231–240 of 313 posts
>Imagine this: >You’re an 18 year old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world. >Soon after, you’re thrust into management. Now, you’re leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest growing internet companies of the last decade. I can't bring myself to…
When you just memorize you lose intuition which is the far more useful portion of learning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
From a different (but really probably the same) angle, this is the frustration I've had with Anki as well. I just want a "dumb" flashcard application that doesn't try to apply "smart" techniques/heuristics. I was just looking for a way to do the same paper card quizzing digitally without having to actually carry decks on my person. Every app I've tried over the years powered under the hood by Anki had this issue. It'…
There’s a “cram seen cards” feature under custom study that’ll just give you a temporary brand new deck you can run through in random order
This article reminds me of posts about "bullet journalling" on sites like Pinterest: the optimization of the productivity process or tool (or in the case of "bullet journal" posts, the beauty of the tool) is the end itself, not a means to an end. The posts are about/by "productivity" or "journalling" enthusiasts and don't map well to people who are simply seeking a bit of an organization or productivity boost, not an…
I think you can go too deep into it as a form of procrastination, but I think this post is sincere. Spaced repetition is backed by science as an effective way to acquire knowledge (e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/ ). I'm personally more skeptical of the Zettelkasten/Roam/PKB craze as being effective, but that's only because I feel like I've had yet to find a problem where it would have been…
A counterexample as food for thought: I do all of my task tracking in a paper notebook. It looks boring -- there's no design and I only use one black and one red pen.
What I've found in over 5 years I've used more than a dozen task trackers for various organizations across different projects and teams. Each time, I have to learn the system and adapt my process to it. Every six months the productivity community goes nuts over some new app.
On the other hand, my notebook process is just the same. Paper has been around for over a thousand years and will be around a lot longer than that. I never have to keep up with the new hot productivity system or worry about the company that makes my favorite app going out of business. Paper will never release an update that makes me redo my whole process.
Paper let's me find a system that works and stick with it. Paper gets out of the way. I can focus on being productive instead of productivity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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've used Anki for about ten years, and I'm going to tell you a huge secret... There's absolutely no need to "reset". Ever. If you have only ten minutes to devote to Anki, then only spend ten minutes. If at some later point, you have more time, then spend that time. Set the maximum reviews per day to something you can do most days -- for me, that's 250 cards. If you're behind, turn off 'new' cards. And eventually, yo…
Each time I've gone back to a deck, I've just slugged out the few days of heavy reviews and let Anki take care of the rest. The stuff that I've forgotten, Anki will nag me with. The stuff that I've retained for years, stays retained.
One thing that I do suggest is to limit the maximum interval to 365 days, and to remove the review limit. I also tend to use the "hard" answer on cards that I've retained in decks that I've ignored for some time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. He is arguing for memorization. I'm saying memorization of this kind of "facts" seems unconvincing at best. Memorizing a "data card" about Reagan with this scribbled on it seems like something that would only be useful for a trivia quiz. "Mozart composed this or that", "Reagan's presidency had something to do with trickle down economics", "Washington had false teeth [1]", etc. I know…
Indeed, a fact like "Shostakovich composed his 5th sympohny in 1937" may have little value on itself, but its value is compounded with related facts. For example, if you also knew that Shostakovich was Russian, you could deduce with reasonable certainty that he composed this piece while living in the USSR (knowing also that the USSR was in place in 1937). This in turn might allow you to enjoy the piece more, because…
As for my nitpick, it was a tangential point I couldn't resist making: that trickle down economics is not exclusively an 80s thing, but (sadly, in my opinion) remains very relevant today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. He is arguing for memorization. I'm saying memorization of this kind of "facts" seems unconvincing at best. Memorizing a "data card" about Reagan with this scribbled on it seems like something that would only be useful for a trivia quiz. "Mozart composed this or that", "Reagan's presidency had something to do with trickle down economics", "Washington had false teeth [1]", etc. I know…
Indeed, a fact like "Shostakovich composed his 5th sympohny in 1937" may have little value on itself, but its value is compounded with related facts. For example, if you also knew that Shostakovich was Russian, you could deduce with reasonable certainty that he composed this piece while living in the USSR (knowing also that the USSR was in place in 1937). This in turn might allow you to enjoy the piece more, because…
Not the person you're replying to, but my feeling is that if you're writing an article about a system to use to usefully remember things, if you're going to then cite an example of something you've remembered, you should focus on what is actually important to remember about that fact. Saying "I remembered that 'trickle-down economics' was 'important in the Reagan administration'" does not do that, and could demonstrate that this memorization method is actually teaching you to remember the wrong things.
It doesn't matter if the post is or is not about 80s economics, but if you're going to use an example out of 80s economics to prove that your method is good, then show that your method actually helped you remember something important about 80s economics, not a piece of trivia that not only isn't useful, but is counter-productive to learn about if you don't remember the meat of the idea, and things like whether or not it was a good idea.
It's possible that the author did actually know and remember the useful parts of those facts, but did not actually demonstrate that his method helped him remember actual useful facts... which is kinda the point of his article.
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.
Would love to see sample decks for languages. Like learning basic 1000 words & sentences in different languages.
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…
> 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet. Can someone tell me if this is a crazy good idea? Social network + spaced repetition. Why should you build all your own cards? Taking a class with classmates? Create a group & create cards during lecture, review/curate cards afterwards during study session, then rate which ones were most useful after the…
BTW, you can choose as many or few excerpts as you want, and what books / articles as well.
If the good folks at Readwise are reading this comment: I'd love to see an Android app with OCR capability. I read "dead tree" versions of books from time-to-time and want to save those highlights.