1. A lot of spaced repetition apps don't optimize for fast card creation. I like to make a card as soon as I come across something interesting, but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating. I wound up building my own app for this.
2. Cloze deletion is surprisingly effective. For those who don't know, cloze deletion involves taking a sentence, blanking the interesting parts out e.g. "The moon landing happened on _______", and trying to recall the blank parts. This is effective because it's a quick way to make cards, thus solving the problem of slow card creation.
3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet.
4. Subjectively speaking, using spaced repetition didn't just help me recall stuff in my cards, it also helped me recall stuff in general.