I’m currently in the thick of my Boards studying time and have been using FSRS for a few months now with my boards decks. However, I have noticed some trouble with my intervals.
Here are my settings:
The main issue I’m facing is that when I hit “Good”, the card comes back in 10 minutes, but if I hit “Good” again, the next interval jumps to 14–19 days. This feels too long, and I would prefer it to be closer to 7–10 days instead. On the other hand, if I hit “Again” and then “Good” a minute later, the next interval is only 2 days. The difference between 2 days to 2 weeks feels too extreme.
What I find most confusing is that if I hit “Again” once and then “Good”, the card is immediately scheduled for 2 days, with no intermediate step. Ideally, I’d like the interval to decrease (not all the way to 2 days) every time I hit “Again”, rather than defaulting to 2 days. Additionally, I’d prefer the “Good” interval for learning cards to be slightly shorter, ideally around 10 days instead of immediately jumping to 14–19 days.
Is there a way to adjust this through settings, or would I need to change my target retention to achieve this?
Those initial intervals are entirely expected with your parameters and 86% DR.
You might think that 14d “feels too long” – but you should at least consider that … you’re wrong. As individuals we are terrible judges of things like that, which is one of the reasons having personalized parameters is so great.
When was the last time you re-optimized your parameters? If you’re optimized, and you get a low RMSE when you Evaluate (do you?), and your Retention results are matching what you want (are they?) – then FSRS appears to be working for you already.
I… actually didn’t know about this table until @Expertium mentioned it. I appreciate the help. Today was a bit of an off day, but over longer periods of time, it looks like my retention is close to my desired retention. Would I need to use the True Retention table to change my DR or is that unnecessary?
I guess the question I originally had was for if I were to see cards for a lecture I just watched, it would give the ones I hit good for in 1-2 days, but after those 2 days, it would give me those “long” 14-19 day intervals. And the ones I hit again for, it would keep those on an interval that is more often. Regardless, I will stick with it. Thank you!
No, you don’t change your DR to whatever this table is showing. If there’s significant difference in retention rate and desired retention, you just make sure you’re optimising presets regularly, you have divided material under different presets, and you are using buttons correctly.
As individuals we are terrible judges of things like that, which is one of the reasons having personalized parameters is so great.
