Good point about spaced repitition, wish I had the discipline. I find that if I learned something the way I described above, I can pick it up again easily even if rusty, the moment I read and think again about it, it comes back fast.
Two words: Spaced repetition, it feels like magic. You are likely going to forget most of what you learn if you don't engage with it and/or it doesn't get repeated.
I didn't have the visual issues so it was enjoyable for me to read.
My spaced repetition system requires that I copy ideas I want to recall. I'm sharing my summary of the main ideas in case they help you.
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# Learning by Building Connection
New ideas have to connect with what’s already there — they cannot be stored, as if in a filing cabinet.
Throwing facts at people doesn’t work. You have to:
* connect ideas to other ideas and everyday things
* understand an idea in multiple ways (e.g. words, visuals, etc.)
* once you make connections, you have to maintain them
* you don’t need to unlearn connections to make room for new ones
# Maintaining what you learned
Recalling is better for retention than re-reading. Spacing effect shows that we forget things quickly the first time we see it, but if you exert effort to recall things spaced over increasing intervals of time, you retain a lot more than if you were cramming.
# Learning through deep connections
You have to process ideas on a deep level to make them stick. A great way to learn something at a deeper level is to explain it to someone.
If memory helps, spaced repetition can help. You’re confusing knowledge with facts. You put in what you want to be reminded of at spaced intervals. Half of my spaced repetition stuff is actually my own personal philosophy and observations about life.
Knowledge isn’t that crap you get out of books. It’s whatever you can know that empowers you.
Do you ever find yourself going back to something you used to know well, only to find that you're now a bit rusty? In theory, spaced repetition would allow you to keep that knowledge from getting stale.
I think you'll find you learn new things quicker with judicious use of spaced repetition. As a bonus, you'll never forget those things as long as you maintain the habit. And we're all always learning, so that shouldn't be hard.
I do think the hardest part of spaced repetition use outside of the classroom is choosing what to memorize. In school, those decisions are made for you. I find it easy to bite off too much and start memorizing minutiae of a technology instead of the essential items. But I think it's just another skill to master.
A key insight for me was when I realized that spaced repetition isn't really about memorization, it's about skill maintenance.
The skill most people use formal spaced-repetition methods for is factual recall, to be sure, but the underlying principles can be applied to any human endeavour. My Anki deck, for example, is designed to exercise reading comprehension. For cooking, I don't try to memorize recipes like the article demonstrates; I do, however, try to revisit and make the dishes in my repertoire semi-regularly to reinforce the operational cues that are impossible to put into words. It's similar for all of my other hobbies: I naturally tend to have a period of intense engagement with them at first that trails off as my confidence builds. I seem to revisit most of them on the same sort of exponential schedule without really trying, as if my subconscious understands when it's time to have a refresher.
Spaced repetition is good for memory[0]. When I read on a subject I will usually read several books in the same area spread out over 6-8 months to reinforce those memories. I felt the repetition in 'Thinking Fast and Slow' helped me soak up and retain the ideas much better, although I've probably forgotten much of that book by now.
I read this policy paper on nuclear weapons that I found in the trash near my house. It consisted of five essays, each essay critiquing the prior essays. The repetition combined with argumentation had a powerful effect and forced me to engage in thinking about the issue under discussion. I wish more books would do that. It was around 80 pages which was a perfect length.
When growing up, rote learning was one of my main gripes with school. Spaced repetition is rote learning with controlled (instead of brute) force.
With time I started to respect memorization for certain kinds of information, to the point of using it on my own vocabulary learning app[1], which is one of the few cases where memorization seems justifiable, but one still has to put the information to use, otherwise the info will be lost.
There's a great book called 'Making It Stick' which details effective, proven methods to improve memorisation and learning. Spaced repition (or more generally active recall) is one of those major methods.
Exactly. Spaced repetition is a remarkably effective learning technique, but it can't tell you what to learn.
At some point I think we have to stop listening to external authorities and rely on our own judgement about what to learn, and how to do so, as signalled by feelings of excitement about particular authors and ideas. One of the effects of formal education is to dampen or corrupt that intuition, e.g. by instilling the desire to learn things 'properly' (say in a certain prearranged sequence) or by the desire to only learn prestigious topics in order to impress other people.
If we are engaged meaningfully with reality we will inevitably revisit particular subjects or authors multiple times. This is an organic form of spaced repetition. Forgetting certain things is part of that: we learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer.
