diff --git a/docs/reference/indices/flush.asciidoc b/docs/reference/indices/flush.asciidoc
index 118a68b7128..3ee2601bb38 100644
--- a/docs/reference/indices/flush.asciidoc
+++ b/docs/reference/indices/flush.asciidoc
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ POST /_flush
 === Synced Flush
 
 Elasticsearch tracks the indexing activity of each shard. Shards that have not
-received any indexing operations for 30 minutes are automatically marked as inactive. This presents
+received any indexing operations for 5 minutes are automatically marked as inactive. This presents
 an opportunity for Elasticsearch to reduce shard resources and also perform
 a special kind of flush, called `synced flush`. A synced flush performs a normal flush, then adds
 a generated unique marker (sync_id) to all shards.
@@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ which returns something similar to:
 === Synced Flush API
 
 The Synced Flush API allows an administrator to initiate a synced flush manually. This can be particularly useful for
-a planned (rolling) cluster restart where you can stop indexing and don't want to wait the default 30 minutes for
+a planned (rolling) cluster restart where you can stop indexing and don't want to wait the default 5 minutes for
 idle indices to be sync-flushed automatically.
 
 While handy, there are a couple of caveats for this API:
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/indices/memory/IndexingMemoryController.java b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/indices/memory/IndexingMemoryController.java
index b70a21c9df9..430b7634672 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/indices/memory/IndexingMemoryController.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/indices/memory/IndexingMemoryController.java
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ public class IndexingMemoryController extends AbstractLifecycleComponent<Indexin
         this.minShardTranslogBufferSize = this.settings.getAsBytesSize("indices.memory.min_shard_translog_buffer_size", new ByteSizeValue(2, ByteSizeUnit.KB));
         this.maxShardTranslogBufferSize = this.settings.getAsBytesSize("indices.memory.max_shard_translog_buffer_size", new ByteSizeValue(64, ByteSizeUnit.KB));
 
-        this.inactiveTime = this.settings.getAsTime("indices.memory.shard_inactive_time", TimeValue.timeValueMinutes(30));
+        this.inactiveTime = this.settings.getAsTime("indices.memory.shard_inactive_time", TimeValue.timeValueMinutes(5));
         // we need to have this relatively small to move a shard from inactive to active fast (enough)
         this.interval = this.settings.getAsTime("indices.memory.interval", TimeValue.timeValueSeconds(30));