One way to look at memory systems' efficiency is marginal cost: I can choose to "pay" 5m over my lifetime to memorize the answer to a question.
I find it generative to flip that around. Say I saturated 10 minutes of review daily—what would that casual practice unlock? (thread)
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This framing maps better onto my lived experience. I review during interstitial dead time I'd probably misuse. It doesn't "cost" 10 minutes: it's free, so long as it stays in that timebox.
Empirically, I find my reviews stay <10 minutes so long as I cap new questions to 40/day.
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If I could add 40 questions a day, that would mean I could add 14,600 questions a year, at the cost of 10 minutes a day!
The first chapter of Quantum Country is 112 questions, so that amount to something like memorizing the material from 130 textbook chapters!
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But I don't add 40 questions a day! Question-writing, not reviewing, is the real bottleneck for my practice.
It's awfully difficult to write good questions, and taxing even if you're skilled at it. I find it also requires a significant context switch.
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Yes, it's an essential tension here. I don't think I'm near the efficient frontier, though—the mnemonic medium already makes that pretty clear.