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How to Remember
- dqpb 7y agoFinally, a memory article that doesn't mention spaced repetition!
- sigstoat 7y agothey probably forgot about it.
- insickness 7y agoI see what you did there.
- scarcelycoher 7y agodid what?
- dorfsmay 7y agoAnd yet it is the one technique backed up by science!
- kazinator 7y agoIt doesn't specifically mention spaced repetition, but spaced repetition is a way of quizzing yourself. Spaced repetition is useful when the number of items to remember is very large; it's a way of optimizing the quizzing.
- dqpb 7y agoSpaced repitition is orthogonal to quizzing yourself.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 7y agoI'm not aware of a passive spaced repetition, which just presents items in increasing intervals without interrogating the subject's recall. For all intents and purposes, the normal SR that everyone uses in the form of software and that everyone refers to when they use the term SR is not orthogonal to quizzing; it's quiz-driven. I don't think that a passive strategy could be anywhere near effective as the actual SR algorithms in use, which incorporate feedback from quizzing in order to adjust the interval for each item, so that difficult items remain on short intervals while easy items recede farther into the future.
- dqpb 7y agoBut I'm sure you could imagine quizzing without spaced repetition
- elviejo 7y agoIn Anki when you quiz yourself with your cards, it's Self Testing. Anki just adds the separation in time, to make it even more efficient.
- mdorazio 7y agoGood article on different techniques that don't require any special software/setup. Personally, quizzing doesn't really work for me, but discussing or (even better) trying to teach it to someone else is extremely effective. The third suggestion, association, has mixed results for me - I use it for names and dates, but trying anything more complicated isn't very effective. Anyone else have better results with these methods?
- sweetbacon 7y ago> discussing or (even better) trying to teach it to someone else is extremely effective. Whenever I have to learn a new OS, system, tool, programming language, etc: if I have trouble with it, I just write up a training manual as if I were also tasked with teaching others. What I end up with is a customized courseware for just me that I can refer back to at any time. Time consuming, but very effective for me.
- jodrellblank 7y agoI wonder if the main benefit of blogs and tutorials is for the writer, not the reader. This makes me wonder about the damage FAQs do to a community; where once there was a continual flow of new people needing newbie explanations - and a continual flow of not-quite-newbies benefiting from writing those explanations over and over, but different people each time, and implicitly being welcoming through that interaction - there is instead an implicitly unwelcoming response with a link to a FAQ. A FAQ which is dauntingly large due to its attempt to be comprehensive, but never deleted and refreshed, so getting ever more outdated and cruftier.
- CGamesPlay 7y agoCan you explain why quizzing doesn’t really work for you? It feels fundamentally the same as teaching someone (active recall).
- underbluewaters 7y agoI've got a trick for remembering things that, to me at least, feels like magic. It was particularly useful in Biology courses where I would have to remember a large set of terminology like family names of fishes. Just imagine a route you regularly take. Ideally a walk where you have time to consider your surroundings, but any route where you can remember landmarks will do. Now assign each thing you need to remember to a specific landmark. That's it. I've found that if I go through this process and then review it just once in my mind I can remember everything with 100% accuracy. I used this trick recently to remember a gate code by assigning numbers to nearby architecture. I'd have a terrible time trying to remember it any other way.
- arkitaip 7y agoSounds like Method of loci (memory palace) [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
- paideic 7y agoA similar strategy works for remembering names too. The next time you meet someone, imagine their name emblazoned on their forehead in bright letters. At least for me, this helps to associate the intangible name with a real, physical thing - seeing their face almost becomes a kind of mnemonic.
- kazinator 7y agoThis is not going to work for serious memorization, like remembering 15,000 words of a foreign language. You're not going to remember 15,000 landmarks along some route that you usually take.
- MiddleEndian 7y agoNow how about something to forget what I want?
- zaphirplane 7y ago2 options Create happy memories to crowd out the sad ones. Invent the MIB device
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI like the first option. What I do is don't worry about forgetting. I let myself be as angry, frustrated, sad, whatevs. The biggest help is decoupling feeling from action. Just because I am angry, that doesn't mean it'd be a good idea to aim my anger at someone else. Then I just move on. Getting the emotional stuff out of the early frees me up to remember something without getting all emotional about it. Eventually I just have too many other experiences to process before I get to the thing I'd prefer to forget.
