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Using Anki to remember what you read

• tokamak-teapot 7y ago
  I’ve used Anki for months, trying to learn the Greek alphabet. I’ve failed. I don’t think I’ve learned more than one or two of its letters. Is it possible I’m just not compatible with the way this works? Any tips on alternatives?
  • frankzander 7y ago
    Maybe Anki isn't a tool for you. I personally don't use Anki because it bores me to death. For me it needs to be interesting. I think there are other people out there who even don't use Anki because it's a boring way to learn something.
    • stringyham 7y ago
      I've tried several times and I agree, it's boring to me. But a lot of people use it daily and see real progress.
    • hikarudo 7y ago
      Absolutely. Keeping it interesting should be one of the first priorities when learning something. For the record, Anki actually works really well for me. But interest in the subject should come first.
    • kd5bjo 7y ago
      Spaced repetition really clicked for me when I realized that it isn’t about learning, but about keeping memories fresh. If you don’t have an emotional attachment to each card in the deck, reviews become a terrible slog. Mine is a mix of random insights I’ve had, photos of places I’ve been, summaries of things I’ve learned, etc. The questions are simply there to force me to engage my memory, which drags up the whole web of mental associations— there’s no need to add every detail explicitly; that’s what notes are for.
      • supersrdjan 7y ago
        Yes yes, I agree. The way I tackle the threat of detachment from my cards is to aggressively delete cards as soon as I see boredom creeping in. I switched from Anki to Supermemo, though. Much better for managing context and even keeping organized notes that may or may not be used for active recall at some later point.
        • nominalprose 7y ago
          Same. After about a year of using Anki the need to aggressively delete became apparent. With good culling and time to reflect, review can be almost a meditation. How does Supermemo help you keep keep context? > keeping organized notes that may or may not be used for active recall I use a separate notes app (Bear) for this. Is there much advantage in your experience to integrating active recall notes with Evernote-style reference notes?
        • rajlego 7y ago
          Can't reply to child for some reason but the reason that SM is so great for managing content is a feature called incremental reading (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading). To sum it poorly, it lets you go through hundreds of articles in parallel and slowly convert them to active recall material over time. It sounds terribly complicated in practice, and learning it is indeed a pain, but once you know it there's really no way of learning more enjoyable. I can promise you that. I don't understand how anki users are able to make cards for non-language things,I personally absolutely hate making cards while reading anything. It's hard to explain the exact process but incremental reading by contrast makes it much easier to take what's really important from an article and make cards from it.
  • projektfu 7y ago
    I, too, did this and it’s not effective. More effective is learning Greek words and memorizing the collation order of the alphabet.
  • kmmlng 7y ago
    My hunch is that Anki is mostly useful for stopping you from forgetting things you have already learned. The actual learning is better done outside of Anki.
    • vz8 7y ago
      Agreed - I've found that Anki really helps to recall underlying facts, but if I didn't grasp a concept well outside of Anki, it's not helping with A-HA moments.
  • throwaway9d0291 7y ago
    How are you using it? Anki is "just" a tool to prompt you with flash cards. Designing them is up to you and extremely flexible. You're free to add text, images, audio, whatever you want. Some ideas of how you could use Anki to learn the Greek alphabet: - Front of the card has the upper- and lower-case glyphs and the back has their sounds, either English, IPA or an actual recording (Wikipedia has them for everything in IPA and the Greek Alphabet page has a mapping from letter to IPA). You should also do this in reverse. - Front of the card has a Greek word with a missing space, back of the card has the complete word. You can use audio recordings here as well if it helps you (e.g. have the front read the entire word). There are also a few pre-made decks that people have shared: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/greek%20alphabet https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/greek%20alphabet
  • keiferski 7y ago
    Try to just learn one letter per day. Don’t work ahead and don’t try to learn more than one every day.
  • rhizome31 7y ago
    When I went to Greece I learned it in a few days just by trying to read all the signs I could see. I guess the trick is not to learn isolated letters but learn to read common words.
  • mkl 7y ago
    I think you'd be able to learn the Greek alphabet in at most an hour, just by writing it out and saying it repeatedly. Making it stick long term would be a matter of a couple of minutes a day for a week or so, then every few days. It's small and simple enough that flash cards aren't necessary. For more involved facts, Anki seems great in principle, but in practice I've found it hard to create and maintain the habit of doing the cards.
  • LeonB 7y ago
    Using it to learn an alphabet effectively probably requires more upfront work (setting up and improving the cards) than you’d expect. It’s not just 1 letter = 1 card. You want to memorise the entire alphabet as a sequence not just as individual letters. So you need cards of little overlapping sequences, like ABC, BCD, etc. The supermemo essays cover this scenario. With that work in place you’d learn it quickly. As just separate letters divorced of any meaning, not hooked up with any other neurons in your brain, you’d struggle to ever recall it quickly. This is a detail that people overlook and then wonder why it’s not working. (Not picking on you for doing that: I did the same before eventually reading way too much about it)
    • LeonB 7y ago
      The supermemo article is here: https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20rules https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20ru... ...by the creator of supermemo who basically formulated the whole idea. In Point 1 he explains you shouldn’t use spaced repetition to learn. Use it to remember. In Point 10 he covers how to remember “enumerations” (with an alphabet example) You have to go back to the classics when you want to do something properly.
      • bigfudge 7y ago
        Spaced repetition and the learning curve is quite a bit older than supermemo.
        • LeonB 7y ago
          Yeh, I hear ya. That’s why I used the word “formulated” rather than “discovered” —- because he really did the work to not just model it, but really implement a system with a very specific formula which he devised and which was the basis of the field we see today.
  • fiblye 7y ago
    Writing systems are something you need to sit down and spend at least a few minutes at a time writing out. Anki is better for inputting vocabulary with definitions and example sentences. That also puts the letters that you spent time writing into practice.
