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Yearly analytics on my spaced repetition results
Follow-up: https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard-reviews-in-2025/ https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard...
- vunderba 9mo agoFrom the article: > For example, I only record the correctness of a response, not its subjective difficulty, and I mix in random cards with my study sessions to make it harder for me to guess the answer on the basis of when I'm seeing the card. Sounds a bit like the Leitner system [1] with respect to recording only Correct/Incorrect responses. One of the reasons I avoided Anki for a long time was that I wanted to be able to answer cards quickly without actually looking at my phone. I ended up using a combination of automatic TTS, bluetooth headphones, and swipe-up/down gestures to indicate my response. Made it much easier to go through cards while driving or during daily runs with my husky. [1] - https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/study-revision/leitner-system https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/study-revision/leitner-syst...
- yangikan 9mo agoWould love to know more -- what software do you use?
- smuenkel 9mo agoIf you have the software for that in a repo somewhere, I'd be interested in seeing how you made that work as well.
- hn_user82179 9mo agoI would love to hear more about your setup!
- rsanek 9mo agoInteresting to see the stats here. My total active library size is about the same as the author's (~50k cards), yet I performed less than 100k reviews this past year. That said, my overall retention is a good bit lower (~83%). Wouldn't have expected a 6% difference to make for a 3x higher review load!
- koakuma-chan 9mo agoWhat are your cards about? The author seems to be learning for the sake of learning.
- Theaetetus 9mo ago1. My algorithm is probably inefficient, and a big Q1 2026 goal is to figure out where the inefficiencies are and (better) to get a better system for addressing and remediating them in an automated way. 2. A lot of my cards were also made in 2025 (and 2024), so I'm probably much farther to the left of you on the learning curve, on average.
- satisfice 9mo agoDoes doing this have utility? What problem does it solve? Years ago, I memorized 1034 digits of pi just to see what it felt like (reciting pi from memory felt like walking through a forest at night without bumping into any trees). So, there was some value in that experience. I wonder what this guy gets out of it?
- santoshalper 9mo agoI think they just enjoy memorizing things. Roughly the equivalent of meeting someone who runs 10 miles a day. They enjoy it and it has some benefit to their life as well, even though they are probably far past the point of diminishing returns.
- rjh29 9mo agoMore precisely, enjoys memorizing things but isn't good at it. Professonal quizzers can absorb huge amounts of information but typically don't use flashcards. OP is grinding thousands of cards a day to get to the same level - worthy of respect!
- redfloatplane 9mo ago> but typically don't use flashcards Can you elaborate on this? I watch an unhealthy amount of University Challenge and I assumed that the vast majority of contestants would use flash cards as a trivia retention tool. Most people I've met who need to rely on large amounts of accurate but relatively dispersed knowledge (law students, say, or specific historical professions) use flash cards in one way or another. It surprises me greatly that 'professional quizzers' wouldn't. Perhaps _some_ of them wouldn't - I'm sure as with anything there are some who are preternaturally excellent.
- hn_user82179 9mo agoI highly doubt professional or even amateur quizzers wouldn't use flashcards. Especially armed with a SRS algo, it would be the most efficient way to learn to quickly recall the type of info needed for quiz bowls
- santoshalper 9mo agoI read the author's attempt to explain why memorization is important, and found myself unconvinced. Of all the things we consider to be "intelligence", memorization of facts seems like one of the least valuable in the Internet-era. That said, I am open to hear some counter-arguments (pro-memorization). Of course, if you simply enjoy the process of memorizing facts, then no explanation is needed - it is entertainment for you, and comes with a benefit, like enjoying exercising. Otherwise, it does not seem like a remotely optimally productive way to achieve mastery in any field I am aware of, other than being a student who will be tested on fact memorization.
- rjh29 9mo agoMemorization focuses on the set of things you want to recall, but don't use often enough to naturally remember. This is most peritent for language learning because you need to 'bootstrap' a large set of words and grammar, and you can't use all of them often enough to put them in long-term memory (at first). Aside from foreign languages, I also use flashcards for English - more difficult words that show up rarely enough that I can't remember their definitions - and country flags. For general learning too, if you need to keep looking something up over and over but can't seem to remember it, flashcards will bootstrap that into your brain and make future learning smoother. Obviously Internet/AI can help - but LLMs can't explain 100% of a topic in their reply, they always assume some level of abstraction, and the higher-level it is the faster you can absorb a topic.
- _JoRo 9mo agoI think the key part here is the bootstrapping phase. You may not use a specific English word every week, but maybe you use it every 2-3 months. SRS is great for getting information to these different thresholds!
