'Optimising' learning steps as you go along

Hey everyone! This is a great forum that has really helped me out with Anki!

Had a quick Q today about learning steps (sorry if this has been asked before)

I’m currently learning new cards with the steps: 1 hour (for incorrect), 3 days, 7 days, with graduation at 12 days which is working reasonably well so far.

My question is, once I have finished my reviews for the day (including cards in learning), is it OK to ‘tweak’ the learning steps before doing New cards? E.g. if I know that the next topic is easier, can I remove the ‘3 days’ step?

Will this retroactively affect other ‘learning cards’ scheduling or just the new ones?

(I suppose my thoughts on this so far are: if a learning card is already at, say 7 days, then removing the 3 day step won’t affect it, but if a card were due in 3 days, it will now skip to 7 days? I wonder if that’s right?)

One other application of this I can think of would be, if I know I am going to be particularly busy in 3 days time, I could tweak the steps to 4 days rather than 3 days before doing the New cards (so they’ll come up the day after)

Is there any potential for harm with regards to long-term retention here?

Thank you!

Changing the steps while cards are in learning may give a strange next step, so I’d recommend you leave them as they are, and use the Easy button when you want to skip the remaining steps for a learning card.

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Thanks