  • barry-cotter 7y ago
    If you want to learn the Greek alphabet try leaving Modern or Ancient Greek on Duolingo. If there’s an Anki deck with modern Greek, translation and romanization that would almost certainly work better than trying to associate a sound to an arbitrary symbol with no scaffolding to help it stick.
  • sage3 7y ago
    I don't think you did it right. I also used anki to learn the greek alphabet, I added just one letter a day for less than a month, and now two years later I know it by heart with a review load averaging 2 notes a month..
• oweiler 7y ago
  I sometimes wonder if tools like Anki aren't just another form of procrastination. The time invested could probably be better spent.
  • Roxo 7y ago
    That depends on what knowledge you're trying to retain. When I majored in Spanish in college I was extremely efficient compared to my classmates. Whereas most would memorize lists of words and sentences and dedicate tens of hours to it, I would average less than 5 hours of preparation time per exam.
    • redmaverick 7y ago
      >> When I majored in Spanish in college I was extremely efficient compared to my classmates. Did you use spaced rep?
      • Roxo 7y ago
        Yes. After class, I would review my notes and add new items. Reviewing for exams amounted to those 5 hours average, spread over 3-4 weeks.
  • wccrawford 7y ago
    I tried to use Anki to study for a tech certification. In the end, I got a lot more out of doing the research to create the cards than I did from the actually looking at the cards. I might even go so far as to say that after creating the cards, they were practically worthless. This would be less true if the exam was further from the creation of the cards, though. It was within a month. Someone else's cards might have helped a little, but not nearly as much.
    • Hamuko 7y ago
      >This would be less true if the exam was further from the creation of the cards, though. It was within a month. Anki is basically meant for longer term studying. The criteria for when a card matures in Anki is when the interval becomes 21+ days.
• knubie 7y ago
  If Anki’s UI/UX turns you off, I’ve built an alternative called Mochi (https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/) that uses markdown. Incidentally it also supports Zettelkasten like note taking like described in the article.
  • manish_gill 7y ago
    Looks great! I have a few questions. - I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import all my Zettel notes? - I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any option/drag-and-drop method to move them anywhere else. I'll definitely be giving Mochi a try. Thanks a lot for creating it!
    • knubie 7y ago
      > I have a huge Zettelkasten note archive (I manage it through Sublime-Zk, which is getting a bit slow to operate it). Can I somehow directly import all my Zettel notes? You can import the markdown files as notes, but it won’t maintain the linking. If you send me a sample I can look into adding a Zettelkasten specific importer. > I tried to import my Anki cards, but it seems like while I could go through them, I couldn't assign them to any particular deck/reclassify them. They show up as part of a "Not Found" deck and I don't see any option/drag-and-drop method to move them anywhere else. Sounds like the importer derped a bit and couldn’t find the deck associated with those cards. If you send me the .apkg file I can take a look. Anki’s data model is a little weird and there’s probably some edge cases I haven’t accounted for.
  • colmvp 7y ago
    I'll try using this for the next weeks but having used it for the last hour, I definitely like the feel of it a lot more than Anki.
  • throwqwerty 7y ago
    can you export export/save the cards?
• maxdarapper 7y ago
  I had the problem where it felt too time consuming making the cards and I just wanted to start off learning a few cards at a time, so I made my own solution. Its free https://www.flashcardmax.com/download https://www.flashcardmax.com/download
• throwaway9d0291 7y ago
  Some Anki-like alternatives that people may like and not have seen (mostly focused on learning languages): - Memrise - https://www.memrise.com/ https://www.memrise.com/ - Has a very extensive selection of decks for language learning - Supermemo - https://www.supermemo.com/en https://www.supermemo.com/en - Has a (disputed) claim that its algorithm beats Anki, various pre-made decks - Drops - https://languagedrops.com/ https://languagedrops.com/ - Mobile-only, has a higher reliance on pictures and audio over written translations.
  • superplussed 7y ago
    You might also try my website (and soon to be app) Seedlang: http://www.seedlang.com http://www.seedlang.com. It is a site for learning German, and later this year Spanish, French, and English. It uses video flashcards to create different learning experiences, and ties them all together with a Anki-like review deck where any word or sentence encountered on the site can be saved.
  • rajlego 7y ago
    There is also SuperMemo 18 (https://super-memo.com/supermemo18.html https://super-memo.com/supermemo18.html) which is from the same people as supermemo.com except it's a desktop app with way more features but also a much higher learning curve. If you use SM and you use anki both for a significant amount of time it's not hard to see that SM leaves you with way less reps. Anki is based on the very first version of the SuperMemo algorithm (from ~1990 or so which was the first SRS algorithm ever) known as SM2. Current version of SM uses SM18.
    • dot1x 7y ago
      Too bad SM is Windows-only and desktop-only. The beauty of Anki is that you can review anywhere.
      • rajlego 7y ago
        On linux you can use SM via vmware/wine and on os x it's quite usable with parallels. If you're using SRS just for language learning then being able to use on mobile can be helpful but I think for those cases supermemo.com can be a decent alternative. More generally, I think the platform specificness of SuperMemo is more than made up for with its incremental reading functionality (alongside better scheduling algorithm)
• fouc 7y ago
  Substack is a YC W18 startup for those wondering (I was!)
• bouk 7y ago
  Classic Simon
• msaharia 7y ago
  Is Anki a trademark? If someone wants to make a tool called AnkiSuper, is that allowed? I'm not a big fan of the UI/UX. So I am thinking of scratching an itch.
  • melling 7y ago
    Is the format open source?
    • jac241 7y ago
      The desktop app is GPL and it's all backed by a Sqlite db so it's possible to reverse engineer.
      • melling 7y ago
        That requires a lot more effort, and it’s error prone. You don’t want to get it wrong because you may corrupt people’s data
    • muldvarp 7y ago
      Here is a description of the format: https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Database-Structure https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Database-Stru... If you'd ask me it's a perfect example of how not to structure a database. It's not even in the first normal form. I'd love to create an Anki clone that has better UI/UX and a better database format and I think that would remedy some of the biggest pain points about Anki. But since most Anki users (me included) use several plugins that are quite essential to their Anki experience, an Anki clone would have to support those plugins, too.
