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Using Anki to remember what you read

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Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#71
post #4

If Anki’s UI/UX turns you off, I’ve built an alternative called Mochi ( https://mochi.cards/ ) that uses markdown. Incidentally it also supports Zettelkasten like note taking like described in the article.

can you export export/save the cards?

Yeah you can export decks. The export is .mochi format, but it's just a zip file with some plain text data and attachment files (like images, audio, etc).

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#73
post #50

Just tried to use it. What's with the Anki UX? You can't just install the mobile app and start downloading shared decks to use.

I believe the mobile app is limited to just studying. Creating new cards and downloading shared decks must be done using either the desktop app or the web app.

It must be copyrighted or have some other broken dis-economy, because the most obvious product decisions that would make this huge have been rejected.

The whole point of this is to study in spare moments, like on public transit - using mobile. Uninstalled. That's so disappointing because it's so obvious, and I can't trust an ecosystem that dumb.

I didn't think it was possible to be as disappointed in an app as I am with this one.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#74
post #61
post #35

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 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 dele…

One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset". I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a…

I'm kind of new to Anki myself (started a couple of weeks ago) so I might be wrong, but I think you can limit the amount of cards you want to review on a per-deck-basis. The default-number is quite high (200 per day I think?).

If you make that number the same as the "new cards per day"-number, that might be a work around for your issue?

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#75
post #3

I sometimes wonder if tools like Anki aren't just another form of procrastination. The time invested could probably be better spent.

It is worth considering the cost, yes. My time isn't so optimised that 15 minutes each day on Anki is otherwise going to be spent on deep work. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html This writeup estimates his usage of Anki is 4-7 minutes of review time for each card over 20 years. So, if it's worth taking 10 minutes to remember a fact, it's worth putting in Anki. (This writeup also explains it's not worth putting t…

I use it for programming. My general rule is anytime i need to keep looking up some command, i just stick it in anki. Here are two python cards I added this week:

What method do you use to format a datetime object in python:

strftime()

How do you create a new virtual env using python 3

python3 -m venv

Those may seem stupid to you, but I was looking them up and now i do not need to. I also use them for other concepts when I want to know a language better. For example

What are the three prototypical methods of a js promise?

then, catch, finally

What does the constructor of a promise take?

and executor function

How many parameters does a executor take?

2

What are the two parameter of the executor function (constructor of a js promise)

resolve() and reject()

Things like this just help me as a programmer. I agree it's not for everyone, but I have the time an enjoying doing it.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#76
post #61
post #35

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 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 dele…

One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset". I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a…

There are a couple ways to do it that I've found. None of them is perfect for every situation I've encountered. I think that part of the reason why there's no clean way to do it is that there are so many specific things someone might want to do:

- If you want to just push cards to the back of the queue, but remember timings and history, there's a built-in command to do that.

- If you want to change the current interval of a card, but keep your history, there's also a built-in command for that.

- If you need to do the above in bulk, the "Reset Card Scheduling" plugin can make this a lot more convenient.

- If you really do want to completely reset a card, forget all history, etc., and treat it as a new card, there's the "Remove Card History" plugin.

Finally, when returning to old decks, I found I usually get the most mileage by leaving all that stuff alone and just suspending the whole thing, and then un-suspending them at a steady pace. I neglected my Kanji deck for months, and I used that approach to get myself back up to speed by doing the catch-up review in the original (RTK) order I originally learned them rather than based on Anki's priority.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just going to be a bit nitpicky here. Noun declension is a feature of various non-slavic languages, including Latin which English speakers have a decent chance of having been exposed to. Modern Russian has 6 cases (with a couple more that pop up very rarely) with 3 genders and singular/plural endings. It's a total of 36 possible combinations, which is not that bad. Masculine and neuter also share most endings so ther…

> Modern Russian has 6 cases (with a couple more that pop up very rarely) with 3 genders and singular/plural endings. It's a total of 36 possible combinations, which is not that bad. 36 isn't that bad but Russian also has 253 irregular verbs [0], each of which adds another set of combinations. A lot of them are just small tweaks and there are some that follow a set of patterns (e.g. идти with its various prefixes) bu…

Irregular verbs are a conjugation problem, which is different from noun declension.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#78
post #61
post #35

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 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 dele…

One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset". I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a…

I don't see that there's any difference in responding "Again" to an expired card vs reclassing that card as new. When I'm catching back up on an old deck I just turn new card off and limit my reviews until I've worked through the backlog this way.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#79
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaced repetition really clicked for me when I realized that it isn’t about learning, but about keeping memories fresh. If you don’t have an emotional attachment to each card in the deck, reviews become a terrible slog. Mine is a mix of random insights I’ve had, photos of places I’ve been, summaries of things I’ve learned, etc. The questions are simply there to force me to engage my memory, which drags up the whole w…

Yes yes, I agree. The way I tackle the threat of detachment from my cards is to aggressively delete cards as soon as I see boredom creeping in. I switched from Anki to Supermemo, though. Much better for managing context and even keeping organized notes that may or may not be used for active recall at some later point.

Same. After about a year of using Anki the need to aggressively delete became apparent. With good culling and time to reflect, review can be almost a meditation.

How does Supermemo help you keep keep context?

> keeping organized notes that may or may not be used for active recall

I use a separate notes app (Bear) for this. Is there much advantage in your experience to integrating active recall notes with Evernote-style reference notes?

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#80

Some Anki-like alternatives that people may like and not have seen (mostly focused on learning languages): - Memrise - https://www.memrise.com/ - Has a very extensive selection of decks for language learning - Supermemo - https://www.supermemo.com/en - Has a (disputed) claim that its algorithm beats Anki, various pre-made decks - Drops - https://languagedrops.com/ - Mobile-only, has a higher reliance on pictures and…

There is also SuperMemo 18 (https://super-memo.com/supermemo18.html) which is from the same people as supermemo.com except it's a desktop app with way more features but also a much higher learning curve.

If you use SM and you use anki both for a significant amount of time it's not hard to see that SM leaves you with way less reps. Anki is based on the very first version of the SuperMemo algorithm (from ~1990 or so which was the first SRS algorithm ever) known as SM2. Current version of SM uses SM18.

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