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I really like Andy Matuschak's ideas. What I don't understand though is his obsession with spaced repetition. While I see the value in it, the cost for me pers

I really like Andy Matuschak's ideas. What I don't understand though is his obsession with spaced repetition. While I see the value in it, the cost for me personally is also very high. I was surprised to hear that with just 10 minutes of practice he can sustain up to 40 new cards added every day. I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session. Maybe my brain is just slower at recalling things.

luqtas 2y ago
"retrieval practice" is a really efficient evidence based method [0]... maybe that's why they talk about spaced repetition [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654316689306?journalCode=rera https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465431668930...
keiferski 2y ago
In my experience, the amount of time needed to remember things in Anki will slowly improve. The key word being slowly. A lot of people get frustrated when they have been learning an item for weeks, answered the card over a dozen times, and yet still struggle to remember it. That’s because you need months for the SR algorithm to work properly. You really need to commit to it for the long haul for it to be effective. Personally I can remember random words in obscure languages off the top of my head (instantaneously), purely because I added a card for them years ago and still keep current.
- kiba 2y ago
  I stopped using anki because the stuff I chosen to remember and study are often of no applicable value or they are of use but does very little toward developing the skills I want. I have no doubt that spaced repetition is a biological reality in how our memories work but I haven't found a way to make it resonate for me.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    It depends on what you're trying to learn. There are certainly some things which don't benefit much from the flash card format, but I do think even then, these kinds of complaints are largely a failing of the user, not the app. If you get a little creative and experiment with the format of your cards, you can learn pretty much anything via Anki. Or at least enhance your knowledge of the skill you're ostensibly also practicing in real life. The mistake most people make is simply adopting the "boring" flash card format of FRONT-BACK, and not incorporating other more creative types of cards. For example, question-answer, visualization, triggers, or unique images. ChatGPT is pretty useful for this, as you can get it to present the same information in a variety of different formats and contexts.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  Interestingly, my experience is quite dissimilar at times. I've been using it for foreign language vocabulary acquisition (not multiple languages, just focusing on one language at the moment). I find that certain words just 'go in' easily, and I never have a problem remembering them as long as I review my Anki deck daily. For other words, they don't ever get substantially easier. I can still use Anki to help memorise them, but re-learning them is sometimes necessary. A concrete example from my deck: word added 2024-02-24, three reviews, now with an interval of 3.03 months. No 'again' answers; nice and easy! Another word, added 2024-02-29, not so good: 14 reviews and an interval of 15 days. I think there are several factors contributing to forgetfulness with Anki for me, some of which might overlap with your experience: A: not properly 'learning' the word in the first place. For me, 'learning' means using the word in context, studying its etymology (even if I do not intend to memorise that) and saying it out aloud. If I don't do that at the beginning, it won't really stick until I effectively start all over again. B: 'learning' words on a bad day, or too late in the day. Even if I 'learn' the words properly, I need to have learnt them in Anki when I'm feeling moderately energetic. If I'm exhausted mentally or physically, my rigorous learning strategy doesn't seem to translate into memory. When I notice myself doing Anki reviews much slower than usual due to tiredness, I generally limit the review count and try to catch up when I'm fresh another day. C: not being consistent enough with reviews. Both the time spent on each individual review and the time spent in total are important - 4 seconds per word is a good sign for me, and strictly 20 minutes a day in total. That allows me to keep up a pace of 12 new words a day very consistently. Would love to hear which parts of this sound familiar to you, or what other things you've noticed for yourself!
  - keiferski 2y ago
