In a conversation today, I was made aware of how long I’ve used Anki (the SRS software). My first memory of utilizing it is when I was preparing for an Art History exam. That was in 2011. It has been the most longstanding program on my devices. I install it on any device capable of it. I have been using the program for nearly 12 years. There have been breaks in the meantime, but I return to it without fail. And yet...I learned recently that there were features that would have addressed a few of the pain points I had. Which, fortunately, brought upon another realization; in all these years of use, I had not read the manual.
I had not read the manual nor had I read many instructional on how to make effective use of the tool. The book that influenced a lot of my knowledge on the tool was Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. And even that, was almost 10 years ago now. The tool has undergone multiple revisions and quality of life updates I never bothered to touch. My use of the tool has remained in the rudimentary.
I have been reading a few articles on how to better make use of it. What I knew about flash card making, I knew from Wyner’s book. But while I read Andy Mattschak’s blog on prompt writings, I learned how I could make my prompts more effective. The primary one being I needed to iterate on them. I had been creating my own flashcards for a while, but it was typical for them to be binary prompts or never iterated upon. His article made me aware that effective prompts must be: - focused - precise - consistent - effortful - not-binary responses
While I had kept in mind to be focused with my cards, I had never thought to make them effortful. His argument is that they should be on the edge of effortful. I had not considered the potential for SRS recollection to become a practice of muscle memory. The flashcard questions should be challenging enough that we force ourselves to recall the knowledge. Admittedly, a few of my cards had fallen into this trap. I now know to tag them for later iteration when I catch them.
Precise prompts were not an aspect I had previously focused on, but as Mattschak says:
Vague questions will elicit vague answers, which won’t reliably light the bulbs you’re targeting.
These will be helpful considerations as I go through my cards slowly and reiterate on them. It will have to be a practice of reiteration because to go through the hundreds of cards I have created is a sisyphean task.
I have found a few other articles around SRS and Anki that I found helpful or interesting during this research, I will list them here.
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Memorizing a programming language using spaced repetition software Derek Sivers
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Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics
Derek Sivers’s blog is well known in the programming community. His article is a great succinct way of getting started with SRS. Honestly, his intro about using SRS to gain complete understanding of a programming language hyped me up. Even though that has not been one of my goals, it was exciting.
The last two articles are written by Michael Nielsen. The first article is a behemoth of a resource. He is thorough in his use of the tool. I had not considered the many ways he uses it. Too many thoughts about his use of the tool to go into it today. But what a worthwhile article on the tool! I feel similarly about his article on using it to understand a piece of mathematics. Admittedly, I did not go through the entire article, it got more complicated than I had expected of it. It is an article I will have to return to at a later date with time set aside for it.
Of course, the last (and most important) bit, is the Anki Manual. Which I’ve finally begun.