My impression and experiences is that obtaining a deep understanding is a lot more fruitful than doing spaced repetition.
I don’t see why these should be mutually exclusive, or even significantly trade off against each other. This sounds like saying “drinking water is more important than getting good sleep”, which is also true in a literal sense, but which implies some kind of strange tradeoff that I haven’t encountered. I aim to get a deep / intuitive understanding, and then use Anki to make myself use that understanding on a regular basis so that I retain it.
However, I think that playing around with those annoying details might be a good means to the end of grasping central concepts. I spent a lot of time telling myself, “It’s only the big concepts that matter, so you can skip this section, you don’t have to answer these questions, you don’t have to do these practice problems.”
I agree, and I’m not trying to tell people to not sweat the details. It’s more like, you don’t have to do every single practice problem, or complete all the bonus sections / applications which don’t interest you. Which is a thing I did—e.g. for Linear Algebra Done Right, and then I forgot a lot of linear algebra anyways.
Another approach is, you start with the papers you want to understand, and then backchain into the concepts you have to learn in a big tree. Then you’re guaranteed not to waste time. I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds very sensible and I mean to try it soon.
I don’t see why these should be mutually exclusive, or even significantly trade off against each other… I aim to get a deep / intuitive understanding, and then use Anki to make myself use that understanding on a regular basis so that I retain it.
Because that time you spend using Anki to retain it is time that you could spend seeking deep understandings elsewhere.
It’s more like, you don’t have to do every single practice problem, or complete all the bonus sections / applications which don’t interest you.
Yeah, that makes sense. Sounds like we made opposite mistakes :)
Another approach is, you start with the papers you want to understand, and then backchain into the concepts you have to learn in a big tree. Then you’re guaranteed not to waste time. I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds very sensible and I mean to try it soon.
I’ve tried that. I think it’s an approach to have in your toolkit, but for me it’s not really my style.
Eg. in learning Haskell I’ve been trying to skim a book, then work on practice problems, then backtrack when I notice a concept I haven’t learned yet that I need to solve the problem. I always seem to get lost/overwhelmed in doing the backtracking. So I pivoted to reading the 1000+ page Haskell Programming from First Principles book, which is exactly what the title implies, and it’s going well for me.
Also from a more motivational perspective rather than a pedagogical one, I find that I can get into a flow state more easily with the first principles approach. With the backtracking approach, I often get stuck. With the first principles approach, it may be slow at times, but at least I’m continuing to take small steps forward and not getting stuck.
Because that time you spend using Anki to retain it is time that you could spend seeking deep understandings elsewhere.
Right, but part of having deep understandings of things is to have the deep understanding, and if I just keep acquiring deep understanding without working on retention, I’ll lose all but an echo. If I don’t use Anki, I won’thave the deep understanding later. I therefore consider Anki to help with the long-term goal of having deep understanding, even if moments spent making Anki cards could be used on object-level study.
I guess the crux is about Anki helping with retention. If you’d lose a lot of your understanding without Anki, I agree it’s worthwhile. If you’d only lose a little, it seems like a better use of time to seek deep understandings elsewhere.
Because that time you spend using Anki to retain it is time that you could spend seeking deep understandings elsewhere.
In my personal experience, a deep-understanding seeking study session is not portable (hard to take notes when you don’t have a surface) and if it’s less than an hour long, it’s usually not very good (need time to ‘warm up’ and fully focus). Anki, on the other hand, is perfect for quick study during a break/short commute/being in a queue.
Also creating flashcards in itself makes a great interactive reread of things.
Thanks for all of these thoughts!
I don’t see why these should be mutually exclusive, or even significantly trade off against each other. This sounds like saying “drinking water is more important than getting good sleep”, which is also true in a literal sense, but which implies some kind of strange tradeoff that I haven’t encountered. I aim to get a deep / intuitive understanding, and then use Anki to make myself use that understanding on a regular basis so that I retain it.
I agree, and I’m not trying to tell people to not sweat the details. It’s more like, you don’t have to do every single practice problem, or complete all the bonus sections / applications which don’t interest you. Which is a thing I did—e.g. for Linear Algebra Done Right, and then I forgot a lot of linear algebra anyways.
Another approach is, you start with the papers you want to understand, and then backchain into the concepts you have to learn in a big tree. Then you’re guaranteed not to waste time. I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds very sensible and I mean to try it soon.
Because that time you spend using Anki to retain it is time that you could spend seeking deep understandings elsewhere.
Yeah, that makes sense. Sounds like we made opposite mistakes :)
I’ve tried that. I think it’s an approach to have in your toolkit, but for me it’s not really my style.
Eg. in learning Haskell I’ve been trying to skim a book, then work on practice problems, then backtrack when I notice a concept I haven’t learned yet that I need to solve the problem. I always seem to get lost/overwhelmed in doing the backtracking. So I pivoted to reading the 1000+ page Haskell Programming from First Principles book, which is exactly what the title implies, and it’s going well for me.
Also from a more motivational perspective rather than a pedagogical one, I find that I can get into a flow state more easily with the first principles approach. With the backtracking approach, I often get stuck. With the first principles approach, it may be slow at times, but at least I’m continuing to take small steps forward and not getting stuck.
Right, but part of having deep understandings of things is to have the deep understanding, and if I just keep acquiring deep understanding without working on retention, I’ll lose all but an echo. If I don’t use Anki, I won’t have the deep understanding later. I therefore consider Anki to help with the long-term goal of having deep understanding, even if moments spent making Anki cards could be used on object-level study.
I guess the crux is about Anki helping with retention. If you’d lose a lot of your understanding without Anki, I agree it’s worthwhile. If you’d only lose a little, it seems like a better use of time to seek deep understandings elsewhere.
In my personal experience, a deep-understanding seeking study session is not portable (hard to take notes when you don’t have a surface) and if it’s less than an hour long, it’s usually not very good (need time to ‘warm up’ and fully focus). Anki, on the other hand, is perfect for quick study during a break/short commute/being in a queue.
Also creating flashcards in itself makes a great interactive reread of things.