
Using Anki to remember what you read - dshipper
https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-learning-machine
======
sequoia
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.

~~~
awefiawejfl
My BS detector went off immediately when I read the link about Zettelkastens,
and then I googled "Zettelkasten", and I skimmed through five different
articles that were each pages long and talked over and over about how
wonderful Zettelkastens are but didn't give any information about how they
work or how to implement them practically. That's a pretty reliable indication
that the service is the end, not a means to the end.

For the uninformed, a Zettelkasten is a searchable, unordered, labeled
database. That's it.

~~~
all2
> For the uninformed, a Zettelkasten is a searchable, unordered, labeled
> database. That's it.

I could spin up ElasticSearch or something similar and have it crawl all the
files on my computer and get an 80% solution. Kinda like Apple's "Finder"
functionality.

~~~
sj4nz
Almost, but not quite. Zettlekastenicians (Zettlekasatengineers?) try to only
put succinct thoughts into their systems that they can tend and grow into
larger productions of thinking or learning--there are some more specialized
amounts of explicit metadata (your thoughts, ideas, inspirations, questions)
that cannot be crawled and indexed by machine which will only see the implicit
metadata.

If you index everything together you get something that it is merely a pile of
searchable things. You do not experience the "conversation" with the slip-box
as Niklas Luhmann described it. Software like
[http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/](http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/)
that implements the "digital version" of the system suffers from what I like
to describe as the "Hudsucker Proxy" problem: A young idealist visionary comes
out and holds a big plastic loop and mutters "You know... for kids!" and
nobody has a clue what that is supposed to mean. It isn't until someone shows
how to use the "big plastic loop" before anyone understands what's happening.
And that's really hard to do with something as abstract as a Zettlekasten
despite it just "being little notes gathered together with lots of numbers and
letters pointing at the other notes" or an "unordered database".

~~~
all2
Now I want to find someone who uses this and follow them around for a day or
two asking questions.

------
yen223
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.

~~~
gwd
One of the issues Anki has, I find, is that if you end up taking a long break
for whatever reason, there's no way to "reset".

I used Anki to study Chinese for a period of about 10 years. At some point I
decided that I wanted to memorize the poker "outs" (probabilities of filling
out a hand based on what had currently been dealt). Then I went through a time
where I was really busy and didn't study the poker deck for a month (but I
made time for Chinese). When I came back to the poker deck, the "spaced
repetition" system was completely broken: I had a massive long list of cards
that had expired, most of which I'd completely forgotten; but it just kept
showing them to me in one giant loop, rather than focusing on a few to
actually teach me. And I didn't even have a clean way of telling it, "Just
pretend I haven't seen any of these cards at all". I ended up just deleting
the deck; that discouraged me from doing anything else I wasn't willing to
commit to doing every single day.

~~~
chipuni
I've used Anki for about ten years, and I'm going to tell you a huge secret...

There's absolutely no need to "reset". Ever.

If you have only ten minutes to devote to Anki, then only spend ten minutes.
If at some later point, you have more time, then spend that time.

Set the maximum reviews per day to something you can do most days -- for me,
that's 250 cards. If you're behind, turn off 'new' cards. And eventually, you
will catch up.

What if you don't do Anki for a month or two? You still don't need to reset.
Anything you remember after that month will have a much longer time until you
next see it.

Only use Anki as much as you have time for it. Let it figure out which cards
to show you. Resetting messes with the algorithm for which cards to show.

~~~
dotancohen
I'm also over ten years on Anki, and I've racked up 2/3 of a million review
during that time. I've taken too-long breaks several times over that time
period, on a variety of subjects (decks in Anki). Sometimes years.

Each time I've gone back to a deck, I've just slugged out the few days of
heavy reviews and let Anki take care of the rest. The stuff that I've
forgotten, Anki will nag me with. The stuff that I've retained for years,
stays retained.

One thing that I do suggest is to limit the maximum interval to 365 days, and
to remove the review limit. I also tend to use the "hard" answer on cards that
I've retained in decks that I've ignored for some time.

------
dangus
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.

~~~
buserror
I agree. In fact, what I find the most interesting part about reading is ....
forgetting about it! Basically concepts will sip thru, but learning the
details is just a waste of brain cells, in my opinion.

Just leave the brain do it's job, don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks,
think about that bits you've just read that was interesting, then promptly
forget about it. You'll forget the details, but not the backbone of it.

Details don't matter in the end. Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/
the name of the greek goddess blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore
me solid. Worse, anyone _knowing it and telling me about it_ would bore me
solid :-)

~~~
jldugger
> don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've
> just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it.

That's basically the spaced repetition model. You need to forget a little bit,
so that working memory isn't saving you, and the recall process takes effort.
That's what builds long term memory. Spaced repetition systems just extend
that process beyond the length of the book, in a time shorter than rereading a
book.

> Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/ the name of the greek goddess
> blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore me solid.

I agree, the names of greek gods is a bad example, unless you're a student of
mythology. Spaced repetition is hard work, so probably only deploy it on
things that matter. A better example might be Bayes Theorem. Incredibly
powerful, but unintuitive and easily forgotten. Cards for Bayes' theorem might
include the purpose: "Bayes' Theorem calculates how to adjust our prior
beliefs given new evidence", as well as cards about the formula, or an
intuitive visualization.

Or, maybe you want to learn more about the linux internals and spend a portion
of your time memorizing the meanings of signals and errnos as a small part of
a larger program of study. Sure, you can look these up in a man page, but part
of the value in knowledge is knowing things exist. How many developers do you
think know of SIGUSR2? Or... SIGBUS ;)

~~~
erezsh
I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get
them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget. I'm more likely
to forget the name of the theorem. But space repetition might be useful for
formulas.

