Add 5-10 new cards per day in a mature SRS — this pace…

When This Fires

• When establishing or maintaining a spaced repetition practice
• When daily review sessions are taking 30+ minutes (too many new cards were added)
• When deciding how many cards to create from a new learning session
• Complements One atomic fact per spaced repetition card, answer under… (atomic cards) with the rate-limiting that keeps the system sustainable

Common Failure Mode

The enthusiasm spike: starting a new topic, creating 50 cards in one excited session, then drowning in 200+ daily reviews two weeks later. The review backlog grows until the daily session takes 45 minutes, the habit becomes aversive, and the system is abandoned entirely. A steady 5-10 per day produces the same total cards over time without the unsustainable spike.

The Protocol

(1) Set a daily new-card limit in your SRS settings: 5-10 new cards per day. Most SRS apps (Anki, RemNote) have this setting. (2) When creating cards from a learning session, create as many as you want but let the SRS meter them out at the daily rate. Excess cards queue for future days. (3) Monitor your daily review count: 50-100 reviews → sustainable, maintain pace. 100-150 reviews → borderline, reduce new cards to 5/day. 150+ reviews → unsustainable, pause new cards entirely until the backlog clears. (4) Never skip review days — each skipped day adds the skipped reviews to the next day, compounding the load. A 10-minute daily session is easier to maintain than a 40-minute session every 4 days. (5) If daily reviews consistently exceed your target, use the SRS's "suspend" or "bury" features to thin low-value cards from the deck rather than pushing through an aversive session.