Ease hell is a myth?

Ease Hell is a situation where many cards are interval too short and the learning burden is too high, and learners are more likely to burn out. It happens in these situations:

  1. For students, exams are one of the causes. e.g. If the next exam is in 2 weeks and the interval of Easy on the card is 1 month, the student cannot press Easy. Because if the student does not remember the card at the time of the exam, they will lose their score. So if students are worried about the exam, they avoid Easy and intentionally press Hard or Again.

  2. They cannot press Easy because just all those cards are too difficult, plus the cards are important and cannot be skipped. This often occurs with medical students and difficult language learners. (or the cards are made improperly.)

So Ease Hell is the result of the proper working of the algorithm. The learner is learning difficult cards and is intentionally pressing the button to shorten the interval to get a higher score on the exam. It is only learners with time to spare who can solve it by pushing the Easy button or editing cards.

Ease Hell does not occur in FSRS because FSRS adjusts them automatically, but if all cards are too difficult the intervals will be shortened. In this case, perhaps learners can adjust their workload with the FSRS option.