But I'm not too crazy about spaced repetition. I used it to learn all the
capitals in the world, and after about a month I managed to do all of them
without error. But after two years of barely using the knowledge, I only
remember half.

Of course, I could keep reviewing it every few months to keep it fresh, but
that's just not an efficient system, when you think of how many things I'm
supposed to (and do) remember.

For me, at least, the best way to remember things is by tying them in as many
associations and metaphors as I can, and that gives me a pretty reliable
recall. It has some downsides: It's a bit more work than spaced repetition
(requires creativity, for example), and it's not that good for unconnected
data (but then, are random facts that useful anyway?). But I think that as a
long-term method, it's much more solid.

~~~
asdfgeoff
I have had reasonable success using spaced repetition with math proofs
(written in LaTeX). I create cards sparingly, often based on questions from
problem sets which I shouldn't have gotten incorrect (i.e. the mistake stems
from a fundamental misunderstanding of concepts, not a misstep in algebraic
manipulation)

> I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get
> them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget.

I find it too easy to trick myself into believing I understand a concept on a
fundamental level. But often that "understanding" slips away, and six months
later when faced with an example problem out of context I struggle to solve
it.

------
komali2
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
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
Split tasks from your knowledge base. Archive tasks/projects aggressively.

------
istjohn
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_
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
Anki and mnemonics are complementary tools. Use them both.

------
knubie
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
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
> 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.

------
kendallpark
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
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
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).

------
bsanr
>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.

~~~
chipuni
It happens. Where I work, the manager of programmers is from Nigeria.

------
throwaway9d0291
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.

~~~
rajlego
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
Too bad SM is Windows-only and desktop-only. The beauty of Anki is that you
can review anywhere.

~~~
rajlego
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)

~~~
aplaice
> On linux you can use SM via vmware/wine

To add to this, there's a set of Winetricks recipes for running SM on
Linux.[0] (Disclaimer: I haven't tried them, though I've been planning to, for
a while.)

[0] [https://github.com/alessivs/supermemo-
wine](https://github.com/alessivs/supermemo-wine)

------
wiz21c
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
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
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
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
Not only that, I also require "offline" time to relax otherwise I become very
weird emotionally and I start dreading everything.

------
wahnfrieden
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/)

~~~
brigandish
That looks really interesting, I'll definitely give this a try. How did you
decide on the reading materials to use? There's obviously so much to choose
from, I'm wondering what criteria you might use.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Let me know what you think!

The app is a (very heavily) dressed-up RSS reader. I maintain a list of
reading sources and add them so long as they're not going to have overly
sensitive material (eg someone suggested an anonymous blog with short and
colorful posts from contributors reflecting on their lives, but some of the
posts talk about self-harm) or be too niche. I'm most interested in feeds that
get regularly updated with new content, or where they have a trove of existing
content. Also always looking out for content that's good for absolute
beginners.

Some RSS feeds require additional work in the app to transform their content
to make them work nicely with the reader mode, so I also take that into
account.

------
run2arun
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
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.

------
dbriles
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/id373493...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-
flashcards/id373493387)

~~~
barry-cotter
> 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.

~~~
gwd
> 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.

I used Anki's web interface from my phone for about 6 months before I bought
the iOS app. Then about 4 years after using the app almost every day, I sent
them another $25 donation. I got way more than $50 worth of value out of it
over the 10 years that I used it.

(I've now written my own study tool for Chinese which fixes some of the issues
with using flashcards for language learning. Maybe at some point it will show
up on "Show HackerNews"; but it's slow going when you've only got a few hours
a week.)

------
southphillyman
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
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
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

------
jeffshek
[https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-
tips-a...](https://senrigan.io/blog/everything-i-know-strategies-tips-and-
tricks-for-spaced-repetition-anki/#adding_cards)

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 :)

------
galfarragem
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).

------
oweiler
I sometimes wonder if tools like Anki aren't just another form of
procrastination. The time invested could probably be better spent.

~~~
throwaway9d0291
It depends what you're doing. I mainly use it for learning vocabulary.

I'm learning German and Anki is nothing short of amazing. I'm easily able to
learn ~20 words a day primarily just practicing on my phone during bathroom
breaks.

On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words
won't stick in my head the way they do with German.

I've heard very numerous accounts of it being great for Japanese.

~~~
Grue3
>On the other hand I'm also learning Russian and Anki just doesn't work. Words
won't stick in my head the way they do with German.

Because (for English speakers) Russian is harder than German. You need to
reduce the number of words learned per day. Japanese is even harder to learn,
but you have to be persistent. I spent more than an hour every single day for
several years straight to learn the vocabulary.