• yen223 7y ago
  I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 1. A lot of spaced repetition apps don't optimize for fast card creation. I like to make a card as soon as I come across something interesting, but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating. I wound up building my own app for this. 2. Cloze deletion is surprisingly effective. For those who don't know, cloze deletion involves taking a sentence, blanking the interesting parts out e.g. "The moon landing happened on _______", and trying to recall the blank parts. This is effective because it's a quick way to make cards, thus solving the problem of slow card creation. 3. I fared better with lots of small, one-sentence cards. My rule of thumb is that a card should fit in a tweet. 4. Subjectively speaking, using spaced repetition didn't just help me recall stuff in my cards, it also helped me recall stuff in general.
  • eterps 7y ago
    > but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating I have this URL in my bookmarks toolbar: https://ankiuser.net/edit/ https://ankiuser.net/edit/ It enables me to directly add new cards (just don't forget to sync)
  • yewenjie 7y ago
    For frictionless card-creation I have made an org-capture template for quickly adding cards to an org-mode file via a custom Emacs pop-up frame. This is accessible from everywhere with the keybinding (Super + c + a). Exporting to Anki from Emacs is done via the anki-editor mode for Emacs. https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor
    • kqr 7y ago
      There is also org-drill that implements spaced repetition in org mode.
      • oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
        I think org-drill is just better overall since it's all stored as plain-text at the end of the day and each card is really editable and accessible. Anki in my experience has a clunky, slow GUI. It can't beat the creation and editing speed from vim keybindings and macros.
• motohagiography 7y ago
  Just tried to use it. What's with the Anki UX? You can't just install the mobile app and start downloading shared decks to use.
  • inetsee 7y ago
    I believe the mobile app is limited to just studying. Creating new cards and downloading shared decks must be done using either the desktop app or the web app.
    • motohagiography 7y ago
      It must be copyrighted or have some other broken dis-economy, because the most obvious product decisions that would make this huge have been rejected. The whole point of this is to study in spare moments, like on public transit - using mobile. Uninstalled. That's so disappointing because it's so obvious, and I can't trust an ecosystem that dumb. I didn't think it was possible to be as disappointed in an app as I am with this one.
      • pergadad 7y ago
        Looking at the thread here most seem to have a positive experience with Anki and your excessively negative reaction is a bit strange.
    • frakkingcylons 7y ago
      You can definitely create new cards in the official mobile app (for iOS).
      • inetsee 7y ago
        I stand corrected. My recollection was that AnkiDroid (the Android app) didn't provide the capability of creating new cards, but I just checked and the current version of AnkiDroid does let you create new cards.
  • muldvarp 7y ago
• jsaldes 7y ago
  Reminds of when I was starting to learn Japanese! https://github.com/miyamoto-san/hiragana https://github.com/miyamoto-san/hiragana
• dbriles 7y ago
  Anki (and spaced repetition) is awesome! Some things I've had used it for to great success: 1. Memorizing Japanese vocabulary, pitch-accent, and basic grammar rules. It would probably be useful, at least to some degree, for any language like this. 2. Any certification which required strict memorization. All the basic ComptTIA certs were like this, and the CCNA:R&S cert (unfortunately) required memorizing commands and their syntax. 3. Verses in the Bible (though this is pretty basic in comparison, just Address <-> Text). In all honestly I think one of the best things you can do if you need to memorize something is make the flash cards yourself, whether with Anki, another app, or even just index cards. This forces you to think about what it is that you're trying to memorize and phrase the text of the cards in a way that you understand. After that, reviewing is just kind of "maintenance" in my opinion. There was definitely a marked difference in my retention when I was using pre-made Anki decks vs. creating them myself. It is also easier to create cards using the desktop app. It's a side note, but I also don't agree with Anki's pricing model. The app is free on Android[1] but $25 on iOS[2]. I think I heard (I don't have a source) that the developer's justification was that they needed to make money from the all the time and effort they spent creating Anki, plus hosting costs, etc - so why not do a cheaper price on both Android/iOS, or do a free-to-download app with a subscription model? For what it's worth you can use the web version on iOS but the app is a better experience IMO. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493387 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-flashcards/id373493...
  • barry-cotter 7y ago
    > I also don't agree with Anki's pricing model. The app is free on Android[1] but $25 on iOS[2]. I think I heard (I don't have a source) that the developer's justification was that they needed to make money from the all the time and effort they spent creating Anki, plus hosting costs, etc - so why not do a cheaper price on both Android/iOS, or do a free-to-download app with a subscription model People with money overwhelmingly buy iPhones. $25 is a pittance for anyone who can afford an iPhone. Anybody who uses Anki seriously gets far, far more value than $25 out of it. I used it for well over 200 hours before I stopped and I know I’ll go back to it again. The Android version is not maintained by the developer of Anki. The iPhone app is. He chooses to charge for the iPhone app, which enables him to make a living making tens of thousands of people’s lives better. If you don’t want to spend the price of two pizzas on an app that the modal user will use for over a hundred hours don’t.
• wahnfrieden 7y ago
  For Japanese learners, I built two iOS apps that cater to the special needs of the language. Manabi [0] is a flashcard app with the same algorithm as Anki but nicer UI. Manabi Reader [1] collects a bunch of short-form reading materials, lets you tap words to look them up, and tap to add a flashcard. It tracks the individual words you read and charts your progress word by word and kanji by kanji. This app has gotten pretty popular so I have been improving it substantially. [0] https://manabi.io https://manabi.io [1] https://reader.manabi.io/ https://reader.manabi.io/
  • tentboy 7y ago
    I will check these out! I use Anki for Japanese right now - mainly because I found Anki decks for each chapter of Genki 1 which I am working through right now.
    • wahnfrieden 7y ago
      Would love any feedback! The Reader app is really unique - no other app provides that kind of kanji-by-kanji reading progress functionality (probably because it took a tremendous amount of work under the hood to get it right).
