My deeper beef with this method is the complete absence of emphasizing, discovering or forming connections between cohesive things. We're trying to learn, it's a super power to start seeing patterns in what we learn, it forms buckets that we can put new concepts and information in. Without it, the learning is ... shallow.
I found a better way. I map out full concepts to fit on single sheets of printer paper. Frontside has mostly words with lines connecting them or forming groups. The backside is for related drudgery (formulae, dates, numbers, names). I repeat new things everyday till I can reproduce the sheet front and back without any help. And then slowly introduce days of spacing between repetitions.
This is way more satisfying, no tech involved, no algorithms, just hard work and way faster. I do not have any evidence of this working long term. The things I put so much effort in learning to reproduce with such accuracy usually is useful in the short term only. So it works for me.
We've been doing it for a few weeks and she now knows ~100% of all countries and their flags. Just absolutely domination level learning.
I think it's a matter of finding things that fit Anki, and not trying to fit Anki to the thing you want to learn. Geography is a perfect application: we all would be a bit more informed by knowing all countries, seas, etc; and it's something that Anki is very well suited for.
I've also added:
- the numerical value for letters (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc) which I think will give me greater powers of lexical sorting. We'll see.
- NATO phonetic alphabet
- multiplication up to 12x12. I neglected/avoided automating that stuff as a kid and my confidence in doing mental arithmetic is still low. Not sure this is a good case for Anki yet...we'll see.
- A custom deck with the faces and names of everyone at my work. This feels like a slam dunk. I am terrible with names, so I think this can up my game a lot.
In my experience it's hard to find things that feel marginally useful/fun to learn and that works with Anki. But when it does, it's amazing.
Another way of doing it could be generating a deck with questions like:
"Q or P. Which comes first?"
I suppose that which technique will be superior depends on whether you usually sort things relative to each other, or relative to their container. If you have a fixed container of files, you could think, "ah, 'T', that's 20 (out of 26), I should look down 3/4 of the length of the container". But if the container wasn't evenly divided - for instance, your 'I' for 'Insurance' was a much thicker file than your 'T' for 'Taxes' or whatever - you'd no longer be able to use those numbers directly. What do you think?
is this just for fun?
The things I'm trying to learn like past economic decisions and investments and their impacts, logical fallacies, algorithms and data structures for my next coding round, database design patterns, areas where one system design pattern excels and sucks at with examples, all study areas where finding the core patterns and their applications is central to the learning process, to make any bit of real progress. Anki sucks so bad at this. m
my disgust at atomic spaced repetition, of which Anki is the cheerleader, comes from how gullible I was reading salesy pitches of "remember anything", "remember forever", "how i could memorize x in y days" kind of articles floating around suggesting it. It left a bad taste, like those As-seen-on-tv home exercise equipments and non stick pans with grifty promises.
Anki maybe useful, to some, but it falls apart for everyone as soon as you add any meaningful complexity beyond mapping 2 lists word to word.
So why do it? Why not learn things the wholesome way? With pen and paper ?
If we accept that all learning involves some memorization, I believe there's no harm in using the best tool for that specific job. I've seen a good amount of literature showing that SRS-like systems are indeed the best.
You can make connections that give you really deep intuition; it just takes practice making cards. I wrote about it here: https://jacobgw.com/blog/tft/2024/05/12/srs-intuit.html
I'm confused why you'd expect spaced repetition to serve this purpose. Did someone claim it would?
Yes, it is shallow. It's meant to be shallow. It's not meant to replace other tools to build connections. It's not meant to be a complete solution. You still need to apply the material to learn it.
Spaced repetition is for remembering/recall - not understanding. It's useful for people who have already done the work to understand (practice problems, etc), but would like to keep it in memory. If you are taking grad level analysis, and can't remember that a compact set is closed, because it's been 2 years since you took undergrad analysis, then SR will help you.
In some cases one can also use decks made by others, which can help avoid wasting time on dry, unnecessarily fluffed up instructional materials with low signal-to-noise ratios like is common in university courses.
I think Matuschak wants to be able to recall particular things ~forever, and spaced repetition is the best method known for that.
(Nit: Your sentence begins as a genuine expression of puzzlement rather than an outright criticism, but then you refer to Matuschak's "obsession", which pre-judges the issue. It would be more consistent to refer to his "emphasis on" or "advocacy of".)
Edit: Can't edit my original post though, time's up. But I would if I could!
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.
Yes, referring just to reviewing. Adding takes much more than ten minutes, as you say. And so, in practice, I don't saturate this capacity most days.
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465431668930...
Matuschak writes:
> In my personal practice, I've accumulated thousands and thousands of questions.
> I spend about ten minutes a day using my memory system. Because these exponential schedules are very efficient, those ten minutes are enough to maintain my memory for thousands of questions, and to allow me to add up to about forty new questions each day.
