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How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

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Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#141

Post by shard »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #54

I don't find doing things tangential to the thing you want to learn all that effective compared to just doing the thing you want to get better at. Maybe it is just me. If you want to improve your vocabulary read more books. If you want to improve in a programming language program more in that language. If you want to learn chess openings - play more chess. Actually doing things you want to learn is way more fun than…

Something like Anki becomes useful when you've gotten to the point where the new vocabulary you are encountering are so rare that you only see them once every few months. I've read somewhere that it takes about 10 exposures to learn a new word. I was seeing certain words once a year (I track how often I look up vocabulary), it would have taken me a decade to learn those words naturally, and those obscure words are likely to be the most important words in the sentence, which means that if you don't know it, you miss the point of the sentence entirely. Anki exposure isn't like real in-context exposure, so it might take more than 10 passes to learn the word, but it should take less than a decade.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#142

Post by allenu »

kazinator wrote: post #135
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't do new cards everyday; eventually you will have seen all new cards of a deck. I'm still working decks whose new cards ran out years ago. The presence and scheduling of new cards is a temporary condition with little long-term significance. My new cards comment was to explain why it's not 14x when you go on vacation. >I've seen curious comments like this in various past forum discussions on the topic of Anki…

Yes, this is the "Anki lunatic" attitude I have seen in Japanese learning forums when Anki discussions come up. One particular comment I remember was about the Anki feature of reviewing ahead. The poster said that you shouldn't do it because it will "mess up your stats". But, think about how idiotic that is. According to that reasoning, you should not read any native language material. Because if you read, you will e…

Thanks for posting this. You hit the nail on the head. I've seen this dogmatic attitude as well, as if following how Anki does it is the One True Way and if you stray from it, you may as well quit.

It's just a tool, and if you miss some lessons, it's not like those cards immediately vanish from your head. If you fall behind because you weren't disciplined, no big deal, just pick it up again and carry on. Learning is a marathon, not a sprint.

For me, SRS algorithms try to model how memory works, it's not an exact match to it, so even missing a card deadline by a day or two or even a week isn't the end of the world.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#143

Post by kazinator »

allenu wrote: post #142
kazinator wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the "Anki lunatic" attitude I have seen in Japanese learning forums when Anki discussions come up. One particular comment I remember was about the Anki feature of reviewing ahead. The poster said that you shouldn't do it because it will "mess up your stats". But, think about how idiotic that is. According to that reasoning, you should not read any native language material. Because if you read, you will e…

Thanks for posting this. You hit the nail on the head. I've seen this dogmatic attitude as well, as if following how Anki does it is the One True Way and if you stray from it, you may as well quit. It's just a tool, and if you miss some lessons, it's not like those cards immediately vanish from your head. If you fall behind because you weren't disciplined, no big deal, just pick it up again and carry on. Learning is…

> I've seen this dogmatic attitude as well, as if following how Anki does it is the One True Way and if you stray from it, you may as well quit.

I suspect that the reason is that language-learning forums are full of children.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#144

Post by Kelamir »

Kelamir wrote: post #105
johnny_b wrote: post #11

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

One solution is using a Vacation add-on. Migaku has already implemented it, and I have it though I find it no use in my position. Migaku will release the vacation add-on for free after a while of beta-testing, I think. He also has days off addon, you can not to do Anki on weekends for example, and have more load during weekdays. Retimement addon too! You can see the uploaded already stuff here https://ankiweb.net/sha…

Here you go folks, a few screenshots https://pixfed.com/p/kelamir/236135097303175168

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#145

Post by Graziano_M »

nomad225 wrote: post #4

Any suggestions for what to use Anki to remember in everyday life as a software engineer?

* [your lang] std lib functions, their arg order.

* HTTP status codes

* Acronyms

* Syntax mistakes (spot the bug).

