I use Anki to learn French, Chess openings/tactics/techniques, to unscramble letters for scrabble, for Pub Trivia... The options are kind of limitless. As a mid-30s guy who has well passed the neuroplasticity of his teen years, it's a godsend for me. To echo the author's thoughts though, I can't prove empirically that I learn more effectively using Anki (or spaced repetition) than other methods... Only anecdotally. I…
* Memorizing things often takes much more time than learning things naturally as you use them because it takes extra time out of your day. * I often lacked the associations that would normally help reinforce a concept or fact because I used brute force a-single-super-simple-concept-at-a-time memorization instead of more natural methods where context helped me gain a better understanding. * Breaking things down into very narrow, simple, one concept cards is more difficult than I imagined. * Creating mnemonics is really helpful but can be time consuming, and you don't know which cards where you will need them until you repeatedly forget those cards. Someone on HackerNews about a year or two ago recommended using AI and that did help a little, but it didn't take long before I realized that the AI created mnemonics feel so similar and less connected than time tested mnemonics that I find them less effective. * Since brute force memory is slower I often learn slower, which is less efficient than learning a groups of related things together at a pace where the concepts together give you a better understanding than learning one at a time. (Sometimes you need to slow down because your not getting the concept, but going too slow is less efficient also.)
I still use spaced repetition but I realized it's not the amazing revolution that I first imagined that it would be.