It takes a while to formulate (and subsequently edit) a single good question (https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...), but suppose we leave that aside and assume that by "using my memory system", Matuschak means answering previously-formulated questions. He says that questions should take only a few seconds each, so suppose it takes 10 seconds on average to answer a question. Then one could answer 40 questions in 400 seconds, which is under 7 minutes. That leaves 3 minutes to review roughly 20 questions of older material.
A lot of people get frustrated when they have been learning an item for weeks, answered the card over a dozen times, and yet still struggle to remember it. That’s because you need months for the SR algorithm to work properly. You really need to commit to it for the long haul for it to be effective.
Personally I can remember random words in obscure languages off the top of my head (instantaneously), purely because I added a card for them years ago and still keep current.
A concrete example from my deck: word added 2024-02-24, three reviews, now with an interval of 3.03 months. No 'again' answers; nice and easy! Another word, added 2024-02-29, not so good: 14 reviews and an interval of 15 days.
I think there are several factors contributing to forgetfulness with Anki for me, some of which might overlap with your experience:
A: not properly 'learning' the word in the first place. For me, 'learning' means using the word in context, studying its etymology (even if I do not intend to memorise that) and saying it out aloud. If I don't do that at the beginning, it won't really stick until I effectively start all over again.
B: 'learning' words on a bad day, or too late in the day. Even if I 'learn' the words properly, I need to have learnt them in Anki when I'm feeling moderately energetic. If I'm exhausted mentally or physically, my rigorous learning strategy doesn't seem to translate into memory. When I notice myself doing Anki reviews much slower than usual due to tiredness, I generally limit the review count and try to catch up when I'm fresh another day.
C: not being consistent enough with reviews. Both the time spent on each individual review and the time spent in total are important - 4 seconds per word is a good sign for me, and strictly 20 minutes a day in total. That allows me to keep up a pace of 12 new words a day very consistently.
Would love to hear which parts of this sound familiar to you, or what other things you've noticed for yourself!
This should (hopefully) get easier over time. From your dates there, it looks like the cards you have to re-learn often were only originally added 3 months ago? I think this should become easier for you in 6, 9, or 18 months – provided you continue to keep updated on the cards.
A. I definitely agree here. If I don't at least know understand a word to say, 30% confidence, I will never learn it, and will forever repeat it without making any progress. Personally I use images and sound to help make words stick in my mind. There's a lot of research about the effectiveness of imagery (see the "picture superiority effect.")
B. Ditto with #1. In scientific terms, this is called "encoding." Properly encoding things at the beginning has a big effect on your long term retention.
C. I do my reviews every morning while on the exercise bike. I use a gamepad to move through them more quickly, although I would technically be better with typing them out.
Also, as a side note, I have written a few blog posts on an old Substack about using Anki and AI tools:
https://neurotechnicians.substack.com/archive?sort=new
You might find the one about Using Images to Remember Things useful.
Whenever I fail a word, I try hard to find a reason for it. Most of the time it's interference - my answer resembles some similar word that I already know. I make a mental note about it, add this other word to the card. In most stubborn cases, some redundancy is good, I create another card for the same word in another context or just for a derivative of it.
Another thing that works for me is adding images (some of my cards just have a picture on the question side), and example sentences with the word in various contexts.
I have no doubt that spaced repetition is a biological reality in how our memories work but I haven't found a way to make it resonate for me.
The mistake most people make is simply adopting the "boring" flash card format of FRONT-BACK, and not incorporating other more creative types of cards. For example, question-answer, visualization, triggers, or unique images. ChatGPT is pretty useful for this, as you can get it to present the same information in a variety of different formats and contexts.
The gamification of finishing my queue doesn't work when it always has thousands of entries in.
That's very interesting! The review sessions cap at 50 questions, so that means well over a minute for each. Our design intent is that if you can't remember in a few seconds, you should mark it as forgotten, view the answer, and move on. The marginal benefit from exerting marginal effort to remember on your own from point is not high. But your comment suggests that it would be helpful for the interface to do something to suggest the tempo we have in mind. Thank you for sharing.
Like, I often had cards asking me a question, and then I'd have to think a little bit about the question, then I couldn't remember, then I look at the solution, and I have to think again about the answer, and how it relates to other concepts.
Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work the first few times you try to associate the answer with the question. Then it begins to sink in, and you can remember the answer for a few minutes after seeing it. When you've successfully remembered it several times after short-delay, then the program increases the delay. When you've successfully remembered it several times after medium-delay, then the program increases the delay again.
> don't you need some time to actively memorize it again?
The rapid repetition of asking / being shown the answer multiple times IS how you actively memorize it.
If the deck is so large it takes you an hour to get through one cycle, there are too many cards in it. Start over with a deck that takes you only 5-10 minutes, and spend an hour going through several repetitions. When your rapid-recall rate becomes high, slowly add more new cards.
From your description, it sounds like, when a user flubs a question in a session and is shown the answer, you do not quickly re-test them on the same question during the session to improve recall, but just go on to other questions instead.
While I see the value in it, the cost for me personally is also very high. I was surprised to hear that with just 10 minutes of practice he can sustain up to 40 new cards added every 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. Maybe my brain is just slower at recalling things.