How fast I should answer to a card?

[kind robin]

I'm trying to answer within 3 seconds now (kanji)
50% of them I recognize instantly, but for the rest I need to see what the kanji are made of

80% of my mistakes are because I remember the answer in 4-6 seconds

Often I can't just remember a word, but I can defenition it. I'm 50/50 on these cards, depending on the word itself.

Question:
Should I "time down" (answer correctly only what I recognize instantly) or increase the answer time?

[robust lynx]

Are you reviewing kanji cards, or word cards? For the latter, around 10ish seconds you should definitely just fail it, but actively thinking hard about your time taken is a recipe for rapid SRS fatigue and burnout.

For the former: first of all, it’s not recommended to learn kanji in isolation or do RRTK any more. We feel for most people that time is better spent jumping into vocab and picking it up there. However, if you’ve already determined you need to do it for whatever personal reason, I wouldn’t worry about the time at all. Perhaps 10 seconds can be a suitable limit, but you’re just trying to recall mnemonics and reinforce them. In the scheme of your studies, it’s not that important right now so being strict about recall time is unnecessary.

[kind robin]

Thanks for the reply.

I do RRTK (because there are 400 kanji left)

For the future, when I learn vocab
What are the time recommendations?

[robust lynx]

The only recommendation is to try to do it quickly. In the beginning, it’ll probably take up to 12ish seconds per card and that’s fine. It’ll drop as you improve. Don’t be too conscious of time though. 12 seconds is the limit, but you shouldn’t be sitting there internally counting seconds while racking your brain for an answer. Even thinking about that stresses me out.