Comment by atahanacar a day ago
> the process of generating the cards contributes substantially to the learning and memory formation.
How is creating a card anything different than reviewing the card once? Anki is a long term tool, writing something down once isn't. The time spent creating cards is better spent on doing more reviews.
Making notes and re-writing in your own words have actually been found to not be very useful to memory formation [1]. Completing exercises works great: this corresponds to reviewing cards. Explaining it to others also works OK, but I'm not sure if creating cards is analagous to that.
[1] https://www.whz.de/fileadmin/lehre/hochschuldidaktik/docs/du...
At the risk of sounding glib, the first way that comes to mind is that the learner is using their own intellect and (short-term) memory to code the information into their own words (often or usually entailing at least some self-checking and critique) instead of merely "reviewing" (really, seeing for the first time) an unfamiliar association of prompt and response, which was generated by a stochastic program, and which may not be correct at all.
There is actually scientific evidence that direct engagement with material (e.g. making notes, re-writing in your own words, completing exercises, explaining it to others, etc.) is very beneficial to memory formation.
So, although creating a card is similar to reviewing it once (in that they will both help you remember it for a while), the former is worth more than the latter as a "unit" of memorisation. This means that you'll likely have longer review intervals, and therefore spend less time on reviews, if you wrote the card yourself, because the memory starts out stronger.
That has to be balanced of course with the amount of time you spend writing the card vs the gains you make in saved review time from having done so.