In spaced repetition, it's tempting to ponder per-card cost—"should I pay three minutes over my lifetime to memorize this?"
But for me, marginal cards are effectively *free* to add:
1. I review cards in time that'd be dead anyway.
2. I can't add enough cards to fill that time.
Conversation
Replying to
For instance, often I'll review cards while waiting 10 minutes for the next train. This doesn't "cost" me 10m because I would've just been screwing around on Twitter or something. And even with 1000s of cards, it often takes less than 10m! I can't write new ones quickly enough!
1
4
This leads to a *very* unintuitive feeling: it's… effectively free to memorize as many new cards as I can write? What?
Which in turn means that for me, the real marginal cost is in the moment of *writing* a new card.
2
9
I think there are ways to mitigate that cost, but some of it's essential: in writing cards, I'm synthesizing, comparing, filtering, personalizing, etc. I'm interested in structures and routines which support me in doing those things more rapidly or with less friction.
2
6
Once one's attention is on the writing-a-card cost, environment becomes a key barrier. The cost is way higher on a smartphone keyboard, so I make cards on my laptop. But my habits often misalign: I read while out, I read in bed, etc—the laptop's not around. Gotta "buffer" cards…
3
6
Replying to
For me, the cost of having low utility cards in my deck is that they gradually erode my interest in maintaining the practice at all. Imagine half the exercises in your gym routine were of dubious value... you might tire of it and just stop going entirely.
5