      • mdocode 7y ago
        This looks really neat. Do you have any plans to make it available on Android or a web app?
        • wahnfrieden 7y ago
          It's a native iOS app so I would have to start from scratch on Android. I do plan to port it to macOS via Catalyst sometime after the upcoming WWDC which will help some Android users. I'll note that this is a big pain point for me: although Android users don't pay as much for apps, they help boost word-of-mouth marketing substantially. I see some similar but (tbh) subpar apps get more word-of-mouth online even in recommendations to iOS users just because of the huge signal boost from Android users.
• hedgedoops2 7y ago
  Has anyone ever created an anki deck from their college coursework that would have allowed them to pass verbal exams 10 years later?
  • muldvarp 7y ago
    Depends on the course, the exam as well as how long you used spaced repetition. The next time Anki will ask me what "å sløse" means is in over five years and I'm pretty sure I won't have forgotten it by then. For exams that rely less on memorization this might be different. I'm pretty sure that even if I remember all definitions from my measure theory course I still wouldn't be able to pass the exam in 10 years.
• wiz21c 7y ago
  FTA : >>> It’s nothing crazy. Here’s an example from a very real non-work day: Followed by a pretty long list. How does he do ? There are 23 items on the list. None of which include daily tasks such as : dishes, sport, talking to family, to friends, eating, cooking, washing clothes, having a social life. All of these tasks take a lot of time, esp. if I consider the time to switch between them (which can be quite long since, hey, it's a non work day, so I'm slower...). We're not equals.
  • misiti3780 7y ago
    Do do the same thing this guy and do all the things you mentioned. I create cards on sundays only and i do anki every morning before i start working. It can be accomplished easily, sans children.
    • lentil_soup 7y ago
      but that list is >8hrs of back to back chores (according to his estimates) for a non-work day without any of the ones your parent post mentions. I don't think that's realistic.
      • falcolas 7y ago
        I imagine that the subject of the article is one of those genetic mutants who only requires 4-6 hours of sleep a day. They do exist, but are definitely statistical outliers. Not needing 9 hours of sleep is the only real way to add time to your day.
        • levesque 7y ago
          Not only that, I also require "offline" time to relax otherwise I become very weird emotionally and I start dreading everything.
      • misiti3780 7y ago
        i missed that and i now agree.
• galfarragem 7y ago
  Using Anki is less important than keeping relevant and digested notes. I use Anki daily but I don't really need to memorize everything. It's enough to be able to fast retrieve previous collected info. In the end I just don't want to repeat myself. For that I simply use one searchable text file (and a github public repository - to maintain some quality - for digested notes/cheatsheets).
• jeffshek 7y ago
  https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-and-tricks-for-spaced-repetition-anki/#adding_cards https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-a... A bit of a self-post, but I've compiled a list of Anki tips I've learned and found. My deck is about 14,000 cards over the last few years - so I've learned a bit from my own mistakes :)
• kendallpark 7y ago
  Was just taking a break from my Anki session to check HN. I'm a regular user, though I'm terrible at consistent, daily reviews. I somehow manage to keep on top of it, even after skipping weekends or entire weeks. You can tweak the settings to make it easier for less-than-perfect users. Lifehack: Anki + exercise. Combining Anki with an elliptical or stationary bike improves both my review and exercise frequency and duration. I've made my peace with the terrible UI/UX. Like many folks here I tried to roll my own SRS app at one point. But my review sessions would always get derailed with brainstorming new features or dealing with bugs. Personally, I'm not sure that the productivity gains from improving the UI/UX are worth the development time (especially when the whole point of using Anki is efficiency).
  • localhost 7y ago
    I find it difficult to do anything intellectual while exercising at a relatively high intensity. What intensity are your workout sessions? But perhaps review is different than trying to absorb a new concept?
    • DevX101 7y ago
      Personal anecdote, but there's some optima for information retention at low intensity exercise. This is around moderate to vigorous walking pace or a very slow jog. Increase intensity beyond that point and your brain's information processing ability drops below baseline. I've found this consistently true. At lower intensity cardio for example, I can watch educational youtube videos or follow along a movie. At high intensity, I can't even watch an action movie and follow the plot. I have to switch to music and/or a sports action video (no meaningful dialog).
    • kendallpark 7y ago
      The more brainless the activity, the easier it is to do parallel flashcards. An elliptical or stationary bike session will be easier than an equal intensity run where you have to worry about your gait. Flashcards are little atomic chunks for you to process independent from one another. When you do flashcards the only thing you need to concern yourself with is the short prompt on that particular card in front of you. So even if you are working out pretty hard, you can still work your way through a deck, it's just going to be at a slower rate. This differs from reading a textbook or journal article, where you have to keep a certain amount of the previous passages in memory to understand the current line. You will hit a point where flashcards stop working but the ceiling is higher than with other types of learning activities. This will differ per exercise type, per intensity, and the subject you're learning.
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  One anti-feature makes me go away every time I return to give Anki another try: lack of a "dismiss once and forever" button. Many decks I'd like to study contain too many cards I already know. Yet I can only choose how easy it was so it would decide how often to repeat it, it won't let me choose "it's easier than saying my own name, don't repeat it ever".
  • contr-error 7y ago
    It's been a while since I used Anki, but I'd suggest marking or suspending the notes you don't want to ever see again. Then you can keep them suspended, or if you marked them, you can delete them completely. Should do the trick?
  • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    It's a little hacky, but you could just suspend the card
  • jac241 7y ago
    I use the suspend card (or note) command for this. Press @ when your reviewing and it will suspend the card and you won't see it again.
  • sage3 7y ago
    You could just delete the card right?
• anticodon 7y ago
  Is it a sane thing to do (cram every bit of knowledge in your head)? I have a feeling that it's futile and could even be a bad thing for mental health and sanity.
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Hey kids in school memorize baseball scores, league position, all the characters in Star Wars. It's very normal for people to remember/memorize things. A trick to do it more efficiently isn't going to drive anybody crazy.
