Cards difficulty keeps on increasing

[Jackson8]

Hi guys, sorry in advance for my english, i’m not a native speaker, so if there’s any misunderstanding in regards to the way my post is written, feel free to tell me and i’ll clarify it.

So, i used to create oclussion and question cards but in the last 5 months i’ve switched to creating only question cards, since i’d get the oclussion cards correct during my reviews but in IRL situations i wasnt able to remember the information (i’m a med student). Since shifting to question cards, i feel like i’ve retained more information, but in contrast, the dificultty of my cards has been constantly increasing. I recall it being around 65% months ago, but since this change it has reached 80%, as you guys can see on this screenshot. (DR=83%)

On top of that, it has come to my attention that when i get cards right and press “Good”, the difficulty increases (??) instead of lowering, some examples below.

I feel like this has lead me to having an higher workload than desired and i dont really know if there’s anything that i could change to get into a more confortable position, since i’ve shitty memory, could this be just the way things are? Or is there anything i could do?

FSRS parameters: 0.3140, 1.0337, 2.3659, 2.3659, 6.5697, 0.4904, 2.7172, 0.0120, 1.6416, 0.4202, 0.6241, 1.6482, 0.0331, 0.5662, 1.8523, 0.5742, 1.2640, 0.5622, 0.0757, 0.1986, 0.7174

[Danika_Dakika]

@Jackson8

the dificultty of my cards has been constantly increasing. I recall it being around 65% months ago, but since this change it has reached 80%, as you guys can see on this screenshot.

“Difficulty” (D) is a component of the memory state that helps FSRS schedule each card more accurately. It’s not an assessment of your studying or card-making techniques. You don’t need to think about it, or change it, or compare it to anything else.

@Jackson8

it has come to my attention that when i get cards right and press “Good”, the difficulty increases (??) instead of lowering

D won’t necessary decrease with a Good grade – that depends on your optimized parameters and the review history of that card. [If you want to know more – A technical explanation of FSRS | Expertium’s Blog .]

When you see it increase from one revlog entry to the next with a Good grade, that is likely because your parameters changed at some point between those 2 reviews. A parameter change recalculates the memory state for each card, so a card’s current D might not match what was recorded at the time of the last review. If you’re re-optimizing your parameters monthly (which you should), this isn’t unusual.

@Jackson8

I feel like this has lead me to having an higher workload than desired

The things that contribute most to your daily workload are (1) your daily New card limit, and (2) whether you are reaching your Desired Retention (DR). It looks like you’re struggling to reach your DR of 83%, so your workload will remain high.

To bring your Retention and DR closer together, you either need to lower your DR, or increase the number of cards you get right (raise your Retention). I don’t mean to be flip, but the biggest thing some users overlook is making sure they learn/relearn their cards. When you get a card wrong, you need to do something to make sure you have a better chance of getting it right the next time you see it. What that “something” is depends on you, your material, and your cards – but if you just click Again and hope for the best, you’ve missed a crucial step.

[Jackson8]

Thank you very much for the insights and for taking your time to answer me. I’d like to dive a little deeper on the topic to understand it better.

I don’t feel confortable with lowering my DR right now since my retrievability is at 90% and i dont feel like i can recall some informations on spot during my rotations. As for others options, i’ve been thinking about some of my cards which are structured in such a way that requires too much from my memory (example: “What are the risk factors for X?”, the answer being 6 different risk factor with 0 explanation). But since most of the content i use anki for is almost brute force memorization, i struggle to view somewhere in the middle from the occlusion cards, where i’d get it right more often but the knowledge wasnt there on my day to day life, to the question cards, which are way harder but reward me with a little more retention.

Besides that, other factors i thought could be interfering with my higher workload (they could be all wrong, it’s just a exercise to clear my opitions on what i could change lol):

1. I only use again and good;
2. Sometimes i do 2-2,5x my normal work load because of new cards i answer (50-100 a day) when it comes test season. Other times i go one whole week not answering new cards;
3. I selected on options to answer easier cards early on the day. Since i have a higher workload than my current life welcomes, i usually get to the harder cards when my attention isn’t quite there anymore;
4. I did the math on all cards accounted on the “Card Difficulty” tab and it add up to a little over 1k cards, but i have, on total, 4,5k cards on this deck, could it be that some of them aren’t being accounted for?

[Danika_Dakika]

@Jackson8

1 I only use again and good;

That does limit FSRS’s ability to in terms of variety of scheduling. It won’t necessarily result in a higher workload, but it cuts off some potential scheduling paths, like cards having their intervals grow more quickly when they are graded Easy. That’s a trade-off some people think is worth it.

@Jackson8

2 Sometimes i do 2-2,5x my normal work load … Other times i go one whole week not answering new cards;

3 I selected on options to answer easier cards early on the day. …

Those are choices that are up to you. But if you don’t like how things are going, being more consistent with your pace of New cards, and ordering your cards throughout the day are options.

@Jackson8

4 I did the math on all cards accounted on the “Card Difficulty” tab and it add up to a little over 1k cards, but i have, on total, 4,5k cards on this deck, could it be that some of them aren’t being accounted for?

Your Stats page can show your entire collection, or a specific deck, or anything else you search for. Look at the top and bottom of the window.

But you don’t need to do the math yourself. Scroll up to the Card Counts section, and that will tell you how many cards are being displayed currently, along with their states. If it doesn’t match your expectations, it’s possible you haven’t selected the right thing.

[Jackson8]

Thank you, that does clarify some things. I’ve tried to be more mindful with my cards (changing them, simplifying, looking at the “Lapses” stat to change problematic cards, breaking it down into multiply cards etc) this last week and it has improved my retention quite a bit (86% on the last week, month is up to 83%).

Regarding the Card Counts problem, it was in fact because of the phrase automatically used on the browser when i clicked on the difficulty bar. As you can see on the screenshots, the default phrase shows 151 cards, but after deleting the backspaces before the quotes, i got the right code with the right amount of cards.

[Danika_Dakika]

  "prop:d>=0.4" AND "prop:d<0.45"

prop:d>=0.4 prop:d<0.45

Hmmm… Both of those should give you the exact same result. The leading spaces, quotes, and AND don’t make a difference. In fact, the search window simplifies the text of the 1st search to the text of the 2nd search – even if you don’t delete the leading spaces first.

I just tried this with your collection (and the same version of Anki on Windows 11 as you), and I got 725 both times.