Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

It takes a text, and creates a bunch of cloze deletion cards, each presenting you with a number of lines, and asking you to recall the next line.

Also some people just find it fun to go through their Anki deck instead of doomscrolling while on the subway or waiting in line. Whether there's any real benefit for that person is debatable. It's “fun“ in the same way going to the gym, or drinking kale smoothie is fun.

The key for improvement is deliberate practice, and one component of that is "working really hard" which you've pointed. But this is still too vague to be helpful. For those interested in the science of expertise, I highly recommend Peak by Andres Ericsson.

This misconception is a common mistake by people that think Anki / SRS are equivalent to the spacing effect itself. That is not the case. The spacing effects exists independently of any particular software implementation.

I don’t think any one claims that memorizing a bunch of facts will make you a genius; rather that if you are aiming for optimal learning and memory, SRS is pretty much the gold standard and is backed up by tons of scientific research.

Repeated exposure (e.g. re-reading a book) does something, but active recall is much more efficient at solidifying memories.

My design principal is that I don’t need to be limited to few words, a sentence, and maybe a picture for each flash card. Instead each flashcard can be the all the relevant parts of the whole dictionary related to the kanji that you are learning.

Another design principal (where I deviate from Wankikani) is that drawing the kanji helps remembering it. So my app has two sided cards, one for drawing and one for reading. Both reading and writing practice include every word in the dictionary + example sentences that contains that kanji.

My third design principal is that I can learn vocabulary at the same time as I learn the meaning and the writing of the kanji (in fact, I like to learn a few vocab words instead of memorizing the different readings). So you can bookmark vocab words you want to learn along the kanji, and the next time the SRS system picks the kanji up for review, these words pop up at the top, to help you recall.

Note that the app is still in development, so use at your own risk, although I am actively using it for my kanji-studies. I still have a couple of features missing before I can call it done enough.