    • anticodon 7y ago
      They don't do it in a mechanical way attempting to maximize recall. It's another thing to try to stuff absolutely every bit of information you've encountered in your head with lots of effort. From reading HN I get a feeling (could be wrong feeling) that western society is always obsessed with something (or perhaps every society, but it's easier to notice this from the outside). If it's money - you need to grab all the money you can get. If it's time - you are obliged to do something productive every second of your waking hours. And you must also find a way to sleep much less than 7-8 hours in order to maximize "productive" time. Now you must also remember every bit of information you've seen. It feels creepy and definitely doesn't feels sane thing to do. What if I earned all the money in the world? What does it change? What if I do something "productive" every second of my life? I would probably hate such life. What's the point of trying to remember every detail from the book about telegraph history and ancient philosophy?.. This obsession feels really weird to me.
      • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        Disagree. Kids will do it in a mechanical way to maximize recall. Kids will obsess over all kinds of things. Harnessing this for fun or profit is normal human behavior. All those strawmen - I'll leave that for another time.
  • pergadad 7y ago
    It helps to read the article before commenting. The headline is overblowing it. He's not learning books by heart, just highlights some key facts he found valuable while reading and then reviews those and adds some of those go in a flashcard and zettelkasten system. Impressive for doing it consistently but it's not learning entire books.
• probably_wrong 7y ago
  For a companion post, there was an Ask HN post yesterday [1] asking people why they don't use spaced repetition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22484060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22484060
• hikarudo 7y ago
  Spaced practice and retrieval practice, both of which are used in SRS, are two learning techniques for which there is ample evidence that they actually work [0]. Of course, You still need to decide what is worth remembering. [0] https://www.learningscientists.org/ https://www.learningscientists.org/
• dangus 7y ago
  I just...can’t relate to living this way. Maybe you have to be a special type of person, but this whole lifestyle just seems exhausting and over-managed.
  • blueside 7y ago
    and yet he is only one whiteboard failure of inverting a binary tree away from being a total failure
  • the_af 7y ago
    Seconded. I mostly read for pleasure (and occasionally for work). Even for work, I don't tabulate what I read. I read a lot of paper books too, where uploading stuff is not practical without a lot of fuss (OCR?). I love reading. And yes, I forget a lot of stuff. But if I had to go through all this whenever I pick up a book, I'd simply stop reading.
    • elbear 7y ago
      You don't have to do this with all the books. Only with the ones where you want to commit the important stuff to memory.
      • the_af 7y ago
        Ok, but I understood the person mentioned in the article does this with every book regardless of subject. And like the OP said, I just can't relate to living like that.
        • FalconSensei 7y ago
          Maybe OP only reads books that he wants to remember, so doing that for every book is valid. On the other way around, maybe some people wouldn't be able to relate to reading a lot of books when you don't want to commit what you learned to memory
          • 7y ago
• Kagerjay 7y ago
  I used a lot of space repetition previously, but I've found a lot of issues with it - Most of what I learned is not useful knowledge in anki. I made many variations of different decks, some for programming and some for other concepts - Space repetition - the concept itself is built in many different places. For instance, google will remind me of photos that I took last year on my phone. I can check up instagram and facebook to see things my friends are doing and be reminded of things we've done. I can message people and be reminded of things too, or throw parties and likewise be hit with space-repetition if done frequently enough. don't get me wrong though, space repetition is useful especially for learning a topic that requires a lot of vocabulary. The best way to learn something is just to be fully immersed into it, if you practice it daily you basically are applying the space-repetition algorithm in practice. If you want to learn a new language, move to the country that speaks said language. There's a lot of wasted time and effort in making cards and determining what is "Fringe value" - cards that expire and offer no values long term If you want to remember things about people you care about, just message them pictures of things you;ve done together. No need to make a rolodex CRM like some of my friends do, its a waste of effort and time imo. What anki really shines though again is language learning, or learning something with a lot of barrier-to-entry vocab. This is especically true for medical industry based applications I practice what I use everyday and immerse myself in many programming communities and I've found that I've learned and retained information far more effectively when it's shared b/w many different perspectices and contextes
• komali2 7y ago
  Zettelkasten has been making the rounds here this year. His process appears similar to the org-mode process using Jethro Kuan's org-roam. I've started using it and while it can be a bit tricky to set up and there's a couple mildly annoying bugs (with workarounds), for a solo project it filled the niche for me perfectly. I use it for all note taking and reading now and it is very satisfying. https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/ https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22337681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22337681
  • bloopernova 7y ago
    Same here, org-roam just kind of "clicked" things into place for me. I've modified a template for single-subject documents called "tags" so they're stored in ~/Org/tags/. I've also configured org-journal to store files in ~/Org/Journal/ One thing I'll be interested to discover, in the future, is how I archive or age out information. Most work stuff right now is related to a single project, so what happens when that project ends? Will I need to move things outside of ~/Org/ to remove clutter, or will I just get used to it?
    • rodelrod 7y ago
      Split tasks from your knowledge base. Archive tasks/projects aggressively.
  • mroll 7y ago
    I also did not find org-roam super easy to set up, but after a second try I have it running and am enjoying it. Edit: I tried it a month ago - before installation was more than just (load)'ing the file. Now there are nicely documented use-package instructions and a layer for spacemacs
  • tra3 7y ago
    Also checkout out org-brain [0]. Similar idea - linking concepts, but a completely different implementation. A much more mature project. [0]: https://github.com/Kungsgeten/org-brain https://github.com/Kungsgeten/org-brain
• hablary 7y ago
  Memorizing anything in the age of Google is damn right foolish.
  • snazz 7y ago
    I strongly disagree. To be able to understand anything on a deeper level, you need to have the “vocabulary” to explain the higher-level concepts. Memorization is not always trivia; it’s the lowest-level foundation of all learning.
  • asavadatti 7y ago
    I disagree. Have you tried learning a new language?
