> Every minute spent on flashcards is a minute that cannot be spent on more contextualized study.

I often spend less than 5 minutes in the morning on my flashcards. There's not much deep contextualizing you can do in 3-5 minutes. Certainly not in areas like physics.

It is a false dichotomy. All minutes are not equal. I'll gain much more by spending less time on HN than by cutting out flash cards.