Been using FSRS for as long as i have been using Anki, a month or 2 ago I switched to 80% (back then 90%) on FSRS so to lower my amount of daily reviews. Currently I’m only doing the japanese vocab Kaishi 1.5k. 2 weeks ago or so I started doing 10 new cards a day in hope of going through faster. Recently I had to lower to 5 new a day, due to feeling like the review amount was growing quickly and I was failing many more than I was remembering. I press on “optimize” FSRS every week.
I had seen and applied the last AnKing anki recommendation settings beforehand. I have search around but have been unable to find anything relevant. Honestly I’m very confused if this is how it is supposed to be, and also scared of changing anything and doing more harm than good.
You have a single learning step that is just 2 seconds. Is that really long enough to test if you can recall the answer from memory on a card you have just seen for the first time? I would keep this at something closer to the default of 10m (ten minutes).
The goal should be to make sure you have really committed a new card to memory before giving a passing grade (Hard/Good/Easy).
I’ll add that the solution for this question almost always lies in the student, and not in the settings. When you get a card wrong – what are you doing to make sure you have a better chance of getting it right the next time? If you just click Again and hope for the best, you’re skipping the important part where you Learn/Relearn the card. [Turning off Auto Advance, at least on the Answer side, seems like it would be good for you too.]
Then you should choose a step delay (for learning AND relearning) that is long enough for you to find out if what you did actually worked – whatever you’re comfortable with in the 5-20m range is a good place to start.
You’re spending so much time (or at least doing so many reps) on Relearn cards every day – you should also consider pausing New cards entirely until you have a better handle on the 400+ cards you already have active.
I wouldn’t use D as your measure of success/failure/progress. Your retention results are what you should be looking at. Or if you have a backlog of overdue cards, get yourself to a workload you can handle.