    • hablary 7y ago
      It's funny you asked, I'm actually learning a new foreign language this year, and I'm doing just fine without memorizing anything. Based on my method and goals, I'll be able to speak at least 20 languages before the end of next year.
  • rajlego 7y ago
    The power of knowing things comes largely from the associative characteristics of knowledge. Having 2 facts on the net and 2 facts in your brain are entirely different. You can't create much with 2 facts in the net while 2 facts in your brain can be used to create so much. Even if you constantly look up whatever you want to use on an as needed basis, you'd run into working memory limits.
• SquishyPanda23 7y ago
  Why would you want to remember everything you read? That sounds like overtraining. It's not clear that managing and drilling on so much information offers a significant improvement over what is likely the most important intervention mentioned: reading widely and with purpose. Sure flashcards can help you remember things you need to memorize. But it's not clear they should become a way of life and an end in their own.
  • Jtsummers 7y ago
    > It's not clear that managing and drilling on so much information offers a significant improvement over what is likely the most important intervention mentioned: reading widely and with purpose. I think you're in agreement with the original article. The individual is reading widely and with purpose. He uses Anki to assist in remembering. And that's the general guidance with Anki (or spaced repetition generally): learn first, recall later. You read, develop an understanding (at least partial), build your deck, and study with the deck while continuing to read the later material and building the deck up further. And you don't try to remember everything, again from the article: > When I come across something in a book that seems useful to understand and remember, I will highlight it on my Kindle and add a note to it with the text: “.flash”. He doesn't highlight everything, just things that seem important. The importance is that many things are outside your particular field of work. But you have to interface with people who work in those domains (or want to), or you just want to have more knowledge to draw on. If you aren't using the information frequently, it won't come to mind when you need it. So with Anki you can have a relatively lightweight way to keep the jargon of another field re-callable, or to have the history of a place or people at hand.
• haolez 7y ago
  I get a feeling that these little jewels of knowledge that we come across get store in our subconscious. And that my brain will pick it up when I need it, although I can't list them all if asked to. Maybe I'm wrong :)
• omginternets 7y ago
  Does anybody know how to get the LaTeX stuff working on MacOS? I've been wanting to memorize a number of mathematical formulae, but I haven't been able to find clear step-by-step instructions for building LaTeX cards.
  • rodonn 7y ago
    Do the instructions here not work for you? https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#latex-support https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#latex-support If you have Latex installed on your machine and have used it before, the process of getting starting should be pretty straightforward.
  • jmnicolas 7y ago
    Why not use a picture of the formula ?
• run2arun 7y ago
  This will probably get down-voted by the hacker news crowd. Information aggregation from diverse sources to construct a comprehensive knowledge graph in our heads and hence further and deepen our understanding of this world and the context in which things happen can be a goal. But at some point, the methods we use to accomplish them can take more importance than the actual goal. The method is not the goal. This is similar to how there are many rituals in every religion that people might follow without understanding the underlying concepts. The rituals are not the religion but we still see people mindlessly doing things that their ancestors did. I would much prefer that we build systems that automatically create that knowledge graph objectively (like the wikipedia) and layer an AI system on top that will create new connections, even with brute force, that our minds in a lifetime cannot. This will not stop us from having opinions. People will still come to different conclusions based on the same underlying data but atleast the data and the surrounding context will be available to all.
  • MrK93 7y ago
    The point of Anki is to learn while making the cards, because making them takes mental effort and requires enough comprehension of the concepts. It would be harder and less motivating to use something premade, that maybe gives priority to concepts that don't really interest you.
• ameyv 7y ago
  And now I feel hopeless again. How can someone get better at so many things so fast that too in tech?? I still myself noob after all these years.
  • gacklesmom 7y ago
    I mean...they don't. Did you read the article? He's not in tech, he's in management -- he doesn't need to know jack.
    • dot1x 7y ago
      Hi ruby / vim / bash repo says otherwise (in terms of knowledge... whether or not he needs it is up for debate)
• southphillyman 7y ago
  I use it for interview prep. I know some people advise against memorizing stuff in programming but it's been effective for me so far. You can spend 3-5 minutes in an interview trying to reason about implementing the partition method of a quicksort or translating 2D array indexes into 1d. With anki you can just regurgitate it out of your deep memory in 30 seconds whether you use it in your day to day or not.
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    Would an intervier be more likely to pass you if you were clearly recalling a memorized answer? That sounds so worthless... If I was interviewing I would switch to a different question.
    • southphillyman 7y ago
      In a world where you are expected to solve 2 leetcode medium-hard questions in 30 minutes with no syntax errors and test cases.... I doubt it. The questions come in different forms with optimizations, it's not about memorizing answers it's "pattern matching" and being efficient in implementation. A partition method would be part of a larger implementation you still have to reason through and talk through. You just remember that the quicksort of the top half starts at pivot+1 instead of pivot, etc. Essentially you eliminate the little mistakes people tend to make when they are nervous
  • tra3 7y ago
    Do you have an example of how you structured your cards for such a question? It seems impossibly hard to remember an algorithm without committing it to muscle memory so to speak.
  • fspear 7y ago
    can you share your interview decks?
• 4dahalibut 7y ago
  Am I the only one who can't stand cloze deletion? When I use it I just end up with memorizing the words around the deletion and pattern matching the middle.
