Spaced repetition, explained
Cramming feels productive because you can recall everything five minutes later. The problem shows up the next day, when most of it is gone. Spaced repetition fixes the actual mechanism that's failing: it shows you a fact right before you'd forget it, not right after you last saw it.
Build a deck and start reviewingWhy cramming doesn't stick
Every new memory fades, and it fades fastest right after you learn it. Read a fact once and, left alone, most of it is gone within a couple of days. Read it five times in one sitting and you've mostly just gotten very good at the last few minutes of short-term recall — the fade rate barely changes. What does change the fade rate is retrieval: the effort of pulling a fact out of memory on your own, rather than rereading it. Each successful retrieval makes the next fade slower, so the fact survives longer before it needs reinforcing again.
That's the whole idea behind a flashcard system. Instead of rereading a page, you're forced to answer first and get told after. And instead of reviewing everything on a fixed schedule, each card gets its own schedule, timed to when you're about to forget it.
What a review actually is
In R3CK0N's Flashcards section, a review is simple: you see the front of a card, try to answer from memory, then reveal the back and grade yourself honestly on how it went. That grade — not whether you got it "right" in some absolute sense — is what decides when you'll see the card next.
There are four grades, matching the buttons under every revealed card:
| Button | Means | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Again | You didn't get it, or guessed | Comes back within minutes, in the same session |
| Hard | You got it, but it was a struggle | Comes back sooner than a normal pass, and the next gap grows only a little |
| Good | You got it at a normal effort | The gap before the next review grows by a healthy multiple |
| Easy | It was no effort at all | The gap grows by more, and jumps further than Good would |
Rating honestly matters more than most people expect. Marking a shaky answer as Good just to feel good about it pushes the review further out than your memory can actually support, and the card comes back too late — you'll have forgotten it again, which costs more time than an honest Hard would have.
Why the gaps grow the way they do
Under the hood, R3CK0N schedules cards with FSRS, the algorithm behind modern Anki (see the FSRS explainer for how it actually works). The short version: every card carries an estimate of how well you currently remember it and how quickly that's fading. A good answer pushes the next review out further than the last one; a missed answer resets it back down. Cards you find easy drift toward long gaps fast; cards you keep missing get reviewed constantly until they stabilize.
The pattern that emerges, illustrated below, is not fixed — R3CK0N adjusts it per card and per person — but it's the general shape every spaced-repetition schedule follows:
| Review # | If you keep answering Good |
|---|---|
| 1st (new card) | Back again the same day, then the next day |
| 2nd | A few days later |
| 3rd | About a week later |
| 4th | Two to three weeks later |
| 5th+ | Months, then longer — as long as you keep answering well |
Miss a card at any point and it doesn't start over from zero, but the gap does shrink — enough reviews of a fact you keep forgetting will find the spacing that actually works for it.
How to actually start
- Open Flashcards and either add a starter deck, build your own, or import one from Anki (see the Anki import guide if you already have decks).
- Study a little every day rather than a lot occasionally — a schedule built around daily reviews falls apart if you skip a week, because everything piles up due at once.
- Keep sessions short. New material and overdue reviews are both capped per deck, so a daily session stays a few minutes, not an open-ended slog.
- Grade honestly. The schedule only works if Again means Again.
If you're building your own cards rather than importing someone else's, spend five minutes with how to write flashcards that actually stick first — a badly written card undermines the schedule no matter how well-tuned it is.
Frequently asked questions
How much time does this take per day?
It depends on how many new cards you add per day and how many decks you're running, both of which you control in the deck settings. Most people land somewhere between two and ten minutes a day once their reviews level off.
What if I get a card wrong on purpose to see it again sooner?
You can, but it defeats the point. The schedule is trying to find the longest gap you can handle without forgetting; deliberately failing cards just means more total reviews for the same material.
Do I have to build my own cards?
No — Flashcards ships with starter decks for common facts (see flashcards for mental math), and you can import existing Anki decks directly.
What happens if I stop for a while?
Cards that were due keep waiting for you; nothing is lost. You'll just have more due at once when you come back, so ease in rather than trying to clear it all in one sitting.
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