    For other words, they don't ever get substantially easier. This should (hopefully) get easier over time. From your dates there, it looks like the cards you have to re-learn often were only originally added 3 months ago? I think this should become easier for you in 6, 9, or 18 months – provided you continue to keep updated on the cards. A. I definitely agree here. If I don't at least know understand a word to say, 30% confidence, I will never learn it, and will forever repeat it without making any progress. Personally I use images and sound to help make words stick in my mind. There's a lot of research about the effectiveness of imagery (see the "picture superiority effect.") B. Ditto with #1. In scientific terms, this is called "encoding." Properly encoding things at the beginning has a big effect on your long term retention. C. I do my reviews every morning while on the exercise bike. I use a gamepad to move through them more quickly, although I would technically be better with typing them out. Also, as a side note, I have written a few blog posts on an old Substack about using Anki and AI tools: https://neurotechnicians.substack.com/archive?sort=new https://neurotechnicians.substack.com/archive?sort=new You might find the one about Using Images to Remember Things useful.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bumbledraven 2y ago
Yeah, 10 minutes/day for 40 new questions/day seemed low to me as well. I agree with you that the plausibility of that figure depends on how long it takes to answer questions. Matuschak writes: > In my personal practice, I've accumulated thousands and thousands of questions. > I spend about ten minutes a day using my memory system. Because these exponential schedules are very efficient, those ten minutes are enough to maintain my memory for thousands of questions, and to allow me to add up to about forty new questions each day. It takes a while to formulate (and subsequently edit) a single good question (https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulating-knowledge https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...), but suppose we leave that aside and assume that by "using my memory system", Matuschak means answering previously-formulated questions. He says that questions should take only a few seconds each, so suppose it takes 10 seconds on average to answer a question. Then one could answer 40 questions in 400 seconds, which is under 7 minutes. That leaves 3 minutes to review roughly 20 questions of older material.
- andymatuschak 2y ago
  Yeah, that's more or less the math. My average is 6 seconds per question, so the mix is somewhat more older material.
throwaway22032 2y ago
I love spaced repetition but the issue I have with it is that if you fall off the wagon you have to basically just reset. It becomes insurmountable. The gamification of finishing my queue doesn't work when it always has thousands of entries in.
gofreddygo 2y ago
I have rejected Anki and its competitors for learning. I found it shallow and a drag It need high initial investment (prep cards, commit to reviewing everyday) with 0 instantaneous results (a week or 2 in and the cards are still fuzzy). These are superficial problems. My deeper beef with this method is the complete absence of emphasizing, discovering or forming connections between cohesive things. We're trying to learn, it's a super power to start seeing patterns in what we learn, it forms buckets that we can put new concepts and information in. Without it, the learning is ... shallow. I found a better way. I map out full concepts to fit on single sheets of printer paper. Frontside has mostly words with lines connecting them or forming groups. The backside is for related drudgery (formulae, dates, numbers, names). I repeat new things everyday till I can reproduce the sheet front and back without any help. And then slowly introduce days of spacing between repetitions. This is way more satisfying, no tech involved, no algorithms, just hard work and way faster. I do not have any evidence of this working long term. The things I put so much effort in learning to reproduce with such accuracy usually is useful in the short term only. So it works for me.
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  Okay, you're already operating at a higher level. You can mostly-memorize entire concept maps and redraw them from memory. You realize most people can't do that? Lots of other people are still operating at the flash card level.
- boxed 2y ago
  I've started doing anki for geography for myself and with my 9yo daughter. We've been doing it for a few weeks and she now knows ~100% of all countries and their flags. Just absolutely domination level learning. I think it's a matter of finding things that fit Anki, and not trying to fit Anki to the thing you want to learn. Geography is a perfect application: we all would be a bit more informed by knowing all countries, seas, etc; and it's something that Anki is very well suited for. I've also added: - the numerical value for letters (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc) which I think will give me greater powers of lexical sorting. We'll see. - NATO phonetic alphabet - multiplication up to 12x12. I neglected/avoided automating that stuff as a kid and my confidence in doing mental arithmetic is still low. Not sure this is a good case for Anki yet...we'll see. - A custom deck with the faces and names of everyone at my work. This feels like a slam dunk. I am terrible with names, so I think this can up my game a lot. In my experience it's hard to find things that feel marginally useful/fun to learn and that works with Anki. But when it does, it's amazing.
