Algorithms can be Ankified with the same strategies that work for other subjects: chunk the basic intuition into a short overview card, use diagrams, and hit the “basic idea” of how it works before adding more details cards for particular tricks & minutia. As always, most cards should take <15 seconds to review (including time spent reading the card).
Personally, I avoid burnout a few ways: A) pair Anki with activities like taking a daily 1-mile walk or doing dishes (iOS voice commands help with the latter, so you can review hands-free), B) don’t be shy about reviewing my professional development cards during work hours, C) deleting social media from my phone, so Anki is the go-to gap-filler app, D) always be learning a few new cards in each deck (since decks with 100% old material are less fun to review), E) refactoring: I set a reminder to work on marked cards every few days, so I can break down difficult cards into higher-quality material. A little maintenance goes a long way. F) card design, card design, card design. Well-designed cards are far less fatiguing to review than hastily made ones.
Not sure I understand. Anki kind of abolishes the line between reviewing and learning: you do both with the same system. If you mean motivating yourself to study old material—my trick is to review from large, combined superdecks, so there is no pause between “Oh, I finished my learning decks, time to move on to old decks.” If I give myself that break, I’m more likely to procrastinate, but if I treat it all as one big deck there’s motivation to finish it all in one go.
I actually find it motivating. Learning complex subjects is usually hard, because when you hit something hard there’s an urge to procrastinate rather than figure out what’s blocking you. Anki removes these energy barriers for me: I can always learn a little more about quantum mechanics or whatever by adding a card or two. It makes hard subjects easy, and makes it possible to say “I’ll just study a little topology for 10 minutes” and actually make progress (which is usually impossible outside of SRS).
I very rarely try to tweak the algorithm. 90% of the usefulness of SRS is just being able to handle the spacing schedule for you. Tweaking it doesn’t lead to much gain in efficiency (with a few exceptions: adding learning stages to avoid ease hell, and changing the reset interval to something like 20% or 50% instead of 0% both help avoid a lot of unnecessary reviews).
Voice commands for everything, and audio cards for languages. Hands-free, eyes-free reviews!
Not the OP, but got a few opinions there:
Algorithms can be Ankified with the same strategies that work for other subjects: chunk the basic intuition into a short overview card, use diagrams, and hit the “basic idea” of how it works before adding more details cards for particular tricks & minutia. As always, most cards should take <15 seconds to review (including time spent reading the card).
Personally, I avoid burnout a few ways:
A) pair Anki with activities like taking a daily 1-mile walk or doing dishes (iOS voice commands help with the latter, so you can review hands-free),
B) don’t be shy about reviewing my professional development cards during work hours,
C) deleting social media from my phone, so Anki is the go-to gap-filler app,
D) always be learning a few new cards in each deck (since decks with 100% old material are less fun to review),
E) refactoring: I set a reminder to work on marked cards every few days, so I can break down difficult cards into higher-quality material. A little maintenance goes a long way.
F) card design, card design, card design. Well-designed cards are far less fatiguing to review than hastily made ones.
Not sure I understand. Anki kind of abolishes the line between reviewing and learning: you do both with the same system. If you mean motivating yourself to study old material—my trick is to review from large, combined superdecks, so there is no pause between “Oh, I finished my learning decks, time to move on to old decks.” If I give myself that break, I’m more likely to procrastinate, but if I treat it all as one big deck there’s motivation to finish it all in one go.
I actually find it motivating. Learning complex subjects is usually hard, because when you hit something hard there’s an urge to procrastinate rather than figure out what’s blocking you. Anki removes these energy barriers for me: I can always learn a little more about quantum mechanics or whatever by adding a card or two. It makes hard subjects easy, and makes it possible to say “I’ll just study a little topology for 10 minutes” and actually make progress (which is usually impossible outside of SRS).
I very rarely try to tweak the algorithm. 90% of the usefulness of SRS is just being able to handle the spacing schedule for you. Tweaking it doesn’t lead to much gain in efficiency (with a few exceptions: adding learning stages to avoid ease hell, and changing the reset interval to something like 20% or 50% instead of 0% both help avoid a lot of unnecessary reviews).
Voice commands for everything, and audio cards for languages. Hands-free, eyes-free reviews!