• earlvlee 7y ago
  I created a spaced repetition app that combines aspects of Pocket and Instapaper with a spaced repetition learning model. It’s helped me get more value of the content I consume online. https://retaino.com https://retaino.com
• bloopernova 7y ago
  I'm starting out on a similar Zettelkasten style database/wiki thing using org-roam and org-journal on Emacs. I find the entire concept fascinating and I'm surprised at how enthusiastic I am with this subject. I'm still refining the workflows and discovering how it interacts with my own idiosyncrasies. The basic setup is: 1) Take daily notes in a hardback A4 sized square dotted journal. Mark shorter tasks/notes as completed when done. 2) Sweep "stuff that needs to be remembered" into org-journal daily entries, once or twice a day. Also add interesting web page links with a short description. And "nice to have" ideas, things like that. 3) Link from those daily notes to other planning or project org-mode notes using org-roam. Write quick outlines of documents. 4) At the beginning of the doc, those planning/project org docs have links to various single-subject docs. Those links are considered "tags" so a taxonomy is slowly being built up. Org-roam shows you backlinks from docs, daily notes, etc, so you can begin to see what is connected. There's also a graphviz output you can generate to get a more graphical view of the links. Things I'd like to be able to do, but haven't yet coded or learned the Lisp to do so: 1) Sync/Import bookmarks and their tags from Firefox. I've got a lot of bookmarks that I've tagged, it would be nice to be able to link those 2 sets of tags. 2) Figure out some sort of end-of-week-review process or multi-doc view. Something for me to look at all the stuff I added that week, and a way for me to push stuff into next week.
• smarri 7y ago
  Good luck to him and his system. This line amazed me by how underwhelming it was "The core of the system is highlighting."
  • tra3 7y ago
    I dont understand the sarcasm. The core of most ideas is simple, wouldn't you agree? I've always struggled with retaining what I read, and "highlighting" is not an obvious answer.
    • smarri 7y ago
      Highlighting is an obvious answer. Children do it at school. I wish the guy well, but it's as I said, underwhelming.
• sequoia 7y ago
  This article reminds me of posts about "bullet journalling" on sites like Pinterest: the optimization of the productivity process or tool (or in the case of "bullet journal" posts, the beauty of the tool) is the end itself, not a means to an end. The posts are about/by "productivity" or "journalling" enthusiasts and don't map well to people who are simply seeking a bit of an organization or productivity boost, not an extremely time-consuming new hobby. The thing in this article that most reminded me about beauty-journalling posts was the todo list. In vanity journalling circles, the todo lists are full of meta-tasks "post to instagram; new journal layout; blog post about journalling" as well as pure vanity items like "yoga!; Breakfast: saffron avocado toast (yum!!)" Likewise, in this post his todo list includes items about writing about productivity, using other productivity tools, and other such "meta-productivity" items. There's nothing wrong with this but it reveals that the "productivity" itself is the hobby, not just a means to an end.
  • Shank 7y ago
    I think you can go too deep into it as a form of procrastination, but I think this post is sincere. Spaced repetition is backed by science as an effective way to acquire knowledge (e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782739/). I'm personally more skeptical of the Zettelkasten/Roam/PKB craze as being effective, but that's only because I feel like I've had yet to find a problem where it would have been the solution. I'm constantly left feeling like it may be the solution to many problems I have related to memory and remembering thoughts, but without personal experience in it, I can't say what it's worth. I don't think it's even possible to evaluate a productivity system without using it for a long amount of time and conducting periodic reviews on it regularly to see if it's helping with anything. I don't know what the metrics to measure are, and I don't know what a review like this would look like. On the paper journaling thing, though, I think the answer is much more clear cut: it's more about the artistic nature of it than anything else. A paper journal is almost always impossible to search, easily damaged, easily lost, and easily customized with stickers, different pens and pencils, and other decor. It's easy to find a notebook you like with a paper you like and then justify writing in it. However, I don't think there are many practical benefits that can't be applied to an electronic system that's functionally similar, save for the effect of slowing down entry so you remember it more.
• arendtio 7y ago
  Reminds me of the open-source app Polar[1], which allows you to create Anki flashcards while you read. [1] https://getpolarized.io https://getpolarized.io
• bsanr 7y ago
  >Imagine this: >You’re an 18 year old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world. >Soon after, you’re thrust into management. Now, you’re leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest growing internet companies of the last decade. I can't bring myself to. It's too sweet a daydream, a fantasy that not a soul on this planet would have deigned to make reality for a black boy like myself, credentials be damned.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • cuntkiller 7y ago
    if you think that's a race thing you're mistaken.
  • theflyinghorse 7y ago
    His story is extremely similar to my second boss - a Nigerian man who was my CTO.
  • chipuni 7y ago
    It happens. Where I work, the manager of programmers is from Nigeria.
  • jmnicolas 7y ago
    > “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.” Henry Ford
  • loco5niner 7y ago
    It's a mistake to assume opportunity is limited by race in this field and credentials aren't as useful as they used to be.
• leon1717 7y ago
  Generally speaking, I don't believe reading more books helps your thinking better than going back to smaller amount of books, unless you just need the knowledge to be used for now. Memorizing is not good enough when reading a good book; it requires more time thinking than reading to grasp the essence of a good book.
• 01100011 7y ago
  Does anyone know if Anki or a similar app can handle importing from a text document or spreadsheet? I have a ton of things I need to learn for my job, and I already have a text document full of notes and definitions. I'd like to assemble everything on my PC and then have flashcards on my phone. I also need to control the syncing because I'd be making cards with the company secret sauce and can't sync to anything but our corporate google drive/docs account. Having an app that pulls the cards from a google sheets doc would be awesome.
  • pjbk 7y ago
    The Anki app does indeed import from CSV files, and you can choose what delimiter character it will use to separate fields.
• cprayingmantis 7y ago
  When you just memorize you lose intuition which is the far more useful portion of learning.
  • diehunde 7y ago
    I disagree. Many times when I read technical books I understand the concepts and ideas but I end up forgetting the actual name of the concept or idea. Then when I heard someone talking about it or mentioning somewhere I can't remember which one was it.
  • muldvarp 7y ago
    You don't really lose anything by memorizing facts. You can still use your intuition for stuff you didn't memorize or forgot.
• thrifter 7y ago
  Readwise.io user here, and I love it. Readwise helps me remember what I read (not just books, but articles too). I get sent a daily email with three excerpts/highlights and it quickly refreshes my memory. Books seem like a better investment for me now because I'm not just forgetting them. BTW, you can choose as many or few excerpts as you want, and what books / articles as well. If the good folks at Readwise are reading this comment: I'd love to see an Android app with OCR capability. I read "dead tree" versions of books from time-to-time and want to save those highlights.