bumbledraven 2y ago
> What I don't understand though is his obsession with spaced repetition. I think Matuschak wants to be able to recall particular things ~forever, and spaced repetition is the best method known for that. (Nit: Your sentence begins as a genuine expression of puzzlement rather than an outright criticism, but then you refer to Matuschak's "obsession", which pre-judges the issue. It would be more consistent to refer to his "emphasis on" or "advocacy of".)
- cloogshicer 2y ago
  Hah, I actually was looking for a better word than 'obsession', I even used the dictionary (English isn't my native language), but couldn't find one. Then I reluctantly picked obsession. 'Emphasis on' is much better, thank you! Edit: Can't edit my original post though, time's up. But I would if I could!
BeetleB 2y ago
> I was surprised to hear that with just 10 minutes of practice he can sustain up to 40 new cards added every day. It'd take me over 10 minutes simply to add those 40 cards. But if he's referring only to reviewing, it's believable. Personally, I don't think I can handle more than 10-20 new cards per day. > I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session. Are you literally going through all the questions? Isn't the whole point of SR not to do that? If you meant it took you an hour to go through whatever subset is due for that day, my next question would be: Are you reviewing daily? SR algorithms assume you review daily, and that's the only sane way to keep the time low. As an example, out of a 2000 card deck, I had to review only 6 cards the other day.
- cloogshicer 2y ago
  Well, I did go through the entire deck at some point because the SR algo gave them to me. But with 'all' I meant the ones that were given by the algo.
- andymatuschak 2y ago
  > It'd take me over 10 minutes simply to add those 40 cards. > But if he's referring only to reviewing, it's believable. Yes, referring just to reviewing. Adding takes much more than ten minutes, as you say. And so, in practice, I don't saturate this capacity most days.
wodenokoto 2y ago
My initial reaction to those numbers are “you’d have to know the stuff in order to go through 40 new cards and a backlog in 10 minutes”, but the thing is, spaced repetition is for remembering, not for learning. We tend to treat anki as a tool for learning, but it isn’t.
breadsniffer01 2y ago
I think he’s imagining the perfect tool for himself rather than a tool that could be widely adopted. He mentioned he doesn’t care at all about raising the floor with learning tools i.e. wide accessibility. Which is a kind of a shame given how much AI now allows
SpaceManNabs 2y ago
He is a knowledge hoarder which is closely correlated with learning but not the same thing. I have the same issue. I do agree with him wholeheartedly that spaced repetition bootstraps you well for actual learning. Until someone else comes up with a better way to bootstrap efficiently, I agree with him mostly and see value in his obsession.
andymatuschak 2y ago
> I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session. That's very interesting! The review sessions cap at 50 questions, so that means well over a minute for each. Our design intent is that if you can't remember in a few seconds, you should mark it as forgotten, view the answer, and move on. The marginal benefit from exerting marginal effort to remember on your own from point is not high. But your comment suggests that it would be helpful for the interface to do something to suggest the tempo we have in mind. Thank you for sharing.
- cloogshicer 2y ago
  That's interesting. When you can't recall a card though, and you mark it as forgotten, don't you need some time to actively memorize it again? Like, I often had cards asking me a question, and then I'd have to think a little bit about the question, then I couldn't remember, then I look at the solution, and I have to think again about the answer, and how it relates to other concepts.
  - andymatuschak 2y ago
    Yes, that does help a bit—elaborative processing. But it’s not something I’d consistently spend more than a few seconds per question on, generally speaking.
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    > I couldn't remember, then I look at the solution, and I have to think again about the answer, and how it relates to other concepts. Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work the first few times you try to associate the answer with the question. Then it begins to sink in, and you can remember the answer for a few minutes after seeing it. When you've successfully remembered it several times after short-delay, then the program increases the delay. When you've successfully remembered it several times after medium-delay, then the program increases the delay again. > don't you need some time to actively memorize it again? The rapid repetition of asking / being shown the answer multiple times IS how you actively memorize it. If the deck is so large it takes you an hour to get through one cycle, there are too many cards in it. Start over with a deck that takes you only 5-10 minutes, and spend an hour going through several repetitions. When your rapid-recall rate becomes high, slowly add more new cards.

