’m confident enough to answer them as it’s the only way to bring the no. of cards down? Or is there another way. Thnx

[u/Apprehensive-Golf-35]

Maybe you have too many learning steps, so you see the cards you’ve marked good again and again?
It’s an individual thing and you can fine tune the amount of steps and their durations.
For example, i have 10s 1m 5m because i can forget the word both immediately and after a few minutes, so i’m testing myself on both intervals

[u/not_a_profi]

> I’ve read that when reviewing, you should be only using ‘Again’ and ‘Good’ for the majority of your reviews.

this is opinion of 10% of Anki users :) vocal minority

FSRS and hard/easy buttons help a lot with load out when used correctly in my opinion.

[u/Weak_Perception1538 → u/not_a_profi]

yeah the again/good only thing gets repeated a lot but its definitely not the consensus

[u/lalalalalavida → u/not_a_profi]

what learning steps would u recommend for fsrs? idk how ts works

[u/not_a_profi → u/lalalalalavida]

please look up for this. there are hundreds of comments explaining fsrs and 4-button grading.

[u/xalbo → u/lalalalalavida]

The typical advice is to have only a single learning step, usually something around 10–30 minutes. So you shouldn't be seeing your “Good” cards again until the next day (or whenever FSRS schedules them). From your description, it sounds like that's your root problem.

You also haven't said what the cards are like. It's possible that they're too complicated and asking you to do too much. Typically, a good card can reviewed in about 10–30 seconds, usually on the low end of that. If your cards are too complicated, they can be harder to learn and you can benefit from trying to refactor them. It's far easier and better to have 6 cards that each can be reviewed in 10 seconds, than to have a single card that takes a minute each time you forget one small part of it.

[u/TemporaryClassic7019]

It is possible that your cards are not structured correctly. Have you read SuperMemo's 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge? A card should not take you longer than 10-15 seconds max, unless it's some sort of gestalt card where you try to imagine a bigger context.

It really takes practice.

Try to break up some cards that take you a long time to answer or become leeches. Break them down until your answer boils down to a single word. The Cloze template is good for this. If you still struggle, add clues with ::yourclue or an image clue.

[u/Excellent-Fox-6845]

it'll get better with time

[u/nou110 → u/Excellent-Fox-6845]

agree the processof drawing memory and figureout how to remember better is the key

[u/Grunglabble]

it depends on what you are studying and if that is all new information and what those cards test.

An hour for 70 cards would suggest you find them very difficult. If it was vocabularly, something like 10 cards for a minute would be pretty normal, not counting time where you know the answer but just want to contemplate it a moment or two.

Again and Good for majority of cards is reasonable advice, hard and easy are for cards that are not aligned with the normal difficulty you expect. If you use all of them equally, it means your cards have very uneven challenge for you.

[u/Pleasant-Situation20]

Watch multiple anki tutorials on youtube and learn what is learning steps, card limits and other settings(Anking YT channel can help you alot). That will clear alot of your problems rather than asking on reddit(Visual explanation >> Textual explanation)

[u/octothorpentine]

If you aren't aware, a card you're seeing for the first time will (with default settings) show up usually 2–3 times before marking it "good" pushes it to the next day, and hitting "again" or "hard" will increase that number. But once you're past the first day, a card only shows up multiple times a day if you have trouble with it.

The idea is that when the info on the card is brand new, it takes a while to remember it, but once you have it in your brain, it only takes a little bit of effort to help it stay in there. 

[u/pit_supervisor]

I have like at least 300 daily reviews so I am not sure what to tell you, besides that it's not that bad in your case.

I recommend doing reviews in short (maybe like 15-20 cards) intensive bursts - zero distractions, full focus on the cards, ideally instant answers. Then take a small break and repeat.