  • keeprunning 7y ago
    recently tried it out as well, and i'm really impressed [especially with the ability to import highlights from instapaper and the kindle clippings file]
• abhiyerra 7y ago
  I wrote a quick script today to use Airtable and Python Flask to do a simple Spaced Repetition. Need to add the following fields in Airtable: Front, Back, Scores (long text), NextReviewAt (date with GMT time). https://gist.github.com/abhiyerra/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7cf18885 https://gist.github.com/abhiyerra/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7c...
• tomerbd 7y ago
  I recently tried instead of remembering stuff with anki, trying to get to the root cause / why of what I try to remember, it's usually a tree meaning the outcomes of what I used to enter to anki was way too many things, and the causes of these items were much fewer, once I get the causes of what I try to enter to anki, I can derive the anki cards just by deducing them. Not perfect but better than having hundreds of anki cards to remember.
• agentultra 7y ago
  Writing works. On pen and paper. I keep journals on everything. I have a series of journals on books I’ve read and what I thought about them. Writing tends to be the key.
• zengargoyle 7y ago
  My problem with Anki was years ago and was how hard it was to programmatically create/modify decks. The database was a pain and not documented anywhere I could find. Took some work and just digging through it the hard way. I just wanted to take a deck and lookup one bit in a dictionary and add a new field for that looked up bit to a card all automagically. Not an easy thing to do. Unless you want to learn the GUI bits, and maybe not even then. It was easy enough to create a new deck, but hard to bulk add new information to an existing deck that you've been studying.
• mellowhype 7y ago
  And in 2020 I stil struggle to export my Kindle highlights from sideloaded books (not bought from Amazon). And even if I did, I haven't found a note system that lets me centralize all the notes I gather from web, documents and my Kindle. Maybe one of you can come up with a piece of service and make me tear up a little.
  • tadeo 7y ago
    Have you tried https://readwise.io https://readwise.io? I export my kindle highlights from sideloaded books through an iphone app and send them to import@readwise.io. That's better then downloading and uploading the txt file. Web is also covered. Dunno about your docuemnts though.
• ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
  I'm using Anki for language learning sparingly (I know it defeats the purpose, but still...) What I haven't figured out it how to automatically create Anki cards from the words I'm looking up in a dictionary. I'm at a point where I rarely stumble upon words I don't understand, and they are usually rare enough to not meet again for a long time, long enough to completely forget them. What I want is something that could catch me opening dictionary by double-tapping in CoolReader and add the shown entry to my Anki. Doing it manually breaks the flow and immersion so I can't really do it while reading.
  • yorwba 7y ago
    Does your dictionary have a search history? That's how I add new cards. Every day before reviewing, I check the list of terms I looked up and then create cards for those I think will be useful to remember.
• istjohn 7y ago
  Anki usage is huge in medical school [1]. There are a handful of huge premade decks students drill hours a day. I think flashcards are hugely underrated for software developers. Memorization is commonly dismissed as unnecesary when we have searchable documentation and Stack Overflow, but the same argument could be had over touch typing. There is enormous value in moving data from disk to L1 cache. If nothing else, having solid, open source, premade decks for the core web technologies would ease the path into web development for boot campers and other newcomers. The first step in that direction is creating a text file format similar to Markdown or TOML for creating, editing and sharing flashcards. I created a hacky solution for myself [2], and another project was also shared in these comments [3]. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/ 2. https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang 3. https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki
  • Valakas_ 7y ago
    Why not use techniques memory champions use though? Never heard of one of them using Anki. Mnemonics, imagery and memory palaces on the other hand... It's like all the amateurs swearing that steel bikes are the best when all the professionals use carbon fiber ones.
    • istjohn 7y ago
      Anki and mnemonics are complementary tools. Use them both.
• GiantSully 7y ago
  I would better endeavor to digest the content and let it be forgotten than to spend time organize it and remember it repeatedly.
• TheCabin 7y ago
  Is someone here running an Anki sync server[1]? I would be keen to know about the experience of setting it up and maintaining it. The github project doesn't seem active, which I always find fishy for server applications. [1] https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync-server https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync-server
• gegohouse 7y ago
  Ad "Zettelkasten" and how you "converse" with it (that's how I [mis]understood it): Luhmann started out by doing these things: * He had sequ. numbered cards, that were written on until they were full and therefore could contain multiple topics - and one topic could therefore also be on multiple cards (no. 1,7,15), if he later added to it * He had a topic index to map card numbers to topics * Most important: he used this system with slight variations continuously over years and it was a one person system The benefit (that you can get with a personal wiki too, if you follow the system with Plugins) is, that when you get all cards on a topic, you also get the information on the topic you wrote down right before and after thinking about the topic you are researching... As information organisation and knowledge is a personal thing, retrieving info from the cards with the other topics you thought of right before and after, might lead to subconscious connections that - and here is the "conversation" - then lead to your brain making connections that go beyond what you wrote down on the cards... at least that is how Luhmann described it... could anyone follow my little mental jump session?
• bor0 7y ago
  I usually write a book review post on my blog that contains these highlights. Whenever I need to recall something, I am reading my own posts. I guess this is similar to spaced repetition.
• AstralStorm 7y ago
  Anki is rather old, SuperMemo in latest versions is generally better. They're related. The unanswered question here is why and how to make these methods of training automatic, as in that you do not need a tool or a calendar or a papet database to run them. There are some other mnemonic methods available but efficacy is unproven.
• classified 7y ago
  A paper notebook would be so much worse. You would have to carry it with you physically (which is clearly an unconscionable imposition), it can't show you relevant ads, and it cannot send every glyph you scrawl to Google, Microsoft, and the NSA. How could people ever use tech like that?
• RMPR 7y ago
  I don't know which kindle OP uses, but there's already a built-in feature called "vocabulary builder" which uses spaced repetition.