301–310 of 313 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it. That's basically the spaced repetition model. You need to forget a little bit, so that working memory isn't saving you, and the recall process takes effort. That's what builds long term memory. Spaced repetition systems just extend that process beyond the length of the book, in a t…
I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget. I'm more likely to forget the name of the theorem. But space repetition might be useful for formulas. But I'm not too crazy about spaced repetition. I used it to learn all the capitals in the world, and after about a month I managed to do all of them without error. But after two y…
> I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget.
I find it too easy to trick myself into believing I understand a concept on a fundamental level. But often that "understanding" slips away, and six months later when faced with an example problem out of context I struggle to solve it.
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…
Luhmann started out by doing these things:
* He had sequ. numbered cards, that were written on until they were full and therefore could contain multiple topics - and one topic could therefore also be on multiple cards (no. 1,7,15), if he later added to it
* He had a topic index to map card numbers to topics
* Most important: he used this system with slight variations continuously over years and it was a one person system
The benefit (that you can get with a personal wiki too, if you follow the system with Plugins) is, that when you get all cards on a topic, you also get the information on the topic you wrote down right before and after thinking about the topic you are researching...
As information organisation and knowledge is a personal thing, retrieving info from the cards with the other topics you thought of right before and after, might lead to subconscious connections that
- and here is the "conversation" -
then lead to your brain making connections that go beyond what you wrote down on the cards... at least that is how Luhmann described it... could anyone follow my little mental jump session?
Anki usage is huge in medical school [1]. There are a handful of huge premade decks students drill hours a day. I think flashcards are hugely underrated for software developers. Memorization is commonly dismissed as unnecesary when we have searchable documentation and Stack Overflow, but the same argument could be had over touch typing. There is enormous value in moving data from disk to L1 cache. If nothing else, ha…
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…
In traditional note-taking systems, the category is the most obvious first-class citizen. In ZK, the little ideas take precedence, because some little idea that belongs to category A can easily end up belonging to other categories B, C, D, ... as time goes on and you study more subjects/discipline.
I'm sure the idea I'm describing is nothing new, groundbreaking, or unique to ZK - but this is the impression that I got, and I've had the pain of having very poorly managed knowledge via Evernote/OneNote/Notion/etc. before. I also dabbled with Anki and mindmapping. I believe the optimal solution is to combine all 3, since mindmaps have the "graph" structure part down; Anki only focuses on recall, but not conceptual understanding/linkage; and traditional notes, while obviously storing more information, are usually organized in hierarchical top-down structures that don't lend themselves well to reviewing or building a deliberate map of knowledge.
Another alternative to mindmaps is something like Jerry's Brain [2], where irrelevant nodes are collapsed until you explore them. Jerry has given extremely compelling presentations because he's used it for something like 20 years.
I am aware of a bias as I write this: I simply might not have had enough discipline when using traditional note-taking systems before, and am going through a bit of a (pre) honeymoon phase with this new ZK stuff. Just my 2 grains of salt.
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…
I think it's important that exercises are tightly linked to the source material, like to a specific paragraph of an article, etc. So these materials should probably be added to the system as well. * With the same starting point it should be easier to have a proper discussion. * A new person can read the source and understand cards more easily with context. * Later if they've forgotten the topic completely they can reread it and hopefully remember faster.
I also had some ideas about being able to discuss and alter every paragraph in the source. Allow it to evolve to be more clear as people come and discuss confusing points.
Anki usage is huge in medical school [1]. There are a handful of huge premade decks students drill hours a day. I think flashcards are hugely underrated for software developers. Memorization is commonly dismissed as unnecesary when we have searchable documentation and Stack Overflow, but the same argument could be had over touch typing. There is enormous value in moving data from disk to L1 cache. If nothing else, ha…
Why not use techniques memory champions use though? Never heard of one of them using Anki. Mnemonics, imagery and memory palaces on the other hand... It's like all the amateurs swearing that steel bikes are the best when all the professionals use carbon fiber ones.
I guess this is similar to spaced repetition.
The unanswered question here is why and how to make these methods of training automatic, as in that you do not need a tool or a calendar or a papet database to run them. There are some other mnemonic methods available but efficacy is unproven.