luqtas 2y ago

"retrieval practice" is a really efficient evidence based method [0]... maybe that's why they talk about spaced repetition [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654316689306?journalCode=rera https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465431668930...

keiferski 2y ago

In my experience, the amount of time needed to remember things in Anki will slowly improve. The key word being slowly. A lot of people get frustrated when they have been learning an item for weeks, answered the card over a dozen times, and yet still struggle to remember it. That’s because you need months for the SR algorithm to work properly. You really need to commit to it for the long haul for it to be effective. Personally I can remember random words in obscure languages off the top of my head (instantaneously), purely because I added a card for them years ago and still keep current.

kiba 2y ago
I stopped using anki because the stuff I chosen to remember and study are often of no applicable value or they are of use but does very little toward developing the skills I want. I have no doubt that spaced repetition is a biological reality in how our memories work but I haven't found a way to make it resonate for me.
- keiferski 2y ago
  It depends on what you're trying to learn. There are certainly some things which don't benefit much from the flash card format, but I do think even then, these kinds of complaints are largely a failing of the user, not the app. If you get a little creative and experiment with the format of your cards, you can learn pretty much anything via Anki. Or at least enhance your knowledge of the skill you're ostensibly also practicing in real life. The mistake most people make is simply adopting the "boring" flash card format of FRONT-BACK, and not incorporating other more creative types of cards. For example, question-answer, visualization, triggers, or unique images. ChatGPT is pretty useful for this, as you can get it to present the same information in a variety of different formats and contexts.
seabass-labrax 2y ago
Interestingly, my experience is quite dissimilar at times. I've been using it for foreign language vocabulary acquisition (not multiple languages, just focusing on one language at the moment). I find that certain words just 'go in' easily, and I never have a problem remembering them as long as I review my Anki deck daily. For other words, they don't ever get substantially easier. I can still use Anki to help memorise them, but re-learning them is sometimes necessary. A concrete example from my deck: word added 2024-02-24, three reviews, now with an interval of 3.03 months. No 'again' answers; nice and easy! Another word, added 2024-02-29, not so good: 14 reviews and an interval of 15 days. I think there are several factors contributing to forgetfulness with Anki for me, some of which might overlap with your experience: A: not properly 'learning' the word in the first place. For me, 'learning' means using the word in context, studying its etymology (even if I do not intend to memorise that) and saying it out aloud. If I don't do that at the beginning, it won't really stick until I effectively start all over again. B: 'learning' words on a bad day, or too late in the day. Even if I 'learn' the words properly, I need to have learnt them in Anki when I'm feeling moderately energetic. If I'm exhausted mentally or physically, my rigorous learning strategy doesn't seem to translate into memory. When I notice myself doing Anki reviews much slower than usual due to tiredness, I generally limit the review count and try to catch up when I'm fresh another day. C: not being consistent enough with reviews. Both the time spent on each individual review and the time spent in total are important - 4 seconds per word is a good sign for me, and strictly 20 minutes a day in total. That allows me to keep up a pace of 12 new words a day very consistently. Would love to hear which parts of this sound familiar to you, or what other things you've noticed for yourself!
- keiferski 2y ago
  For other words, they don't ever get substantially easier. This should (hopefully) get easier over time. From your dates there, it looks like the cards you have to re-learn often were only originally added 3 months ago? I think this should become easier for you in 6, 9, or 18 months – provided you continue to keep updated on the cards. A. I definitely agree here. If I don't at least know understand a word to say, 30% confidence, I will never learn it, and will forever repeat it without making any progress. Personally I use images and sound to help make words stick in my mind. There's a lot of research about the effectiveness of imagery (see the "picture superiority effect.") B. Ditto with #1. In scientific terms, this is called "encoding." Properly encoding things at the beginning has a big effect on your long term retention. C. I do my reviews every morning while on the exercise bike. I use a gamepad to move through them more quickly, although I would technically be better with typing them out. Also, as a side note, I have written a few blog posts on an old Substack about using Anki and AI tools: https://neurotechnicians.substack.com/archive?sort=new https://neurotechnicians.substack.com/archive?sort=new You might find the one about Using Images to Remember Things useful.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bumbledraven 2y ago

