251–260 of 313 posts
Memorizing anything in the age of Google is damn right foolish.
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My BS detector went off immediately when I read the link about Zettelkastens, and then I googled "Zettelkasten", and I skimmed through five different articles that were each pages long and talked over and over about how wonderful Zettelkastens are but didn't give any information about how they work or how to implement them practically. That's a pretty reliable indication that the service is the end, not a means to th…
> For the uninformed, a Zettelkasten is a searchable, unordered, labeled database. That's it. I could spin up ElasticSearch or something similar and have it crawl all the files on my computer and get an 80% solution. Kinda like Apple's "Finder" functionality.
If you index everything together you get something that it is merely a pile of searchable things. You do not experience the "conversation" with the slip-box as Niklas Luhmann described it. Software like http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/ that implements the "digital version" of the system suffers from what I like to describe as the "Hudsucker Proxy" problem: A young idealist visionary comes out and holds a big plastic loop and mutters "You know... for kids!" and nobody has a clue what that is supposed to mean. It isn't until someone shows how to use the "big plastic loop" before anyone understands what's happening. And that's really hard to do with something as abstract as a Zettlekasten despite it just "being little notes gathered together with lots of numbers and letters pointing at the other notes" or an "unordered database".
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…
I'd recommend having its own repository with Markdown files grouped by target domain using tags for every card. It'd help to search quickly relevant cards even in the same domain.
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…
My BS detector went off immediately when I read the link about Zettelkastens, and then I googled "Zettelkasten", and I skimmed through five different articles that were each pages long and talked over and over about how wonderful Zettelkastens are but didn't give any information about how they work or how to implement them practically. That's a pretty reliable indication that the service is the end, not a means to th…
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There is also org-drill that implements spaced repetition in org mode.
I think org-drill is just better overall since it's all stored as plain-text at the end of the day and each card is really editable and accessible. Anki in my experience has a clunky, slow GUI. It can't beat the creation and editing speed from vim keybindings and macros.
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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'…
I use Anki for that all the time 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
Clearly, millions of people are benefiting from this app.
I'm just finding the features and interface very bombarding. And, the sheer number of screen taps just to study the flash cards in the manner that I'd like (and even then, not fully within my perceived control) is pretty repelling.
Thank you for pointing that out that feature. It might help eventually with conversion.
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.
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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…
> On the paper journaling thing, though, I think the answer is much more clear cut: it's more about the artistic nature of it than anything else 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 d…
I did go through an experimentation phase trying to do what the "official" bullet journal people and the bujo "influencers" suggested. Instead of having to restart and adapt to a new app, I could try a little bit and discard what didn't work or I didn't like.
To the point that grandparent made about:
> A paper journal is almost always impossible to search, easily damaged, easily lost, and easily customized with stickers, different pens and pencils, and other decor.
I can't run a grep on a notebook, no, but I often know about when I took a note on something to find it quickly. I usually run through a single notebook for a bullet journal per year. I started with fountain pens the same time I shifted back to analog. I have a little fun with colored ink, changing colors at most once a week. I tend towards waterproof/water-resistant inks that can weather some random wetness and still be fine. Some of them are even UV-resistant/forgery proof. I'm not taking hours upon hours to create the perfect spread.
I'm not writing outside in the rain. I've misplaced my phone more than my notebook. With the way that many are paper phobic these days, I'm not in real fear that my book would grow legs and walk off.
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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.
Then on day 1 it will want to show you cards 1-5; day two it will show you 1-5 again and also 6-10; day three it will show you 6-10 again and also 7-15 (to simplify somewhat). So you're having some cards you know and some that are new.
If you have 50 cards you've forgotten, then on day 1 it will show you 1-10; on day 2 it will show you 11-20; day 3 it will show you 21-30, and so on -- all completely new. That makes it far more of a grind.