> I was surprised to hear that with just 10 minutes of practice he can sustain up to 40 new cards added every day.

It'd take me over 10 minutes simply to add those 40 cards.

But if he's referring only to reviewing, it's believable. Personally, I don't think I can handle more than 10-20 new cards per day.

> I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session.

Are you literally going through all the questions? Isn't the whole point of SR not to do that?

If you meant it took you an hour to go through whatever subset is due for that day, my next question would be: Are you reviewing daily? SR algorithms assume you review daily, and that's the only sane way to keep the time low. As an example, out of a 2000 card deck, I had to review only 6 cards the other day.