Also there's a unique challenge with Russian is that nouns, verbs and
adjectives are all conjugated, and the rules are quite complex. The noun cases
would be completely foreign to non-Slavic language speaker. Even if you learn
the vocabulary, using it in sentences is not trivial at all.

~~~
CrazyStat
Just going to be a bit nitpicky here. Noun declension is a feature of various
non-slavic languages, including Latin which English speakers have a decent
chance of having been exposed to.

Modern Russian has 6 cases (with a couple more that pop up very rarely) with 3
genders and singular/plural endings. It's a total of 36 possible combinations,
which is not that bad. Masculine and neuter also share most endings so there
aren't actually 36 unique ones

Probably the most difficult thing about cases when I was learning Russian was
remembering which verbs took a different case than I would expect, e.g. dative
instead of accusative for what seems like a direct object.

~~~
lvh
Right: but one difference (which you sort of hint at) is that German is
consistent in why something takes a particular case compared to Slavic
languages (e.g. direction vs location), and at least the preposition is
consistent. Is it "nad morze" or "nad morzem"? No way to know without the
entire sentence. And "morzem" is the "tool case" \-- the form you usually use
to describe that something happens with the help of a tool even though the sea
(morze) is not at all a tool in that sentence. Oh, and you only use "nad" with
bodies of water by the way. Sorry!

Another incredibly tricky one for Slavic languages is imperfective vs
perfective aspects. In most other languages, perfect vs imperfect is just a
standard construction. In Polish (and Russian, though my examples here are
Polish), you change the verb itself. How? Well, sometimes you put "po" in
front of it, like rozmawiać / porozmawiać. Sometimes it's "z" (jeść / zjeść),
sometimes "u", "na" or "wy". And sometimes you just give up, like oglądać (but
obejrzeć in the perfective), widzieć (zobaczyć), mowić (powiedzieć).

(For this reason I have found it very hard to progress in Polish without
conversation with native speakers who aren't too polite to correct me.)

~~~
CrazyStat
Yes, perfective and imperfective aspects are very tricky, particularly how
they interact with various other linguistic features: imperatives (and the
negative imperative), the subjunctive, and verbs of motion come to mind, each
of which modifies the use of the aspects in it's own way.

------
bloopernova
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.

------
Kagerjay
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

------
arendtio
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)

------
msaharia
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
Is the format open source?

~~~
jac241
The desktop app is GPL and it's all backed by a Sqlite db so it's possible to
reverse engineer.

~~~
melling
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

------
gegohouse
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?

------
TheCabin
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)

------
hedgedoops2
Has anyone ever created an anki deck from their college coursework that would
have allowed them to pass verbal exams 10 years later?

~~~
muldvarp
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.

------
hikarudo
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/)

------
ZoomZoomZoom
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
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.

------
zengargoyle
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.

------
thrifter
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
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]

------
jsaldes
Reminds of when I was starting to learn Japanese!
[https://github.com/miyamoto-san/hiragana](https://github.com/miyamoto-
san/hiragana)

------
01100011
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
The Anki app does indeed import from CSV files, and you can choose what
delimiter character it will use to separate fields.

------
tomerbd
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.

------
qwerty456127
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".

~~~
jac241
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.

------
abhiyerra
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/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7c...](https://gist.github.com/abhiyerra/7a7c31d7e695010e0bd0669c7cf18885)

------
SquishyPanda23
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
> 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.

------
GiantSully
I would better endeavor to digest the content and let it be forgotten than to
spend time organize it and remember it repeatedly.

------
AstralStorm
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
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?

------
leon1717
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.

------
mellowhype
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
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.

------
maxdarapper
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)

------
probably_wrong
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)

------
omginternets
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
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.

------
haolez
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 :)

------
tokamak-teapot
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
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.

~~~
kd5bjo
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
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.

~~~
rajlego
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.

------
bor0
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.

------
RMPR
I don't know which kindle OP uses, but there's already a built-in feature
called "vocabulary builder" which uses spaced repetition.

------
agentultra
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.

------
4dahalibut
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.

------
ameyv
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
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
Hi ruby / vim / bash repo says otherwise (in terms of knowledge... whether or
not he needs it is up for debate)

------
motohagiography
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
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.

~~~
frakkingcylons
You can definitely create new cards in the official mobile app (for iOS).

~~~
inetsee
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.

------
smarri
Good luck to him and his system. This line amazed me by how underwhelming it
was "The core of the system is highlighting."

~~~
tra3
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
Highlighting is an obvious answer. Children do it at school. I wish the guy
well, but it's as I said, underwhelming.

------
bouk
Classic Simon

------
cprayingmantis
When you just memorize you lose intuition which is the far more useful portion
of learning.

~~~
diehunde
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.

------
earlvlee
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)

------
fouc
Substack is a YC W18 startup for those wondering (I was!)

------
anticodon
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
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
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
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.

------
hablary
Memorizing anything in the age of Google is damn right foolish.

~~~
asavadatti
I disagree. Have you tried learning a new language?

~~~
hablary
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.