Also another trick (without going full formaliser spaced repetition): reread the same thing the next day, and then a week after. Boring but very effective for long term retention.
I tried spaced repetition for a few months, but I found that I wasn't actually learning anything, I was only remembering facts. I'm not sure what I expected, but when I "learn" something, I grasp the "shape" of the concept...how it fits with other things...where its edges are...where parts of it are unexplored etc. This only comes to me by using the thing I'm trying to learn, not by injecting random facts into my memory.
One of the first rule of spaced repetition is that SRS is a system for retaining information, not learning.
Once you learn the information, then you use the SRS to retain the knowledge you built up.
Also, if you have trouble connecting individual facts into larger conceptual framework, you may not be making enough connecting notes to connect those facts.
By writing from your own perspective it has 2 effects: 1) it helps solidify the concepts a bit more, because you can only explain something once you've reached a certain level of comprehension. and 2) it serves as a "stack snapshot" of your mind when you had a handle on the concept, and re-reading that snapshot loads the context back into your mind very quickly.
Writing is what I do too. I have a note system that I devised that I looked up and revised all the time. It's part of my learning system, but I considered it secondary storage.
But beware of reading. It can make you feel like you understand something, but you really don't. Reading is considered a poor study strategy, since it mislead you into thinking you have fluency when you don't.
I like the idea presented in TFA, but as a small counter-anecdote, the mileage I've gotten out of my reading has skyrocketed since I started doing spaced repetition.
I can now actually whip out enumerative combinatorics to solve problems, or do on the spot estimations of the standard error of log-odds differences from contingency tables, or compute the power or any number to any other with mental maths, without looking it up in my notes first. That's immensely powerful.
But it also doesn't stop there. Since I now remember far more higher-level concepts, I can also make sense of more advanced reading in a way I was unable to when I had to dip back and forth between my notes and the text to try to piece things together.
Essentially, remembering what I've read has allowed me to raise the level of abstraction of my thinking, which has been more helpful than I expected it to, across a number of different situations.
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That said, I'm only a few months into my spaced repetition journey, so maybe there's a balance to strike and a judgment to make between forgetting and remembering, and I'm sure that's something I'll get better at finding as I get practise.
Maybe the first few months of spaced repetition is the time before diminishing returns set in. I don't know but I'm excited to find out.
That's great, thanks. I've been taking notes for a while on my reading, to try and remember it better (under the idea that if you summarise and write it down, just that process will help you remember it better).
I suppose it's better than nothing, but I've found the same thing, if I don't revisit those notes, I do still forget it.
So I think a more formalised spaced-repetition process like this can help me.
Spaced repetition works great for me. Especially because it binds well with a pragmatic approach of professional learning : if I encounter a problem multiple times it is worth it to learn the solution to have it quickly. If I only encounter it once I don't need to.
My process is usually this one :
- Understand learning space ontology. Once I am able to visualize the concepts associated with the field and their relationships, I stop digging the theory and go to practice.
- Start practice: try to solve a simple problem in this learning space. Maximally use all information sources available to solve problems as we go (articles, youtube, wikipedia, blogs, anything). If I get confused I recognize that I missed some theory and go back to square one.
- Solve real use case, go back to step 2 if I get confused or blocked.
I usually get where I need in less than 6 steps. I use this in Software Engineering, Physics and Mathematics.
When I encounter a problem in an Ontolongy space I already encountered, I go directly to step 3.
I tried spaced repetition for a few months, but I found that I wasn't actually learning anything, I was only remembering facts. I'm not sure what I expected, but when I "learn" something, I grasp the "shape" of the concept...how it fits with other things...where its edges are...where parts of it are unexplored etc. This only comes to me by using the thing I'm trying to learn, not by injecting random facts into my memory.
If anyone has had similar experiences, I've found the best way to learn has been writing about things that I use, as I'm using them. The rule for writing in that way is only write what you've come to understand...don't just copy text that is "useful" from another source. Dive deep and learn the shape of the concept, then write about it in your own words, then move on.
By writing from your own perspective it has 2 effects: 1) it helps solidify the concepts a bit more, because you can only explain something once you've reached a certain level of comprehension. and 2) it serves as a "stack snapshot" of your mind when you had a handle on the concept, and re-reading that snapshot loads the context back into your mind very quickly.
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