* Command line or vim snippets, e.g. "write a for loop over all files in a directory in bash" "grep and only show match"

I find it most useful for catching things I commonly screw up. The trick, of course, is to build the habit of identifying when you've repeated a blunder and then to make it into a card. An example for this in Go would be using `range` and forgetting the second arg: `for val := range slice` is legal syntax, but `val` is actually the index var here, it should be `for _, val := range slice`.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#146

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

kazinator wrote: post #143
allenu wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this. You hit the nail on the head. I've seen this dogmatic attitude as well, as if following how Anki does it is the One True Way and if you stray from it, you may as well quit. It's just a tool, and if you miss some lessons, it's not like those cards immediately vanish from your head. If you fall behind because you weren't disciplined, no big deal, just pick it up again and carry on. Learning is…

> I've seen this dogmatic attitude as well, as if following how Anki does it is the One True Way and if you stray from it, you may as well quit. I suspect that the reason is that language-learning forums are full of children.

Hey why do you have to be a dick to try to get your point across?

Jesus christ, calling someone a child because they disagree about adding a cheat vacation mode to an SRS program? You gotta take a step back and look at your life.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#147

Post by wonder_er »

lemming wrote: post #119
wonder_er wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it to remember the names of persons I encounter in my day-to-day. Coworkers, neighbors (like that neighbor 3 blocks away that I talked with for a few minutes about {such-and-such}, but don't see that often), restaurant employees/proprietors, delivery people, maintenance workers, friends-of-friends I've met. Without Anki I have an abysmal memory for names. I have aphantasia[0] which might relate to my difficulty…

I'm curious, what format do you use for cards to do this? Do you use Cloze cards like: My delivery driver is ___? How do you specify in the card which co-worker you mean?

I'm a few days late, so I don't know if you'll see this.

When adding "people cards", I do anki's forward-and-reverse card, and I build the card so I can read both sides, and generate the opposite side.

I'm just trying to build an association in my brain for their name, so I might do:

Front: "people: Neighbors to west, older couple, he likes woodworking"

Back: "people: Joe and Trish"

I only use a single Anki deck for all my cards, which span many interests, so I'll usually give myself a word to specify the topic, like "Go, Ruby, People, Mental Models"

Or if I can grab a headshot or picture from Slack, Twitter, or LinkedIn, I'll often put the picture on the front, name on the back.

When I review the card "from the back", I try to remember what the person looks like.

I have aphantasia [0] so this form of recall is effortful.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#148

Post by jac241 »

johnny_b wrote: post #11

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

You can use the ReMemorize add-on to distribute the cards you missed over the next X days. Here's a good video explaining how to manage it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXgck-g0nQA&t=1189s . If I get home too late and don't have time to do all my cards, that's what I do.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#149

Post by jac241 »

kd5bjo wrote: post #23
johnny_b wrote: post #11

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

The only thing I’ve found to help here is to make sure the act of reviewing the cards is inherently fun— then you’re less likely to get behind. My strategy for this was to dump the entire text of some good literature into Anki decks that give me one new paragraph per day. The steady drip of unseen material removes the stigma of pressing the “again” button and gives me a small reward of story progression from each ses…

I created an add-on (Anki Killstreaks - https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/579111794) that uses the killstreak feature from Halo and COD to make the reviews more fun. Has a corresponding leaderboard (https://AnkiAchievements.com) that shows your rank while reviewing in Anki to help you stay motivated. Both are FOSS.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#150

Post by lemming »

wonder_er wrote: post #147
lemming wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what format do you use for cards to do this? Do you use Cloze cards like: My delivery driver is ___? How do you specify in the card which co-worker you mean?

I'm a few days late, so I don't know if you'll see this. When adding "people cards", I do anki's forward-and-reverse card, and I build the card so I can read both sides, and generate the opposite side. I'm just trying to build an association in my brain for their name, so I might do: Front: "people: Neighbors to west, older couple, he likes woodworking" Back: "people: Joe and Trish" I only use a single Anki deck for…

I did come back and see this, so thanks for taking the time to write it up! That's very interesting and useful.
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