- Theaetetus 9mo agoSee my other comments here for some of my motivations, but also: Even in the Internet age, getting the latency from "fast" to "effectively zero" has a lot of value for staying in flow, synethesizing information, etc. Your memory is the ultra-low-latency fact retrieval system you always have. No, you definitely don't want to use it for everything, but it definitely does complement modern tools in important ways.
- webdevver 9mo agowould be really funny if this was actually someone preparing for who wants to be a millionaire
- NoSalt 9mo agoAre these physical flashcards or virtual, some sort of flashcard software? Definitely writing out 301,432 physical flashcards would be a lot of work, not to mention [kinda] a waste of paper, however many people still like the physical over the virtual; this is me when it comes to reading books.
- namrog84 9mo agoBullets 2,3, and 4 * I'm using my own software * I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025. * Those reviews covered 52,764 distinct cards.
- elil17 9mo agoAs someone who did about 51k in 2025, oh my goodness how would you possibly have time for 300k?
- hn_user82179 9mo agoI did 10k reviews. Admittedly, very streakily - so spurts intense study for 2-3 months than several months off - I think about 2.5 spurts total. I felt pretty wrung out after. 51k is a ton, congrats!
- elil17 9mo agoThank you! I feel very proud of it.
- Theaetetus 9mo ago1. I have a long commute, and I have about 45 minutes of walking per day, during which I like to do my reviews. 2. I've put serious effort into reducing the friction in my software in order to reduce time per review. 3. You've got to do something when you're on the toilet, right?
- MattRix 9mo agoWhen you review while walking are you just looking at your phone? I’m wondering if there’s some less obtrusive way it could be done, like via smartwatch or even 100% by audio or something.
- Theaetetus 9mo agoLooking at my phone. I do have exactly the plans you describe!
- vunderba 9mo agoNot OP but but one of the reasons I avoided Anki for a long time was that I wanted to be able to answer cards quickly without actually looking at my phone. I ended up using a combination of automatic TTS, bluetooth headphones, and swipe-up/down gestures to indicate my response because I wanted to do flashcards while going on runs. I currently use a bespoke piece of software for this now but I've had great success in the past with Flashcards Deluxe (by Orange or Apple). It supports automatic TTS, answering by gestures, etc. I used to use it back when I had a long commute. https://orangeorapple.com/flashcards https://orangeorapple.com/flashcards
- scotty79 9mo ago> My correct-answer rate is approximately 89% That sounds like incredibly boring way to spend time. I'd aim for something like 20% at most. What's the fun in being asked things you already know?
- BeetleB 9mo agoThe point of spaced repetition is to have you recall something right when you're just about to forget it. If you recall after it's been forgotten, that means you're forgetting a lot more, which means the system isn't working.
- scotty79 9mo agoThen the point is boring and tedious. You should be forgetting a lot in your life and learn a lot. Remembering is overrated. Learning the same thing second or third time gives you better understanding.
- reedlaw 9mo agoThat sounds nearly perfect for FSRS [1], the default spaced repetition algorithm used by Anki, which aims at estimating the time it takes for memory stability to decline from 100% to 90%. At the estimated 90% stability point, FSRS would require a review, so naturally a mature deck of flashcards would hover between 90-100% stability. 1. https://expertium.github.io/Algorithm.html https://expertium.github.io/Algorithm.html
- Theaetetus 9mo agoThis is a really good question! 1. As others have said, the idea is to study something before you forget. 2. It's hard to predict when you're going to forget something, so you do wind up studying a bunch of stuff before you really have to. It's a limitation of prediction (and also of the technology as developed so far). 3. It really is pleasant to work to recall things even when you succeed at it. It does "freshen them up" in your memory. And sometimes just the experience of seeing a fact can be pleasant. (A lot of us review familiar things for the joy of it in other domains--movies, etc.)
- kayo_20211030 9mo agoThere are some days when I feel I don't know this community at all. :-) Do this many people use flashcards? Maybe I'm way too old. Probably.
- scotty79 9mo ago> The prompt of my most-missed card (39 misses in 2025) is: Merrily We Roll Along (the musical) is based on a 1934 play by what two people > [...] But, ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me that these effects are not statistically significant, despite having pretty large sample sizes. Imagine he instead learned how to calculate staristical significance instead so he didn't have to believe AI guesswork.
- NewsaHackO 9mo agoYes, different strokes I guess but I can't imagine just using flashcards for random information. And you'd think someone who wrote(maybe vibe coded?) a flashcard program would be calculate that by hand.
