Bored of SRS? My 1-week active review experiment

I was getting super bored of normal SRS flashcards so I tried a mini experiment this week. Instead of just hitting spacebar I forced myself to write a single dumb story using three random words from my deck. Honestly my retention went from like 60% to almost 90% when I tested myself today. It takes a bit longer but actually using them in a weird context makes them stick way better. Anyone else tried this?