> I didn't have to spend days of time that I would have had to with spaced repetition
The number of repetitions per item is basically O(1) over your lifespan because of the exponential backoff. If you're spending constant time practicing every day, it's usually because you're constantly adding new items to memorize. If you stop adding new items, the workload decays rapidly.
Maybe loci is faster for you, but it's not obvious to me that's true in general.
While it may be constant over all time (given the convergence of a geometric series as you imply), there is still a startup cost of brainpower every time one must practice. I'd rather get everything done at once than have to practice every some number of days, if simply to avoid having the thought of practicing in the back of my mind.
I've thought this too but I've seen some things that put this assumption into question [0]. The way that I've dealt with it in Anki specifically is by decreasing my leech threshold such that knowledge that isn't working well in the exponential-backoff strategy simply gets removed from my reviews.
Interesting. Another approach might be to apply mnemonic techniques (like method of loci) to leeches to make them memorable so they're no longer leeches.
The number of repetitions per item is basically O(1) over your lifespan because of the exponential backoff. If you're spending constant time practicing every day, it's usually because you're constantly adding new items to memorize. If you stop adding new items, the workload decays rapidly.
Maybe loci is faster for you, but it's not obvious to me that's true in general.