These days, I sometimes get bumped into great new ideas[tm], that are at times well proven, or at least workable and useful—only to remember that I did already use that idea some years ago with great success and then dumped it for no good reason whatsoever.
Simple example: in language learning write ups, I repeatedly find the idea of an SRS. That is a program which does spaced repetitions at nice intervals and consistently helps in memorizing not only language items, but also all other kinds of facts. Programs and data collections are now freely available—but I already programmed my own program for that about 14 years ago as a nice entry level programming exercise, and used it quite extensively and successfully for about 2 years in school, till I suddenly stopped.
That made me wonder which other great ideas I already used and discarded, why former me would do such a thing and to make it a public question: which great things LWers might have tried and discarded for no particular reason.
Another obvious example from my own stack would be the use of checklists to pack for holidays. Worked great for years and still does.
These days, I sometimes get bumped into great new ideas[tm], that are at times well proven, or at least workable and useful—only to remember that I did already use that idea some years ago with great success and then dumped it for no good reason whatsoever. Simple example: in language learning write ups, I repeatedly find the idea of an SRS. That is a program which does spaced repetitions at nice intervals and consistently helps in memorizing not only language items, but also all other kinds of facts. Programs and data collections are now freely available—but I already programmed my own program for that about 14 years ago as a nice entry level programming exercise, and used it quite extensively and successfully for about 2 years in school, till I suddenly stopped. That made me wonder which other great ideas I already used and discarded, why former me would do such a thing and to make it a public question: which great things LWers might have tried and discarded for no particular reason.
Another obvious example from my own stack would be the use of checklists to pack for holidays. Worked great for years and still does.
That’s kind of hard—if they were so great, how could we remember they were great and also not immediately reinstate them?