My fsrs is acting weird after changing my learning and new steps. I first had fsrs do the steps for me so left the steps blank, but since I have changed the steps (to the steps below) a card that I should’ve seen in 1 day is now going to appear in 20 days. What’s the fix for this?
Learning steps 1s 5s 30s 2m 10m 1h
That’s probably too many steps. By the time FSRS gets to schedule the card, you’ve already gotten it right six times in a row, so it’s setting it for a longer next interval. Just 1-2 short steps (5-20m) is plenty.
Thanks, I’ve just tried those steps and I’m getting shorter intervals, but usually if I fail a card I’ve already learnt, I’d see it the next day. With even 5m 20m I’m getting 8 days, I’d assume it’s because I had no steps for a long while it’s doing this.
I’m currently trying those steps with new cards to see if there’s a difference. Maybe it depends on difficulty of the card, because I just got 2 days for a new card.
Also one thing I’ve changed before that might’ve affected it was. I had Learn ahead limit on 900 minutes, I remember seeing somewhere someone reccomended to have it that way, I’ve changed it to 0 minutes as how spaced repetition should be.
The post-lapse interval isn’t fixed. It’s based on that particular card’s review history, and your parameters. FSRS is smarter about preserving some of the pre-lapse interval than SM-2 was. Ex. (with made-up data): If you’ve gotten a card correct after 3d and 9d, but you miss it after 20d, it doesn’t necessarily make sense for the post-lapse interval to start over at 1d.
Generally there’s nothing sacred about the length of your short/same-day steps. It doesn’t violate anything about spaced repetition for you to leave that set to the default of 20m.
It comes down to personal preference. If you want to finish your study session without waiting for the last few re/learning cards to come back, that’s fine. But if you want to wait for them for their full step delay, that’s okay too.
I’m just struggling with 5m 20m today lol. (took me 3 hours and a half for a usual 1 and a half hour study session 
. And I gave up at that point and swapped it to 1m to 10m)
I must have terrible memory.
It’d be nice If I could somehow have more steps, also is there any difference in having a longer last step. I just thought it proves you can remember it that long and strengthen that memory more.
Like would 5m to 1h be a lot harder than 5m to 20m, but more worth it? Thanks.
You can have more steps – you can have longer steps – but those don’t tend to be the cure for anything. Loading up with lots of steps is usually an attempt to brute-force something into your memory, which hardly ever works. Setting a longer step will only be a benefit if you’re going to have another study session later in the day. Otherwise you’re just preventing FSRS from scheduling the card for another day.
More important than number/length of steps is that you do whatever it takes when you get the card wrong to give yourself a better chance of getting it right the next time. If you’re not doing that, then no amount of steps will help you.
I guess I’d have to test which intervals work best for me then. Also the “Learning steps 1s 5s 30s 2m 10m 1h” were working in a way where I’d almost never forget the word and get through each of those steps in succession without fail, rather than brute force. How many steps am I allowed do you think before it stops giving my normal 1 day intervals and gives me long ones?
What I mainly understand is if the interval is too long you end up spending too much time on trying to recall and memorize and if it’s too small you don’t really remember it for the next step if the gap between them is significant, but I felt like some short steps can be good for driving in information thats just not getting in your head, of course it would be have to be paired with some other decent steps to work.
And yeah I’d plan on revisting anki again during the day if it helps me remember it more lol.
At first I thought I messed up my fsrs because I did learn ahead 900 min and had no steps so then fsrs would think “oh they can remember a card with an interval of 6 hours after failing it guess that’s how strong their memory is” and misinterpret my memory.
The problem is that 1s 5s 30s (and maybe even 2m) aren’t long enough for you to forget – so you’re not practicing remembering. That’s a mass-repetition/brute-force approach – which might seem effective in the short-term, but doesn’t form strong memories for the long-term.
A spaced-repetition approach is about waiting to study the card until you’re close to forgetting it. See Background - Anki Manual – and How To Remember Anything Forever-ish .
I can’t tell you. First, because that’s determined by your optimized FSRS parameters, your Desired Retention (DR) and the card’s review history. Second, because you’re assuming that your “normal 1 day interval” is the right interval, just because it’s the one you’re used to. That’s not necessarily true.
If you’ve optimized your parameters on a significant amount of review history, you can post your parameters here as text, along with your DR, and we can take a look.
FSRS doesn’t care about your Learn Ahead Limit – it only pays attention to how long it’s actually been since you last studied the card. If the card is set to be due in 6h, and you study it 5m later, FSRS cares about the 5m, and that you reviewed the card “early.”
FSRS-6 just knows that you reviewed the card on the same day. It doesn’t care about 5 min vs 6 hours. It only considers how many times you reviewed the card on the same day. This problem should be solved by the in-development FSRS-7.
I haven’t read any of the other messages in this thread. I just happened to notice this incorrect “fact” and thought I should point that out.
Good point. Thanks!
FSRS Parameters: 0.2532, 0.4902, 1.3207, 16.3767, 8.7124, 0.1557, 0.5130, 0.0013, 0.9152, 0.2671, 0.7276, 1.9673, 0.0025, 0.0975, 2.3655, 1.0000, 5.9999, 0.6279, 1.0564
My DR is currently 0.90
Total reviews for this deck: 1,214,630 reviews
You’ve definitely got plenty of review history!
No red flags in your parameters. Your cards start at pretty low intervals and grow slowly. Based on your parameters, it looks like you’re still using FSRS-5. If you’re not ready to give up your many learning steps, you might want to consider switching to FSRS-6 (released in Anki version 25.07), which does a better job of taking multiple same-day reviews into account.
Thanks dude. Would that mean my Learning steps don’t force me see it in a month or 20 days, but 1-3 days, because when I was using FSRS-5 and had those steps for a new card I completed it for like 2 days and it wanted me to see it in 15.9 years. I’m glad anki thinks I’ll be using it still when I haven’t planned that far ahead myself. (I joke anki is amazing)
Also looking back, it seems my steps were a bit different at that point
1s 5s 30s 2m 5m 10m 20m 30m 1h
instead of the
1s 5s 30s 2m 10m 1h
though I’m currently testing things and 10s 1m 10m works pretty fine for the first few steps.
It’s what I said in my first response –
– grading it Good nine times before it graduates is even more times.