- Theaetetus 9mo agoYes, I can calculate that! I was a math major and have some basic literacy. I checked the LLMs' work. That said, I only did so with medium rigor, and I wanted to flag that I was speaking as someone who was assisted by AI, not someone who had done the process by hand.
- Artgor 9mo agoI sympathise. I did ~200k reviews in Anki and no idea how many in Renshuu in 2025 for language learning: German, Spanish and Japanese... and I think I got into Anki hell. For a long time, Anki was really useful for me, it pushed my Spanish and German forward, but now I plan to decrease the number of reviews significantly. I hope to spend no more than 30 minutes per day of flashcards, and the rest of time on immersion.
- aaronrobinson 9mo agoHow do you decide what to immerse yourself in? Do you just search for things independently or do you have a way of selecting content based on your level?
- Artgor 9mo agoI prefer to start immersion at ~B1 level. I know some people want to do comprehensive input right from the start, but I prefer to build foundations. I start with popular books that I have already read before - The Little Prince, Harry Potter, etc. Then I take books that are interesting for me and work through them. There are graded readers, but the stories are usually very boring. I prefer to read what I like.
- simedw 9mo agoFirst of all, big kudos for not missing a single day. When I used flashcards in the past, missing even a couple of days led to an avalanche of cards to review. Since you’ve been so consistent and are using your own software, have you experimented with different resurfacing rates? Did you notice a material difference in recall?
- Theaetetus 9mo agoI have done a lot of algorithmic experiments. I wouldn't say I noticed a big difference in recall, but my graphs say that there definitely is one!
- Nerada 9mo agoIs there a reason you chose to roll your own software instead of just using Anki? Custom algorithm you think is better than FSRS? UI preferences?
- Theaetetus 9mo agoI don't exactly think I have an algorithm better than FSRS yet, but I have an algorithm I like better. Hopefully I'll have more to say about this soon.
- yodsanklai 9mo agoThey barely mention why they're even doing this. I see flashcard as a means to something (e.g. learning a language, preparing for a test...). The measured outcome should be the success in task, rather than the number of reviewed cards.
- vjerancrnjak 9mo agoReading the article I did not ask at all the question for why they're doing this. I see no reason why that is important.
- yesitcan 9mo agoYeah, can anyone else that does this explain what the point is? Genuinely curious.
- Theaetetus 9mo ago1. I have always loved learning things, both big and small. 2. I enjoy trivia competitions. 3. I'm interested in human memory more generally. 4. I think that spaced repetition software could be a lot better, and I'm trying to make such software. So when I study, I'm also getting the value of using and improving my own software.
- anon7000 9mo agoI’ve thought about using spaced repetition myself. I have ADHD and I tend to forget about things I’ve learned. There are certain skills or hobbies I enjoy doing that benefit from knowing things, and i just want to better remember things I already learned. For example, maybe I read a book that has a really key insight about how my brain works with ADHD. I’m not going to remember or apply that insight to my life unless I spend some time trying to remember it. By default it’s not going to stick for very long.
- Theaetetus 9mo agoIt's likely to be worth trying! Good luck.
- 9mo ago
- aydin212 9mo ago301k reviews/year is serious commitment. Curious — do you ever prune low-value cards, or is the goal to never delete anything?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Theaetetus 9mo agoI prune some, but less than I probably should, and less than most other serious SR people do. I'm more interested in techniques for (i) raising the quality of even my lower-value cards and (ii) figuring out how to actually learn the stuff that people think of as "leeches."
- williamsss 9mo agoI would have liked to see statistics on study session length eg. average duration. Also how long you typically spend creating per card and how many you created this year. That information would help us all better assess whether the time spent on a spaced repetition flashcard system is justified
- jjice 9mo agoHow do you decide what gets a card? I see you like trivia and such, but what triggers you to turn a trivia sounding fact into a flash card?
- Theaetetus 9mo agoAt this point there's just a reflex I have that says "ah, I'd like to remember that." It's the same feeling whether I'm learning something for trivia, for work, or for personal reasons.
- Theaetetus 9mo agoThanks to everyone for all the useful notes and questions here. I've compiled a follow-up post here: https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard-reviews-in-2025/ https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard...
- dang 9mo agoOk, I've put that link in the toptext as well.
- rahimnathwani 9mo agoIf you use Anki and want to analyze your review history, you can export the review history into a CSV, and then use pandas to analyze it. https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flashcard-reviews https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flas...