My first FSRS "Optimize All Presets" led to a 75% reduction in reviews per day

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Hey folks, updated to FSRS about a month ago, things were going well, decided it was time to “optimize” so I did that. In addition, I selected Sunday as an “Easy Day” and selected a “reduced” workload. I did this on Saturday; I also downloaded the FSRS helper to enable the “Less Anki on Easy Days” → “Apply now” feature so I could have less cards yesterday (Sunday). That all worked like a charm. I’d say my reviews were decreased by 70%.

Unfortunately however, whereas I normally have 350-450 reviews per day, again today I only have around 150 reviews.

To be clear:

  • Sunday is definitely the only “easy day” I have selected.
  • I have no idea if the “FSRS helper” download & “apply easy days now” actions affected anything, I’m just stating all my tweaks.
  • My Desired Retention after optimizing all presets went from 85% → 86%

I’m really not sure what to do; I understand that increasing my desired retention higher would increase my reviews, but still, a 70% decrease in reviews surely isn’t just expected tweaking of my algorithm, especially considering my desired retention went up, not down.

Would appreciate any help/advice y’all may have.

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I’ll help you understand what’s happening with your FSRS optimization and the significant decrease in review count. Let me search for some relevant information to better address your situation.

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Found 3 results for 'tags:official FSRS reschedule cards optimization status:public'

I noticed you’ve experienced a significant reduction in daily reviews after optimizing your FSRS parameters. This is an interesting situation that could be related to how FSRS optimization works.

What Likely Happened

When you ran “Optimize All Presets,” the FSRS optimizer analyzed your review history and adjusted the parameters to better fit your actual learning patterns. The key issue here seems to be with the “Reschedule cards on change” setting.

By default, when you optimize FSRS parameters, Anki doesn’t automatically reschedule your existing cards. However, if the “Reschedule cards on change” option was enabled during optimization, it would have recalculated all your due dates based on the new parameters, potentially extending many intervals.

How to Check and Fix

  1. Check if rescheduling was enabled:

    • Go to Deck Options > Advanced > FSRS Options
    • Look for the “Reschedule cards on change” setting to see if it’s enabled

  2. Understand the implications:

    • When rescheduling is enabled during optimization, it often results in “a large number of cards becoming due” or, alternatively, having their intervals extended
    • The documentation specifically notes that “activating this option is not recommended when first switching from SM2”

  3. Options to adjust your workload:

    • If you want more reviews: Increase your desired retention (try 90-95% instead of 86%)
    • If the current schedule is fine: Simply continue with your studies as the algorithm has determined these intervals are optimal for your memory patterns
    • If you want to revert: You could restore from a backup made before optimization

Normal Behavior?

A 75% reduction in reviews is significant but not impossible with FSRS optimization. The optimizer might have determined that you were reviewing cards more frequently than necessary based on your actual performance data.

Would you like me to provide more specific guidance on adjusting your settings to increase your daily review count? Or would you prefer to continue with the optimized schedule for a while to see if it maintains your retention rate while requiring less study time?

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Hello,

I would be happy to help. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, it’s going to be pretty hard to nail down the specifics here. It would require looking at your review history, historical retention, previous parameters, current and recent retention, current parameters, and wrestling with a lot of modeling. Probably more than is feasible for lil ol’ me, tbh

But, I will say that, if you recently optimized your parameters, it’s not at all unusual for your daily review burden to drop. A 60-ish% drop is pretty significant, but not unheard-of. Again here, though, this depends on a lot of factors, so it’s hard to give a blanket statement one way or the other.

It is possible that, in tinkering with the FSRS Helper Add-on you may have inadvertently rescheduled your entire collection, and/or that you opted to ‘reschedule cards on change.’ Either could potentially explain the change in review totals, though neither necessarily needs to have happened to explain a drop in daily review burden.

All-in-all, though, I’m sorry to say this is one of those things where the requisite detective work to figure out exactly what happened underneath the hood of that particular add-on is probably beyond my ken. In a real pinch, you might try reaching out on the official Anki forums where some of the FSRS developers are known to hang out: https://forums.ankiweb.net/

If your retention stays about the same, which sounds like it may be the case, that would be the ultimate indication that nothing deleterious has changed and that FSRS is working as intended. Thus, you might keep an eye on your retention over the coming days/week and see what movement, if any, occurs there.

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