For those of us who aren’t brilliant, but want to learn well anyway, Anki’s (my preferred SRS) is a godsend when used in the right domains — foreign language vocabulary is the best example.
I don’t see spaced repetition as one of those get-fit-fast schemes. I see it as going to the gym as opposed to generally living an active lifestyle. Some gifted people can get very, very fit without going to the gym, just by playing sports and other physical activities. Gym isn’t that fun compared to playing soccer, and it takes a lot of time and consistency to be worth it.
That's an excellent way to put it. Personally, it allowed me to get excellent grades despite my post-concussion syndrome. It's miserable, but optimising your learning can really let you punch above your weight.
Also, you can fit Anki into parts of your day where "proper" learning is more difficult. I used to do it on the bus to and from school, where it was far to loud - and I was often too tired - to learn through other means.
The alternative was scrolling through HN... I did that a lot, too.
Would you mind outlining how you use Anki? I've had some memory issues lately and I think it would really help.
Specifically, when do you create cards, how do you make sure your cards are good quality, what are the scheduling settings, how is it organized (sub decks?). I feel like Anki itself is overwhelming...
I haven't used Anki for a while now. I've had an aversion to it since I completely burnt out after my A levels.
I primarily added Anki cards from Obsidian. I'd have a heirarchal note structure for the subject (e.g. physics -> paper 3 -> astrophysics -> stars -> star type categories). Then I'd have my plainly-formatted notes, and below it I'd have some flashcards. The Obsidian4Anki extension let me create cards from the markdown.
The cards would strictly be on the topic in the note, generally be written around the same time or a few days later, and would be Q-and-A or clozes.
So as an example, "What colour is an O class star::Blue" would be in my notes and turned into a matching card, or "A {1:type 1A supernova} always has an {2:absolute magnitude} of {3:-19.3}" would create three cloze cards.
At the top of each note I'd use a note property to specify the notes' place in the Anki heirarchy, and I'd use the first three parts of the Obsidian heirarchy. So I'd save it as Physics -> Paper 3 -> Astrophysics -> [many, many cards]. I always duplicated notes to make new ones, so I rarely touched this.
Generally I'd practice all the physics cards at once, but categorising them this way let me drop the paper 1 cards once I'd done it and focus on paper 2 and 3 etc.
Honestly, though, I first started this when I was fourteen. My notes and my Anki decks were a complete mess compared to when I stopped when I left school four years later. You'll find what works for you - and clean things up - as you go along.
I don’t see spaced repetition as one of those get-fit-fast schemes. I see it as going to the gym as opposed to generally living an active lifestyle. Some gifted people can get very, very fit without going to the gym, just by playing sports and other physical activities. Gym isn’t that fun compared to playing soccer, and it takes a lot of time and consistency to be worth it.