Yeah, 10 minutes/day for 40 new questions/day seemed low to me as well. I agree with you that the plausibility of that figure depends on how long it takes to answer questions. Matuschak writes: > In my personal practice, I've accumulated thousands and thousands of questions. > I spend about ten minutes a day using my memory system. Because these exponential schedules are very efficient, those ten minutes are enough to maintain my memory for thousands of questions, and to allow me to add up to about forty new questions each day. It takes a while to formulate (and subsequently edit) a single good question (https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulating-knowledge https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...), but suppose we leave that aside and assume that by "using my memory system", Matuschak means answering previously-formulated questions. He says that questions should take only a few seconds each, so suppose it takes 10 seconds on average to answer a question. Then one could answer 40 questions in 400 seconds, which is under 7 minutes. That leaves 3 minutes to review roughly 20 questions of older material.

andymatuschak 2y ago
Yeah, that's more or less the math. My average is 6 seconds per question, so the mix is somewhat more older material.

throwaway22032 2y ago

I love spaced repetition but the issue I have with it is that if you fall off the wagon you have to basically just reset. It becomes insurmountable. The gamification of finishing my queue doesn't work when it always has thousands of entries in.

gofreddygo 2y ago

I have rejected Anki and its competitors for learning. I found it shallow and a drag It need high initial investment (prep cards, commit to reviewing everyday) with 0 instantaneous results (a week or 2 in and the cards are still fuzzy). These are superficial problems. My deeper beef with this method is the complete absence of emphasizing, discovering or forming connections between cohesive things. We're trying to learn, it's a super power to start seeing patterns in what we learn, it forms buckets that we can put new concepts and information in. Without it, the learning is ... shallow. I found a better way. I map out full concepts to fit on single sheets of printer paper. Frontside has mostly words with lines connecting them or forming groups. The backside is for related drudgery (formulae, dates, numbers, names). I repeat new things everyday till I can reproduce the sheet front and back without any help. And then slowly introduce days of spacing between repetitions. This is way more satisfying, no tech involved, no algorithms, just hard work and way faster. I do not have any evidence of this working long term. The things I put so much effort in learning to reproduce with such accuracy usually is useful in the short term only. So it works for me.

ahazred8ta 2y ago
Okay, you're already operating at a higher level. You can mostly-memorize entire concept maps and redraw them from memory. You realize most people can't do that? Lots of other people are still operating at the flash card level.
boxed 2y ago
I've started doing anki for geography for myself and with my 9yo daughter. We've been doing it for a few weeks and she now knows ~100% of all countries and their flags. Just absolutely domination level learning. I think it's a matter of finding things that fit Anki, and not trying to fit Anki to the thing you want to learn. Geography is a perfect application: we all would be a bit more informed by knowing all countries, seas, etc; and it's something that Anki is very well suited for. I've also added: - the numerical value for letters (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc) which I think will give me greater powers of lexical sorting. We'll see. - NATO phonetic alphabet - multiplication up to 12x12. I neglected/avoided automating that stuff as a kid and my confidence in doing mental arithmetic is still low. Not sure this is a good case for Anki yet...we'll see. - A custom deck with the faces and names of everyone at my work. This feels like a slam dunk. I am terrible with names, so I think this can up my game a lot. In my experience it's hard to find things that feel marginally useful/fun to learn and that works with Anki. But when it does, it's amazing.

bumbledraven 2y ago

> What I don't understand though is his obsession with spaced repetition. I think Matuschak wants to be able to recall particular things ~forever, and spaced repetition is the best method known for that. (Nit: Your sentence begins as a genuine expression of puzzlement rather than an outright criticism, but then you refer to Matuschak's "obsession", which pre-judges the issue. It would be more consistent to refer to his "emphasis on" or "advocacy of".)

cloogshicer 2y ago
Hah, I actually was looking for a better word than 'obsession', I even used the dictionary (English isn't my native language), but couldn't find one. Then I reluctantly picked obsession. 'Emphasis on' is much better, thank you! Edit: Can't edit my original post though, time's up. But I would if I could!

