Ask HN: Anyone using Anki/Spaced-repetition successfully?

I never managed to get any benefit from spaced repetition. I tried paper and anki.<p>I found I remembered more creating the cards than reviewing them. Creating the cards made me think about the information and understand it so I could create the card (back and front) in a beneficial way. Reviewing them was a waste of time for me, but the act of creating something with the information I was trying to learn worked wonders.<p>To be honest I found this with mind maps, concept maps, and nearly every single other way of presenting information in a way that is touted as a good way to learn.

I started using it about a week or two ago after someone linked a post called &quot;Augmenting Long-Term Memory&quot;[0] in another thread here. I&#x27;ve been reviewing daily and have already noticed knowledge that I was beginning to forget feeling refreshed and more solidified. For example, I used to be very familiar with the oauth2 protocol after having to implement a compliant service a couple of years ago. But I realized that knowledge was beginning to slip. After &quot;Ankifying&quot; some of the parts of the protocol that I thought were most useful, I have a good grasp of it again.<p>Since then I also started going through the ActivityPub protocol and Ankifying that, too. I&#x27;d scanned it a couple of times before and started building an implementation for fun, but I feel like Anki helped me grasp it better. I also don&#x27;t have to refer back to the doc as much as I used to. Aside from the reviewing itself being useful, writing the actual cards has been very useful as well (but I kind of expected that, since writing&#x2F;blogging has long been my preferred way of reinforcing new learnings).<p>I&#x27;ve Ankified different kinds of things so far, all in one deck. From details of auth flows to git commands (so I no longer have to Google each time I need to remember how to delete a remote tag or reset a git author).<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;augmentingcognition.com&#x2F;ltm.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;augmentingcognition.com&#x2F;ltm.html</a>

I’ve been using SuperMemo for 16 years, do my cards every day (just finished today’s cards about 20 mins ago). Super useful for obvious stuff like languages, but also very useful for more subtle stuff you want to keep in your brain; you basically have a “remember forever” button in your life, which you can use for useful information you encounter online, facts about loved ones, jokes, scientific concepts, cognitive biases you are prone to, basically a little bit of everything. Spaced repetition is a very effective tool, but it’s overall usefulness depends on the self discipline and willingness of the user to recognize their own memory related shortcomings. You can live an entire life without spaced repetition and be just fine, but once it clicked in my head how effective spaced repetition was, I couldn’t not be obsessed with it. The feeling of being able to know what you know, and to rely on that knowledge being there, it feels like when Thor reaches out his hand and Mjölnir just flies into it with no effort on Thor’s part. It feels so great!

I wrote this two years ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;camilomatajira.wordpress.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;05&#x2F;my-most-precious-learning-tool&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;camilomatajira.wordpress.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;05&#x2F;my-most-prec...</a><p>Anki is great. However I am getting a little bit tired after the years. I now use it more as my knowledge base.

Using Anki for about four years on and off, 1.5 years consistently while learning Chinese, my advice is:<p>1. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Some months I review 10-20 new cards a day; this month, I was busier than usual, so I changed it to 1 new card a day. There’s no rush.<p>2. For languages, sentences are drastically more helpful to have as cards than single words. I find it much easier to learn a whole sentence than just a word.<p>3. I have a mix of my cards and pre-made ones (e.g., Vocab from my textbook).<p>4. It&#x27;s OK to let a card be a leech and to forget about it. If a card was a leech, I’d just let it go. It&#x27;s not school, the goal isn’t to get 100%, its just to use as another resource.<p>5. I use Anki along with 2-3 other apps AND a private teacher. I treat it like an additional resource, not the end all be all.

Spaced repetition is a beast! I know it from my experience w&#x2F;o software. I have some experience with Anki which is one of default apps on one of Linux distribs, but it did not worked for me because I do not start it daily :) and to be honest I do not know what info to load and to not load in Anki. For me paper seems to be more handy because it is simpler to write in it something, to read several times what has been written and to abandon what has been learned or obsoleted.

There was a point when I was learning and retaining so many new French words that I added on Chinese just to see what my limit was. It may be the optimal way to memorize as much information as possible, but ultimately I suspect that most of the heavy lifting is being done by just showing up and doing the work.