Believe me, this is me after having tried out a lot of methods in the past 2 years of me studying. My collection is plagued with cards that are so difficult, you think you got it after 5 min, 1 hour, 5 hours even yet you wake up the next day unable to recall. After completely shifting all my cards into cloze cards, each representing a single “unit” of information making them as brief as possible, trying out mnemonics, imagery, reformulating, I think my next idea is to just to copy the cards for the exact same reason you mentioned - doubling the workload.
Maybe these cards do require double the workload in order for them to be retained than a normal card would. Adjusting learning step would do more damage than good (I have tried it), because it is not a one size fit all thing.
I have begun to really resent myself because of this. I don’t know what is the cause of this. Perhaps because I am learning in a language foreign to mine(?), even though I do understand everything I read.
Do more 5 or more vigorous learning steps for ALL Cards and I am loosing too much time.
Do 3 or less learning steps and I am doing too little for these said cards to remain inside my head the next day and afterwards.
My current learning steps sit at (1s 5m 55m). Practically 2 learnings steps, since I have put the 1s step there as a boolean.
I don’t think I haven’t much left to do other than go ahead with this. For that a method to have to deck reviewer windows opened for 2 decks at the same time would be helpful.