BeetleB 2y ago

> I was surprised to hear that with just 10 minutes of practice he can sustain up to 40 new cards added every day. It'd take me over 10 minutes simply to add those 40 cards. But if he's referring only to reviewing, it's believable. Personally, I don't think I can handle more than 10-20 new cards per day. > I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session. Are you literally going through all the questions? Isn't the whole point of SR not to do that? If you meant it took you an hour to go through whatever subset is due for that day, my next question would be: Are you reviewing daily? SR algorithms assume you review daily, and that's the only sane way to keep the time low. As an example, out of a 2000 card deck, I had to review only 6 cards the other day.

cloogshicer 2y ago
Well, I did go through the entire deck at some point because the SR algo gave them to me. But with 'all' I meant the ones that were given by the algo.
andymatuschak 2y ago
> It'd take me over 10 minutes simply to add those 40 cards. > But if he's referring only to reviewing, it's believable. Yes, referring just to reviewing. Adding takes much more than ten minutes, as you say. And so, in practice, I don't saturate this capacity most days.

wodenokoto 2y ago

My initial reaction to those numbers are “you’d have to know the stuff in order to go through 40 new cards and a backlog in 10 minutes”, but the thing is, spaced repetition is for remembering, not for learning. We tend to treat anki as a tool for learning, but it isn’t.

breadsniffer01 2y ago

I think he’s imagining the perfect tool for himself rather than a tool that could be widely adopted. He mentioned he doesn’t care at all about raising the floor with learning tools i.e. wide accessibility. Which is a kind of a shame given how much AI now allows

SpaceManNabs 2y ago

He is a knowledge hoarder which is closely correlated with learning but not the same thing. I have the same issue. I do agree with him wholeheartedly that spaced repetition bootstraps you well for actual learning. Until someone else comes up with a better way to bootstrap efficiently, I agree with him mostly and see value in his obsession.

andymatuschak 2y ago

> I did quantum country a while back and I sometimes needed more than an hour to get through all the questions in a single practice session. That's very interesting! The review sessions cap at 50 questions, so that means well over a minute for each. Our design intent is that if you can't remember in a few seconds, you should mark it as forgotten, view the answer, and move on. The marginal benefit from exerting marginal effort to remember on your own from point is not high. But your comment suggests that it would be helpful for the interface to do something to suggest the tempo we have in mind. Thank you for sharing.

cloogshicer 2y ago
That's interesting. When you can't recall a card though, and you mark it as forgotten, don't you need some time to actively memorize it again? Like, I often had cards asking me a question, and then I'd have to think a little bit about the question, then I couldn't remember, then I look at the solution, and I have to think again about the answer, and how it relates to other concepts.
- andymatuschak 2y ago
  Yes, that does help a bit—elaborative processing. But it’s not something I’d consistently spend more than a few seconds per question on, generally speaking.
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  > I couldn't remember, then I look at the solution, and I have to think again about the answer, and how it relates to other concepts. Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work the first few times you try to associate the answer with the question. Then it begins to sink in, and you can remember the answer for a few minutes after seeing it. When you've successfully remembered it several times after short-delay, then the program increases the delay. When you've successfully remembered it several times after medium-delay, then the program increases the delay again. > don't you need some time to actively memorize it again? The rapid repetition of asking / being shown the answer multiple times IS how you actively memorize it. If the deck is so large it takes you an hour to get through one cycle, there are too many cards in it. Start over with a deck that takes you only 5-10 minutes, and spend an hour going through several repetitions. When your rapid-recall rate becomes high, slowly add more new cards.