I was hoping that with the use of FSRS and by doing reviews twice a day the amount of Green Cards and Reviews would eventually decrease over time.
After 9 months of doing this at 0.90 Retention, the green cards just kept gradually increasing.
So recently I decided to try to reduce it to 0.85.
My routine was like this:
1 morning review, do all cards in 1 hour or so
-2 few hours later when the red daily cards would appear 20ish or so, I would clear them
-3 night review to clear all red cards before sleep
Recently I haven’t had time for step 2, so i’ve only done 40ish Red reviews at night before sleep.
And I’ve noticed my Green Reviews the following days have been decreasing.
So my question is, is it just a coincidence, and the Green cards are decreasing cause of the 0.85 retention being less strict, or it’s also cause I’ve done less reviews per day?
[Is there a reason why you haven’t optimized your FSRS parameters? You’ll get more personalized scheduling if you optimize and re-optimize monthly.]
Adding extra learning steps that require you to do additional study sessions each day takes more work, but it doesn’t necessarily help you in the long run, since multiple same-day reviews don’t have much impact on long-term retention. Did you add those steps because you were struggling with retention? How does your Stats > [True] Retention compare to your Desired Retention [DR]?
Once you optimize your parameters, you’ll be getting better scheduling, so you will want to adjust your DR to what your retention goal actually is. But generally, yes – lower DR means longer intervals and a lower workload.
What are your new optimized parameters [as text, please]?
Yes, that’s what I mean. Was that a recent recommendation, based on using those steps with FSRS [from someone familiar with the algorithms]? Or a “classic” recommendation from 2+ years ago, which almost certainly was made for use with the SM-2 algorithm?
See the link I gave you for recommendations about steps and FSRS. Obviously that won’t cover every eventuality, every collection, every learning style – but since your concern here is how many reviews you’re needing to do, it’s worth considering the things that increase the number of reviews!
[If you’re trying to figure out what steps are right for you, the FSRS Helper add-on compiles “Step Stats” for how you’ve been doing so far. Since you’re considering making a significant change in steps, it’s definitely worth a look. Choose the longest time-period possible, and post a screenshot.]
There’s another important thing to consider. You’ve told FSRS you want a much higher retention rate than you’re getting. As long as that remains so far apart, you’ll have shorter intervals and more reviews scheduled to push you to that goal.
That doesn’t mean you can’t want that goal! It just means that you need to understand getting there takes extra work.