- piracyde25 7y ago11/10 want
- ryannevius 7y agoTrying to forget is futile. I recommend becoming a regular practitioner of awareness meditation.
- CGamesPlay 7y agoPractice mindfulness to learn to prevent unwanted thoughts from distracting you, and learn to confront and accept memories that are emotionally distressing (therapy can help with this).
- sys_64738 7y agoMust remember to read this!
- bgee 7y agoIf you need to remember printed material (for an exam etc.), I highly recommend this product [0]. It's basically a blue highlighter and a red transparent plastic sheet. You first highlight the stuff you want to test yourself on, and when you are ready you can cover the material with the red sheet. Now the highlighted words just became redacted like in a released CIA doc. There is a review on Youtube that let you see how it actually looks [1]. [0]: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01C02NOMQ/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ohdbDbTZCREJG https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01C02NOMQ/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_... [1]: https://youtu.be/et14d3cafcQ?t=58 https://youtu.be/et14d3cafcQ?t=58
- akg_67 7y agoVery common in Japan. Most test prep books in Japan come with red plastic sheet and important phrases and sentences printed in red in books.
- jodrellblank 7y agoHighlighting notes, and re-reading notes are the two study techniques that students think are most effective, but studies show are less effective. Spaced repetition, repeated testing yourself on the material, questioning yourself to prompt you to work your memory recall, are shown to be the most effective. Sources discussed and referenced in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAgreed. In college (30 years ago) I found a brochure on the "SQ3R" method - Skim, Question, Read, Recite, Review. As an ADD person it revolutionized my college achievements. I could deliberately attack the learning process and get (something) out of a subject with my limited attention.
- knubie 7y agoWhile highlighting and re-reading notes might not be as effective as SRS quizzing, I still think there's a lot of value in writing the notes themselves. It sort of acts as the "summarize and share" part of this article (you're sharing with your later self). I got frustrated with writing notes in one app, then making SRS cards out of them in another app, so I made one that combines the two[0]. I'm still trying to nail down the best workflow, but something like: 1) Read/watch material. 2) Summarize material in note(s) 3) Create cards from note(s) and study with SRS. Works pretty well I think. [0]: https://mochi.cards https://mochi.cards
- jneplokh 7y ago> "What that [making yourself a quiz] forces you to do," Adam says, "is practice retrieving the information, which makes it stickier and easier to find yourself." The same is true for flashcards where it is the process of creating them that helps remember the information. I have noticed when I don't create the flashcards I use, the information is not remembered as well.
- danielbigham 7y agoSomething that I started doing recently is to create a "30 second summary" of each important concept, consisting of text and diagrams. I then record a 30 second video where I narrate, using good intonation, the 30 second summary. I also create a hyperlink from the summary to my notes of each prerequisite concept. This serves three purposes: 1) The act of teaching is one of the best ways to solidify a concept in your mind. It forces you to have a good understanding of it, and forces your mind to produce a good internal organization around concept. 2) It usually takes a while to write + diagram a good summary, and takes a number of tries to get a smooth recording of you speaking the summary (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHc-bog1hhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHc-bog1hhE). All of this "repetition" / time spent with the concept makes it easier to remember. 3) Sooner or later we realize that remembering everything is impossible. Given enough time, concepts will decay in your mind. In the long term, one of the most important things for you to optimize is the speed at which you can re-create your mental model of a concept. Having these 30 second summaries, complete with links to prerequisite concepts, allows you to re-build your mental model of a subject area extremely quickly in the future in a just-in-time fashion. Just like a smartphone is an "extension" of your brain, a note system like I've described here is like an extension of your memory.
- ddffre 7y agoI highly recommend using flashcards apps, especially this one that I have found. As mentioned in the article about quizzes, this app has just that. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.words.words https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...
- bemmu 7y agoFor those studying Japanese, this one is amazing: https://nihongo-app.com/ https://nihongo-app.com/ It has sets for all Japanese school grades, split into daily chunks so that you can keep going forward with the app for years. The only thing missing is kanji stroke orders, but the dev has hinted that those would be coming soon.
- vipref 7y agoThe linked article reads: "Because students believe that learning and testing are separate things, they often study inefficiently" Efficient learning is not only about performing during a test, but understanding the subject matter.
- HNLurker2 7y agoAdam Grant is a charlatan. Never read his book. It is worthless self help.